The Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize
The editors of the MIT Sloan Management Review are pleased to announce the winners
of this year’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize, awarded to the authors of the most
outstanding SMR article on planned change and organizational development published
from fall 2008 to summer 2009.
RICHARD
BECKHARD
One of the founders and
architects of the field of
organizational development, Professor Richard
Beckhard was a member
of the MIT Sloan School of
Management faculty for
more than 20 years. A
longtime friend of the
MIT Sloan Management
Review, Beckhard was
known for his efforts to
help organizations function
in a more humane and
high-performing manner
and to empower people
to be agents of change.
His books include
Organizational Development Strategies and
Models; Organizational
Transitions: Managing
Complex Change; Changing
the Essence: The Art of
Creating and Leading
Fundamental Change in
Organizations; and his autobiography, Agent of Change:
My Life, My Practice.
The prize was established in 1984 by the
faculty of the MIT Sloan
School of Business upon
Professor Beckhard’s retirement and renamed the
Richard Beckhard Memorial
Prize after his death on
December 28, 1999.
THIS YEAR’S WINNING ARTICLE discusses the importance of managing virtual teams. In the
past, companies would typically colocate the members of teams because of the high levels of interdepen-dencies that are inherent in group work. Recently, more and more companies routinely organize teams over
several locations according to the specific levels of expertise required to accomplish a task. The dispersion
of team members, however, often leads to a number of problems, including difficulties in communication
and coordination, a lack of trust and an increased inability to establish common ground.
The authors investigated the performance of 80 software development projects with varying levels of dispersion, including those with members in different cities, countries or continents. They found that virtual
teams can outperform their collocated counterparts when they have the appropriate processes in place. Those
processes can be classified in two categories: task related — including those that help ensure each team
member is contributing fully; and socio-emotional — including those that increase the cohesion of the group.
The task-related processes were the
most critical. Specifically, virtual
teams that had processes that increased the levels of mutual support,
member effort, work coordination,
balance of member contributions and
task-related communications were
able consistently to outperform other
teams with lower levels.
The prize committee found the
article especially pertinent to Rich-
ard Beckhard’s legacy and said: “In a
challenge to the conventional wis-
dom, Siebdrat, Hoegl and Ernst
conclude that virtual teams can out-
perform colocated teams. But the
research finds that success requires
selection of team members based on more than just their expertise and availability. It also depends on
task and social processes that help coordinate the work and facilitate communication. This article builds
on Dick Beckhard’s long-standing goal of emphasizing management attention to such processes. We
believe he would also support the message that there must be a fit of team member skills and management
processes with the degree of dispersion and diversity of team members.”
This year’s panel included three distinguished members of the MIT Sloan School of Management fac-
ulty: Schussel Professor and chair of the MIT Sloan Management Review Erik Brynjolfsson, senior lecturer
Cyrus Gibson and Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management John Van Maanen.
The Winners:
Frank Siebdrat
Consultant, The Boston
Consulting Group Inc.
Martin Hoegl
Professor, WHU-Otto
Beisheim School of
Management
Holger Ernst
Professor, WHU-Otto
Beisheim School of
Management
Authors of:
“How to Manage
Virtual Teams”
Summer 2009, Volume 50,
Number 4, pp. 63-68
Reprint 50412
SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU
SUMMER 2010 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 9
