Idea posted: September 2013

Institutions: Vlerick Business School   

  The KSV plastics company is in trouble. A myopic cost control program has created supply chain and production problems and made it difficult to deliver orders on time and…

Idea posted: September 2013

Institutions: Columbia Business School    Harvard Business School   

Most leaders now recognize (at least theoretically if not always in practice) the ineffectiveness of the old school top-down, command-and-control leadership style. The knowledge worker of the information age is…

Idea posted: September 2013

Institutions: Harvard Business School    Rady School of Management    Stanford Graduate School of Business   

In a classic Harvard Business Review article published in 1981, Harry Levinson said “managing others… creates unending stress… Today’s managers face increasing time pressures with little respite.” Levinson’s view is…

Idea posted: September 2013

Institutions: Saïd Business School, University of Oxford    University of Nottingham   

In Aristotle’s great work the Nicomachean Ethics, happiness (eudaimonia) is not a feeling so much as a state — and a state with a distinctly moral dimension. Synonymous with ‘living…

Idea posted: August 2013

Institutions: NUS Business School   

The ‘nature v. nurture’ debate has been around for centuries, argued over by psychologists, sociologists and the like; the business world has not escaped from it either. Whether leaders are…

Idea posted: July 2013

Institutions: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University   

A growing number of studies in both the field and the laboratory demonstrate that people are imperfect co-operators — they tend to co-operate only if others do so, and a…

Idea posted: July 2013

Institutions: IE Business School   

The term “tribalism” was coined by sociologist Michel Maffesoli in the 1980s to explain a shift in Western society from one built around the individual to a world populated by…

Idea posted: July 2013

Institutions: INSEAD   

The story of Nelson Mandela is a remarkable illustration of forgiveness. In the face of fierce opposition from most members of the ANC, Mandela reached out to his former enemies…

Idea posted: July 2013

Institutions: Harvard Business School    Stanford Graduate School of Business   

‘Employee happiness’ has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. The evidence is there to show that it is directly-related to business performance; your happy employees are almost…