Silo-Busting: Overcoming the Greatest Threat to Organizational Performance

Andre de Waal, Michael Weaver, Tammy Day and Beatrice van der Heijden
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Michael Weaver: DPA Consulting, Guildford GU4 8EP, UK
Tammy Day: DPA Consulting, Guildford GU4 8EP, UK
Beatrice van der Heijden: Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, 6500HK Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 23, 1-21

Abstract: Most organizations are set up to operate in some form of silos, such as vertical divisions or horizontal functions. At best, silos offer a practical way for organizations to operate efficiently. At worst, they create a silo mentality where departments do not want to exchange knowledge or information, hindering internal collaboration and organizational learning, thus preventing achievement of high performance and organizational sustainability. The silo mentality issue has been recognized for a long time as a real tangible problem that has to be dealt with. On the basis of a questionnaire containing statements on organizational strength, collaboration, and silo-busting techniques applied, which was distributed to a sample of mainly large companies, we found that there are five factors that are important for breaking down silos and increasing the quality of cooperation.

Keywords: silos; silo-busting techniques; high performance organizations; knowledge exchange; organizational learning; organizational sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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