Organizational Capability : Competing from the Inside Out

Rating:
Summary: Not a very useful book for the complete perspective
Review: Organizational Capability provides a good explaination of all the peices required to achieve, change, and sustain an organization's competencies. The book really focuses on competency and not capability. This makes the title a misnomer. However it is a worthwhile read for anyone contemplating or leading broad scale change.

The book is definately not for people from Human Resources as between the lines there are some fairly cogent criticisms of traditional HR Departments and their operations.

The only drawbacks to the book are its week testimonials. Frequent references to Apple Computer, GE and others appear weak and less than anecdotal. A few strong case studies would have raised the value of the book dramatically. While this shouldn't keep you from reading it, it does cause you to wade through "fluff" from time to time.

Rating:
Summary: A must for those seeking to sustain change
Review: Organizational Capability provides a good explaination of all the peices required to achieve, change, and sustain an organization's competencies. The book really focuses on competency and not capability. This makes the title a misnomer. However it is a worthwhile read for anyone contemplating or leading broad scale change.

The book is definately not for people from Human Resources as between the lines there are some fairly cogent criticisms of traditional HR Departments and their operations.

The only drawbacks to the book are its week testimonials. Frequent references to Apple Computer, GE and others appear weak and less than anecdotal. A few strong case studies would have raised the value of the book dramatically. While this shouldn't keep you from reading it, it does cause you to wade through "fluff" from time to time.

Rating:
Summary: Not a very useful book for the complete perspective
Review: This book focusses on the "human" side of building organizational capabilities. It is a pretty good treatise of how HR and individual development can be used to achieve competetive advantage. The model for competitive advantage given in the book makes interesting reading. But the biggest drawback of the book is the lack of illustrative examples. There are hardly any useful cases. In addition there could have been some focus on value chain activites and how organizational capability responds to that. The book also doesnot focus at all on some of key components of capability like technology, time etc. There is also no clear model/ process given which shows the transition of capabilities to competencies. The emphasis of the book also seems to be how to build organizational capabilty - there are really no clues provided about how strategy should be shaped by capablity.