Abstract
All business organisations strive for progression, which means movement towards an objective by converting the energy within from latent potential to actual force, and orchestrating assets and resources in support of this movement. In addition, it means development- providing foundations for future growth—by balancing a focus on short term gains with investments that will pay back in the longer term. Progression manifests itself by results—profit, return on investment, or the maximisation of shareholder value and by the successful adaptation to contemporary environments including social objectives -fair- trade practices, contribution to social welfare, respect for and understanding about the environment, diversity, and equality of opportunity. A characteristic of latent potential is that of complementarity in which one capability reinforces the impact of another capability—where the relations of independent units or their evolution creates higher value than their individual operation. Complementarity refers to the interaction of business strategies and practices to produce coherent, aligned and mutually reinforcing systems and processes that give superior outcomes over those that would occur if such strategies or practices had taken place independently of one another.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ahlstrad, B., Lampel, J., & Mintzberg, H. (1998). Strategy safari. Pearson.
Albrecht, S., Breidahl, E., & Marty, A. (2018). Organizational resources, organizational engagement climate, and employee engagement. The Career Development International, 23(1), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-04-2017-0064
Alimo-Metcalfe, B., & Alban-Metcalfe, J. (2003, March 16). Under the influence. People Management, 32–35.
Bakker, A. (2017). Strategic and proactive approaches to work engagement. Special Issue: Employee Engagement, Organizational Dynamics, 46(2), 67–75.
Baldwin, C. Y. (2018). Design rules, volume 2: How technology shapes organisations, Chapter 5 Complementarity. Working Paper 19-036. Harvard Business School, USA.
Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), 99.
Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. The Free Press.
Bohr, N. (1929). Atomic theory and the description of nature. Cambridge University Press, 1961.
Brynjolfsson, E., & Milgrom, P. (2013). Complementarity in organizations. In R. S. Gibbons & J. Roberts (Eds.), The handbook of organisational economics. Princeton University Press.
Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. Harper & Row.
Cappelli, P. (2008). Talent management for the twenty-first century. Harvard Business Review.
Cascio, W. F., & Boudreau, J. W. (2016). The search for global competence: From international HR to talent management. Journal of World Business, 51(1), 10909516.
Cavaco, S., & Crifo, P. (2014). CSR and financial performance: Complementarity between environmental, social and business behaviours. Applied Economics, 46(27), 3323–3338.
Chambers, E. G., Foulon, M., Handfield-Jones, H., Hankin, S. M., & Michaels, E. G. (1998b). The war for talent. The McKinsey Quarterly, 3.
Chambers, E. G., Handfield-Jones, H., Hankin, S. M., & Michaels, E. G., III. (1998a). Win the war for top talent. Workforce, 77(12), 50.
Child, J. (1969). British management thought—A critical analysis. George Allen & Unwin.
Christian, M. S., Garza, A. S., & Slaughter, J. E. (2011). Work engagement: A quantitative review and test of its relations with task and contextual performance. Personnel Psychology, 64, 89–136.
CIPD. (2017). Employee engagement and motivation. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London, UK. https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/engagement/factsheet#6227
Collings, D. G., & Mellahi, K. (2009). Strategic talent management: A review and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 19(4), 304–313.
Collings, D. G., & Mellahi, K. (2013). Commentary on: “Talent—innate or acquired? Theoretical considerations and their implications for talent management”. Human Resource Management Review, 23(4), 10534822.
Collings, D. G., Scullion, H., & Vaiman, V. (2015). Talent management progress and prospects. Human Resource Management Review, 25(3), 233.
Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. Harper Business.
Conger, J. A., & Kanungo, R. N. (1998). Charismatic leadership in organisations. Sage Publications.
Drucker, P. (1954). The practice of management. Butterworth-Heinemann Edition (2007).
Drucker, P. (1974). Management, tasks, responsibilities, practices (2011 ed.). Routledge.
Edger, C. (2012). Effective multi-unit leadership: Local leadership in multi-site situations. Gower Applied Research Press.
Gallardo-Gallardo, E., Dries, N., & González-Cruz, T. F. (2013). What is the meaning of ‘talent’ in the world of work? Human Resource Management Review, 23(4), 290–300.
Giri, S., & Ramakrishnan, S. (2019). Behavioural momentum in hierarchical and non-hierarchical organizations. Behavioural Development, 24(1), 1–5.
Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (2006). Why should anyone be led by you. Harvard Business School Press.
Goleman, D. (1996). Emotional intelligence. Bloomsbury.
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. Bantam Books.
Grandori, A., & Furnari, S. (2008). A chemistry of organization: Combinatory analysis and design. Organisation Studies, 29(3), 459.
Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant leadership. In G. R. Hickman (Ed.), (2010) Leading organisations—Perspectives for a new era. Sage Publications Ltd.
Grint, K. (2005). Leadership: Limits and possibilities. Palgrave Macmillan.
Handy, C. (1976). Understanding organisations. Penguin.
Harrison, J. S., Hitt, M. A., Hoskisson, R. E., & Ireland, R. D. (2001). Resource complementarity in business combinations: Extending the logic to organizational alliances. Journal of Management, 27(6), 679.
Henderson, B. D. (1989, November–December). The origin of strategy. Harvard Business Review.
Hlupic, V. (2014). The management shift. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hong, B., Kueng, L., & Yang, M. J. (2015). Estimating management practice complementarity between decentralization and performance. NBER Working Paper No. 20845.
Hsu, P. F. (2013). Integrating ERP and e-business: Resource complementarity in business value creation. Decision Support Systems, 56, 334–347.
Huggett, M. (2009, August 18). Engagement depends on a clear psychological contract between employee and employer. HR Magazine.
Jackson, G., & Ni, N. (2013). Understanding complementarities as organizational configurations: Using set theoretical methods. In Configurational theory and methods in organizational research 38.
Kay, J., McKiernan, P., & Faulkner, D. O. (2006). The history of strategy and some thoughts about the future. In A. Campbell & D. O. Faulkner (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of strategy: A strategy overview and competitive strategy. Oxford University Press.
Kilburg, R. R., & Donohue, M. D. (2011). Toward a ‘grand unifying theory’ of leadership: Implications for consulting psychology. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 63(1), 6–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023053
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2007). The leadership challenge. Jossey-Bass.
Kraaijenbrink, J. (2019). 20 reasons why strategy execution fails. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeroenkraaijenbrink/2019/09/10/20-reasons-why-strategy-execution-fails/?sh=32f836041ebe
Lanteri, A. (2021). Strategic drivers for the fourth industrial revolution. Thunderbird International Business Review, 63(3), 273–283.
Lenfant, J.-S. (2006). Complementarity and demand theory: From the 1920s to the 1940s. History of Political Economy, 38(Suppl 1), 48–85. Duke University Press.
Magalhaes, R. (2018). Design discourse for organization design: Foundations in human-centered design. Design Issues, 34(3), 6–16.
Martin, R. L. (2014, January–February). The big lie of strategic planning. Harvard Business Review.
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). The truth about burnout: How organizations cause personal stress and what to do about it. Jossey-Bass.
Milgrom, P., & Roberts, J. (1990). The economics of modern manufacturing: Technology, strategy, and organization. The American Economic Review, 80(3), 511–528.
Mintzberg, H. (1978). Patterns in strategy formation. Management Science, 24, 934–948. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.24.9.934
Mintzberg, H. (1987). Crafting strategy. Harvard Business Review.
Mintzberg, H. (2011). Managing. FT Prentice Hall.
Moreno, V., Felipe Elias Lobo Vieira da Silva, Ferreira, R., & Filardi, F. (2019). Complementarity as a driver of value in business intelligence and analytics adoption processes. Revista Ibero Americana de Estratégia, 18(1), 57–70.
Muldoon, J., Gould, A., & McMurray, A. (2020). The Palgrave handbook of management history. Springer International Publishing.
Nakata, C., Zhu, Z., & Izberk-Bilgin, E. (2010). Integrating marketing and information services functions: A complementarity and competence perspective. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39, 700.
Parker, M. (2020). Humble Pi. Penguin Books.
Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive strategy. The Free Press.
Porter, M. E. (1985). Competitive advantage. The Free Press.
Roser, M. (2013). Economic growth. https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth
Rumelt, R. (2011). Good strategy, Bad strategy. Profile Books.
Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(7), 600–619. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940610690169
Saks, A. M. (2017). Translating employee engagement research into practice. Organizational Dynamics, 46, 76–86.
Samuelson, P. (1974). Complementarity: An essay on the 40th anniversary of the Hicks-Allen revolution in demand theory. Journal of Economic Literature, 12(4), 1255–1289.
Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: A multi-sample study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25, 293.
Schoenwaelder, T. (2019). 3 reasons good strategies fail. Wall Street Journal. https://deloitte.wsj.com/cmo/2019/12/18/3-reasons-good-strategies-fail
Schwarz, T. (2012). New research: How employee engagement hits the bottom line. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2012/11/creating-sustainable-employee.html
Sytch, M., Wohlgezogen, F., & Zajac, E. J. (2018). Collaborative by design? How matrix organizations see/do alliances. Organisation Science, 29(6), 1130.
Tansley, C., et al. (2007). Talent: Strategy, management, measurement. CIPD.
Tarique, I., & Schuler, R. S. (2010). Global talent management: Literature review, integrative framework, and suggestions for further research. Journal of World Business, 45, 122–133.
Teece, D. J. (1986). Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Research Policy, 15, 285–305.
Turner, P. A. (2019). Leadership in healthcare. Palgrave Macmillan.
Turner, P. A. (2020). Employee engagement. Palgrave Macmillan.
Turner, P. A. (2021). The making of the modern manager. Palgrave Macmillan.
Ulrich, D., & Smallwood, N. (2011). What is talent. Michigan Ross School of Business, Executive White Paper Series. execed.bus.umich.edu/execdev/.../dulrich_wp_what_is_talent.
Vance, R. (2006). Employee engagement and commitment, SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Employee-Engagement-Commitment.pdf
Wilson, J. F., & Thomson, A. (2009). The making of modern management. Oxford University Press.
World Economic Forum. (2019a). The importance of collaboration in a connected world. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/how-collaboration-is-the-modern-company-s-secret-weapon/
World Economic Forum. (2019b). HR4.0: Shaping people strategies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_NES_Whitepaper_HR4.0.pdf
World Economic Forum. (2019c). 3 ways firms can master the digital challenges of the 4IR. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/3-ways-digital-challenges-fourth-industrial-revolution-cybersecurity-ai-artificial-intelligence/
Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organisations. Pearson.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Turner, P. (2022). From Singularity to Complementarity. In: Complementarity in Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10654-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10654-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-10653-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-10654-5
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)