P-Will at DISCO

Ethan  Bernstein; Naoko  Jinjo; Yuna  Sakuma

Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2018

P-Will at DISCO

by Ethan Bernstein, Naoko Jinjo and Yuna Sakuma

Abstract

From the outside, DISCO—a Japan-based manufacturer of precision tools for semiconductor production devices—appeared to be a rather ordinary company that had achieved rather extraordinary success: it had simultaneously achieved 70% global market share, had lifted its profitability from 15% to 30% over the past seven years, and was consistently selected as a "Best Workplace" in Japan. The secret to DISCO’s success, according to CEO Kazuma Sekiya, lies in its truly individualized management of human capital, which they called the P-Will (Personal Will) system.
P-Will was a proprietary managerial accounting system based on Will, a currency that enabled internal market transactions. At DISCO, every hour of labor and every good was associated with a price in Will. Employees were expected to act like independent business owners; they used the P-Will system to manage their own revenue contributions and business expenses in Will. Four times a year, the balances of individual P-Will accounts were converted to real currency and paid out as bonuses.
In the last couple of years, about 10 companies, including other companies in the semiconductor industry, had visited Sekiya wanting to replicate DISCO’s enviable success and introduce the P-Will system at their companies. However, none of these companies had actually implemented it. Seeing off another guest who had visited DISCO, Sekiya asked himself: Why don’t other companies adopt the P-Will system? What were the conditions under which P-Will would work—and not work?

Keywords: human capital; P-Will; DISCO; semiconductors; Self-Managed Organizations; Governance; Human Resources; Selection and Staffing; Management Practices and Processes; Management Systems; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Semiconductor Industry; Japan;

Language: English

Format: Print

29 pages

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Citation:

Bernstein, Ethan, Naoko Jinjo, and Yuna Sakuma. "P-Will at DISCO." Harvard Business School Case 419-035, October 2018.

Article | Harvard Business Review | October 14, 2019

The Truth About Open Offices: There Are Reasons Why They Don't Produce the Desired Interactions

Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber

It’s never been easier for workers to collaborate—or so it seems. Open, flexible, activity-based spaces are displacing cubicles, making people more visible. Messaging is displacing phone calls, making people more accessible. Enterprise social media such as Slack and Microsoft Teams are displacing watercooler conversations, making people more connected. Virtual-meeting software such as Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Webex is displacing in-person meetings, making people ever-present. The architecture of collaboration has not changed so quickly since technological advances in lighting and ventilation made tall office buildings feasible, and one could argue that it has never before been so efficient. Designing workplaces for interaction between two or more individuals—or collaboration, from the Latin collaborare, meaning to work together—has never seemed so easy.
But as the physical and technological structures for omnichannel collaboration have spread, evidence suggests they are producing behaviors at odds with designers’ expectations and business managers’ desires. In a number of workplaces we have observed for research projects, those structures have produced less interaction—or less meaningful interaction—not more.
In this article we discuss those unintended consequences and provide guidance on conducting experiments to uncover how your employees really interact. That will help you equip them with the spaces and technologies that best support their needs.

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Interpersonal Communication; Communication Technology; Design; Human Resources; Performance Productivity; Organizational Design;

Citation:

Bernstein, Ethan, and Ben Waber. "The Truth About Open Offices: There Are Reasons Why They Don't Produce the Desired Interactions." Harvard Business Review 97, no. 6 (November–December 2019): 82–91. View Details

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Nationwide is “on your side,” but did employees feel that way? CAO Gale King and CEO Steve Rasmussen, starting in 2008, invested heavily in a human capital strategy centered around “engagement” at the Ohio-based Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. Set in 2014, this case tells the story of those efforts to bolster employee engagement as a key part of the company’s strategy to recover from the financial crisis (which it did far more effectively than most of its peers, rising in the Fortune 500 ranking as a result). From 2008 to 2013, Nationwide has seen employee engagement improve from the third to the sixth decile of Gallup’s North American Finance and Insurance workgroup database. The case details the multi-pronged human capital strategy that Rasmussen and King implemented. It concludes by asking students to consider: will a new initiative aimed at moving Nationwide’s dozen brand under a single umbrella jeopardize the culture gains that Nationwide has achieved over the last six years?

Nigel Le Quesne, CEO of Jersey-based financial services firm JTC, firmly believed that "shared ownership" was at the heart of his company’s successful track record. The firm had seen its revenues, profits, and number of clients and staff grow steadily throughout its over 30-year history, and management attributed much of its competitive edge to its culture in which engaged employee owners had fully aligned interests and collaborated for the greater good of the firm. Le Quesne had seeded the first employee benefit trust with some of his own equity when becoming CEO in 1998, making all employees—from the receptionists to top executives—direct shareholders in the firm. Over time, the employee owned equity had grown from 5% to 23% and the trusts created significant value that had already been directly distributed to employees in two past pay-out events. In 2018, after JTC’s successful IPO, Le Quesne and his leadership team have to decide if and how to adjust the shared ownership tools to their new public markets environment.

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