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Broken Promises: An Unconventional View of What Went Wrong at IBM
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.7610040973
EAN: 9780875846545
ISBN: 0875846548
Label: Harvard Business School Press
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 210
Publication Date: 1996-06
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Studio: Harvard Business School Press
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Editorial Review:
Once the world's most admired corporation, IBM stumbled badly in the early 1990s. At the depth of the crisis, the company suffered its first-ever operating loss and eliminated nearly 200,000 jobs. What went wrong? Contrary to popular wisdom, the authors argue that the root cause of IBM's difficulties was not that it fell behind in technology, but rather that it disregarded its customers and misled its employees.
In Broken Promises, Mills and Friesen draw on extensive interviews with IBM executives, access to company files, and surveys of the company's customers to explain why, despite its advantages, IBM's executives failed to maintain its leadership. The authors show that IBM:
* developed an overly optimistic strategic plan based more on pride than reality;
* made a financing decision that eventually crippled its industry-leading marketing franchise;
* destroyed its long-term relationship with customers, to whom it had guaranteed high-quality product and close service support;
* broke its implied commitment to employees of lifetime employment security; and
* executed a massive corporate reorganization that left the subsequent strategic crisis unresolved.
Telling the story of IBM's downfall in the context of the company's history, the authors also outline the challenges that lie ahead for current leadership, even in the face of IBM's apparent rebound.
Broken Promises is a cautionary tale of strategic miscalculation, managerial error, and a loss of confidence that demonstrates for executives at any large company the risks of neglecting customer and employee relationships in the face of large-scale change.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - What Happened to IBM?
This book presents one viewpoint on IBM during the 1980s and 1990s. The authors claim that a choice of IBM "could not be faulted" (p.9). [Was that because IBM, unlike some competitors, did not offer kickbacks to customers?] The authors claim IBM broke its promises of high-quality technology and excellent service to customers, and job security to its employees. But no company can guarantee jobs when losing money.
IBM's "incompatible small computers" may have deviated from the S/360 model, ... Read More
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