Partnering for Organizational Performance : Collaboration and Culture in the Global Workplace

The increasing practice of working 24x7 does not only refer to providing customer service day and night. It also describes how work now gets handed off from one time zone to the next, making business hours effectively all-day and world-wide. Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, General Motors, and the Ford Motor Company all have embraced the advent of an increasingly global work environment. The result is that business today necessarily spans cultures, languages, and continents. In Partnering for Organizational Performance, applied anthropologists Briody and Trotter bring together an array of key practitioners and academics whose work demystifies the dynamics and life-cycles of partnerships. Each contributor explores the concepts and practices associated with the new, global reach of professional collaborative efforts by looking at cases that involve an array of partners. Students and practitioners will benefit from the in-depth analyses of cases that illustrate the possibilities of collaborative arrangements, whether in business and management, academic, or non-profit organizations.