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Unit 11: Structural Implementation

Notes

Case Study Boundarylessness: The Welch Way

lobalization has certainly changed the way that HR does business, enabled by
technology advances. HR organizations that embrace globalization opportunities
Gare finding ways to deliver their strategic value in that new environment. So,
human capital plans can be presented that take advantage of a global workforce, talent can
be identified and aligned with customers, no matter where they may be. Technology
offers the capability to maintain contact and information flow to employees--through
web sites, e-mails, webinar, video conference and virtual sites such as Second Life.
'Boundarylessness' was developed at General Electric in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and
it is one of the cultural elements General Electric credits for its phenomenal success over
the last fifteen years. Proponents of boundarylessness believe traditional boundaries
between layers of management (vertical boundaries) and divisions between functional
areas (horizontal boundaries) have stifled the flow of information and ideas among
employees. A boundaryless culture seeks to overcome the limitations imposed by these
and other internal corporate divisions.

Jack Welch certainly propelled it into the world's corporate consciousness with his Work-
Out program at General Electric in the early 1990s. In 1992, he described boundarylessness
this way: GE's diversity creates a huge laboratory of innovation and ideas that reside in
each of the businesses, and mining them is both our challenge and an awesome opportunity.
Boundaryless behavior is what integrates us and turns this opportunity into reality, creating
the real value of a multi-business company -- the big competitive advantage we call
Integrated Diversity.

"Boundaryless behavior has become the 'right' behavior at GE, and aligned with this
behavior is a rewards system that recognizes the adapter or implementer of an idea as
much as its originator. Creating this open, sharing climate magnifies the enormous and
unique advantage of a multibusiness GE, as our wide diversity of service and industrial
businesses exchange an endless stream of new ideas and best practices"-- This quote ignited
my interest in the link between organizational evolution and boundarylessness. Because
of its unique position as a "multibusiness" company, General Electric recognized the
importance of idea adaptation, or in organizational evolution terms, recombination. By
creating an atmosphere where adapting and implementing a good idea from another area
of GE or from outside is valued as much as or more than generating the good idea, Jack
Welch focused his company on getting the maximum benefit from its diverse and powerful
intellectual capital.

"Town meetings," developed at GE as it embraced boundarylessness, are an important
tool in creating boundaryless organizations. In a town meeting, employees with a common
goal or purpose (serving the same customer, working on the same product or process, etc.)
but from different areas and different levels of management come together to discuss new
ideas. In the organizational evolution reading of boundarylessness, town meetings are
recombination workshops. Groups work for a few days before town meetings to generate
and refine new ideas, and the ideas are presented, discussed, and either killed or
implemented at the meetings. The town meeting format provides "safe ways" for anyone's
ideas to be challenged by anyone else, without regard to position or authority. Town
meetings have two purposes. First, of course, is to generate and implement change ideas.
Second however, is to educate people on their "real degrees of freedom," to let employees
Contd...

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