Communication Best Practices at Dell, General Electric, Microsoft, and Monsanto

Preface

Preface In 1984, the University of Hawaii, East-West Center in Honolulu, and Harvard University provided research grants and/or support to begin an inquiry into the criteria high-tech firms employed in site selection . Armed with letters of introduction from Harvard University, we began interviewing the top management of high-tech firms located in Silicon Valley, California, the Highway 128 Beltway in Massachusetts , and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. From these interviews emerged the broad outline of what would become the theory of High-Speed Management, a new organizational communication theory. Between 1984 and 2001, we had the opportunity to continue this line of research while consulting with over sixty firms and governments in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. We also were invited to report and update our research in MBA programs sponsored by ABB (formerly known as Asea Brown Boveri) and Siemens. In addition we held ten international conferences on High-Speed Management in Europe, Asia, and the United States. In 1994, the European International Business Association held its conference on High-Speed Management and we were invited to participate in that conference. In 1998, our theory of High-Speed Management was named a finalist in the Arizona State University Organizational Communication Prize lecture contest for developing an original theory capable of stimulating and integrating the research in organizational communication . This line of research has generated over ten books and 50 chapters in books and journal articles. This book is, then, the culmination of 18 years of research, training, consulting, and thoughtful analysis. We believe that this line of research has generated three important outputs: (1) an understanding of one appropriate method, the benchmarking of communication best practices, for researching the critical success factors involved in effective organizational communication; (2) an understanding of one ix method for developing a theory of organizational communication which has generality and necessity at the theoretic and practical levels of communication; and (3) an original and powerful theory of organizational communication High-Speed Management which can integrate organizational communication research and generate new lines of inquiry. Donald P. Cushman Sarah Sanderson King November 2002 x PREFACE ...