Corporate social responsibility and sustainable development are increasingly linked to competitive advantage and innovation. Harvard’s Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer have, in recent years, ‘reframed’ CSR as ‘shared value’, pointing to the business opportunities in ‘unmet social needs’. Meanwhile, the external pressures for responsible business — from governments and regulators and from shareholders […]
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Change forms a huge part of our world today, whether we like it or not. The pace of technological progress is phenomenal, while the growth of emerging markets is one of the most striking forces of change. Not only are we seeing more international competitors in a range of sectors (emerging market companies currently comprise […]
Read More… from Emerging Market Strategy: Creating Order out of Chaos
When marketing their brands, companies will use image attributes, which are the impressions that the brand makes on the mind of consumers. For a car brand, for example, marketers might position their brand on the image of being ‘safe and dependable’ or ‘exciting’ or ‘tough.’ Brand consistency — using the same image or positioning in […]
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Social change has made advertising that appeals to a broader range of consumers more important and desirable. A company’s ‘diversity and inclusion’ agenda does not, however, always transfer easily to the domain of marketing. Mass-media campaigns aimed at every social group that might buy a product or service can be complicated and costly to produce. […]
Read More… from Ambiguous Ads: Hidden Messages, Hidden Risks?
Generalist CEOs are CEOs who have worked in different organizational areas, for a number of different firms, in different industries, or even in a conglomerate firm. Former IBM CEO and Chairman Louis Gerstner is a typical example. Before joining IBM, he had been a consultant at McKinsey & Company, had held senior positions at American […]
Read More… from Generalist CEOs Not Specialists Spur Innovation
In the 1940s, psychologist Jean Piaget suggested that children use their hands-on experiences of the world around them to build and develop their knowledge. This theory went on to shape the modern approach to learning, moving it away from lecturing to passive audiences to actively engaging participants. Similar is the science behind a method known […]
Read More… from How LEGO® Helps Strategic Thinking and Idea Generation
In Shakespeare’s Othello, the eponymous lead’s passionate jealousy motivates all of his actions, including ultimately the murder of his own wife. Similarly, in the corporate world, there exist executives whose quest for power or professional success can generate jealousy that consciously or unconsciously affects their decisions. In an article published in the European Business Review, […]
Read More… from Is Othello Boss Syndrome Affecting Your Organization?
‘Charismatic leadership’ has received much attention from researchers over the past few decades, lending support to theories that it is capable of fostering higher levels of employee and team performance in organizations. The term was first used in the 1940s by German sociologist Max Weber, who envisioned ‘charismatic leaders’ as leaders able to inspire passionate […]
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Most organizations are split into different business divisions that all report to a corporate office. This office houses the CEOs and other corporate functions, such as HR, finance and IT. In recent years, these functions have often underperformed and corporate offices have failed to add value. Could the reason behind this be that CEOs do […]
Read More… from Four Ways CEOs Can Align Function Heads with Corporate Strategy
Discontinuous technologies refers to when new products are created that end up transforming existing markets, such as cloud computing, digital photography, 3D printing, online news, etc. Not surprisingly, they often pose a critical challenge for executives, and how they deal with such major paradigm shifts has formed the basis of a number of recent articles. […]
Read More… from Organizational Identity and Adaptation to Disruptive Change
