1. Employment security
2. Selective hiring of new personnel
3. Self-managed teams and decentralization of decision making as the basic principles of organizational design
4. Comparatively high compensation contingent on organizational performance
5. extensive training
6. Reduced status distinctions and barriers, including dress, language, office arrangements, and wage differences across levels
7. Extensive sharing of financial and performance information throughout the organization

The list above comes from the book, The Human Equation, building profits by putting people first, by Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer.

Even though the suggestions seems conventional wisdom, the general trend in the industry seems to have a different approach to management. Indeed, Professor Pfeffer explains and gives examples of how great companies adopt and benefit from those practices.

Interesting is also his latest book written with another Stanford professor, Robert Sutton: Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-based Management.

Robert Sutton is also the author of the good book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilised Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.