Business projects, opportunities, or endeavours typically involve conjunctive risk—that is, the endeavour will succeed only if multiple, uncertain events occur. If just one of these required events fail to occur, the endeavour fails. For example, the success of a new product might depend on new technology and successful marketing. A technologically amazing product for which […]
Read More… from The Risk of Ignoring the Lesser Risk in Projects
As robotics continues to advance, companies are finding more and more opportunities to transfer repetitive and tedious tasks to robots, freeing up their employees to focus more on tasks that can only be performed by humans. One of the challenges of humans and robots working side-by-side (what researchers call human-robot work collaboration or HRWC) is […]
To make decisions, leaders must understand, to use the vernacular, ‘what is happening’. They must make sense of the events and situations that impact their areas of responsibility; this sense-making not only involves the past and present, but also the future: what is likely to happen. In July of 2005, an innocent man commuting to […]
Read More… from Bad Framing Leads to Bad Decisions and Bad (Even Fatal) Actions
Corporate board of directors are composed of executives (CEOs and CFOs) and non-executives. In the U.S. and the UK, the executives and non-executives are grouped on one board. In Europe, the executives form one board, and the non-executive members form a distinct ‘supervisory’ board. Together, the CEOs, CFOs and non-executive board members make up what […]
Read More… from Non-Executive Board Members More Risk Averse than Executives
More and more board of directors have the CEO as the only insider on the board. At first glance, this movement toward near unanimous outside directors would seem to meet the mandate of independent oversight and governance that have defined corporate boards since the corporate scandals of the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, new research […]
Read More… from Corporate Governance: The Power of Outside Directors on CEO-Only Boards
The extensive damage caused by computer hackers accessing the confidential information held within a company’s information technology is, unfortunately, well documented. But beyond compromising millions of customers or accessing company secrets, a cyber attack on an SITE (systemically important technology enterprise) could be even more catastrophic, potentially damaging the global economy and undermining the value […]
Read More… from Cyber-Attack Catastrophe: Lessons from a Plausible Risk Scenario
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
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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Do soldiers make better CEOs? There is no doubt that the hands-on leadership lessons learned in combat — or in preparation for combat — can seldom be matched by any corresponding leadership learning from business school or a typical corporate environment. Given the stress of war or training for war, ex-military business leaders may be […]
Despite decades-long efforts to eradicate it, corruption continues to be a serious business risk in emerging markets. Policies by national and international governments have had only limited success; so, too, have strategies by companies. The difficulties are often said to be particularly great in Russia, where the rule of law has been diverted by a […]
Read More… from Reflective Leadership to Counter Corruption in Emerging Markets
