Transcompetition: Moving Beyond Competition and Collaboration (Businessweek Books) - Hardcover

Robbins, Harvey; Finley, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0070530823 ISBN 13: 9780070530829

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 1998

Synopsis

The award-winning authors of Why Teams Don't Work draw on ideas, lessons and examples from the worlds of current events, business history, psychology, anthropology, and the transcompetitive swarming of ants and bees to present a new trend in management style called transcompetition. Transcompetition combines the best tactics of business war and the new spirit of teamwork to encourage an alliance between individuals and organizations. With easy-to-follow guidelines for transforming your organizational style, the authors explain how to create and maintain a collaborative environment that hires the best and optimizes the rest.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"It will make you made, it will make you laugh, but above all, it will make you think... TransCompetition provides a blueprint for the successful organization of the future."-Glenn M. Parker, Author of Cross-functional Teams: Working with Allies, Enemies and Other Strangers. "Absolutely mandatory reading before any other management book. This book will save readers many years of wasted effort. It will save some companies from extinction. That's an R.O.I. I strongly recommend."-Stewart D. Saxe, International Partner, Baker & McKenzie. TransCompetition: A new way to compete-and succeed-in the collaborative marketplace. In today's marketplace, what really works-hard-driving competitiveness or friendly collaboration? Neither, say experts Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley. In this wake-up call to the business community, the award-winning team that gave us Why Teams Don't Work outlines a groundbreaking new concept in management style called transcompetition. An innovative combination of the best tactics of combat and the new spirit of teamwork, transcompetition can helo transform your business practices far more effectively than anything you are doing right now. The new business philosophy of transcompetition is grounded in ideas and strategies that can help you: Understand where negative competition arises in your organization and what you can do about it-and what you can't do; Break the pointless cycle of slash-and-burn that vanquishes enemies without improving the bottom line; Reach a new level of continuous winning-one that is possible only when organizations stop their internal and external bloodletting and get on with the business of expanding markets and satisfying customers. Applying transcompetitive concepts to your business can help you understand the nature of your corporate culture and of yourself-and turn that knowledge into a highly effective strategy for long-term growth without losing that important competitive edge.

Reviews

Almost a decade ago, Robbins touted the advantages of teamwork and collaboration in Turf Wars: Moving from Competition to Collaboration (1990). Five years later, he and Finley acknowledged some of the barriers to collaboration in Why Teams Don't Work: What Went Wrong and How to Make It Right (1995). Now, the two propose a new management model that combines the best elements of both collaboration and competition. Robbins is a licensed clinical psychologist, and Finley is a business writer whose columns are carried by the Knight Ridder newspaper chain. They document the destructive effects of competition and the often ineffective results of collaboration. Using self-and organizational-assessment tools and examples from the corporate world, the authors show how to combine these two strategies to best advantage. This book is the second imprint in a new series from Business Week magazine, and Robbins and Finley utilize short, article-length chapters that reflect Business Week's journalistic style. David Rouse

Coauthors of Why Teams Don't Work (LJ 7/97), Robbins and Finley now tackle traditional concepts of competition vs. collaboration in business, offering as an alternative what they refer to as "transcompetition." Eschewing either end of the continuum, the authors attempt to define the right mix of competition and collaboration in today's radically changing business environment, with a heavy emphasis on the fields of anthropology, psychology, history, and biology. Their goal is to break the cycle of winning at all costs, or of suppressing the individual for the good of the group, while integrating the best of both approaches in an alliance between individuals and organizations. Examples of companies clearly representing these conflicting approaches abound here, but the idea of a transcompetitive organization is sadly lost in a mush of New Age ideas sorely in need of a point. Look to Margaret Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science (Berrett-Koehler, 1993) for a far better understanding of natural laws applied to organizations. Buy only on demand at larger public libraries.?Dale F. Farris, Groves, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0070530823
• ISBN 13: 9780070530829
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 251