Furniture retailer IKEA successfully expanded from its home base in rural Sweden to 52 countries across the globe. In contrast, Wal-Mart, the capital-rich retail leader in the largest economy in the world, has stumbled repeatedly in its efforts to expand its reach. Its latest failures include Germany and Brazil. And it is not alone among […]
Read More… from How Complexity Trips Up Companies In Foreign Market
Traditionally, according to Tony Dyson of Tessera Consulting and Kevin Money of Henley Business School, companies and organizations engage in what they call ‘silo communication.” Different parts of the organization communicate with different stakeholders. Thus, for example, the Investor Relations department communicates with the financial community, Government Relations communicates with Government, Media Relations communicates with […]
More than a billion people live in poverty around the world, earning less than $2 a day. A billion people may be a huge market in terms of numbers but they don’t have the disposable income that can turn them into traditional customers. However, C.K. Prahalad and other pioneer academics and entrepreneurs recognized the potential […]
Read More… from Business Templates that Succeed in ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ Environments
Many companies recognize the reputational risk of the environmental reputation of their suppliers. As a result, companies launch green supply chain management (GSCM) initiatives, working with suppliers to ensure that their activities and processes are environmentally friendly. There are two ways for companies to engage with suppliers on environmental issues. One is to monitor their […]
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Sceptics of enterprise risk management believe that the 2008 financial crisis proves their point: risk management practices do little to prevent risks. Instead, according to these sceptics, focusing on potential risks only leads to a fear of innovation and initiative. Companies stay in their safe zones, becoming sitting ducks for competitors who are not afraid […]
Read More… from Effective Risk Management to Secure Change and Growth
What is the role of social movements in inspiring or sparking corporate social responsibility? To answer this question, Panayiotis Georgallis of the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise builds on the academic research related to social movements and to corporate social responsibility, which are two distinct fields of research. Social movements are […]
Read More… from How Social Movements Spark Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives
Megaprojects are large, technically complex, multi-year, billion-dollar (or more) engineering and financial ventures that somehow overcome challenges, turbulence, risk and resistance to eventually meet the needs for which they are built. To better understand the success factors of megaprojects, it is more useful to think of them as games of innovation, rather than the linear, […]
Read More… from How Successful Megaprojects Are Games of Innovation
Canadian banks are now strong, stable and profitable. They have become sterling examples of successful Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). Yet, it wasn’t very long ago that Canadian banks were in a worse position than many banks in other countries. Traditionally, Canadian banks had a greater exposure to high-risk assets and loans. Their exposure to less-developed […]
Read More… from Enterprise Risk Management: Lessons from Canada’s Banks and Burning Platforms
Mined materials are in many if not most of the products we buy — from the obvious such as jewellery to the not so-obvious, such as the number of mined materials in our ubiquitous cell phones. Mining, however, is known as the industry that degrades the environment, causes birth defects from polluted waters, and destroys […]
Read More… from The World Needs Mining, but Mining Must Change
Most people think of themselves as moral and ethical. And yet, major fraud and unethical behaviour is widespread. A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina, University of Washington and University of Arizona studied how people who are otherwise good allow themselves to become involved in increasingly unethical behaviour. “There are a number of […]
Read More… from Ethics and the Slippery Slope: Why Good People Do Bad Things
