Competing aggressively and repeatedly on price can threaten the future of companies. The losers of price wars have been known to go out of business, and the survivors to suffer a long-term squeeze on profitability. Generally, the winners are companies that have a superior cost structure. It is, however, possible for a ‘weaker’ company to […]
Why do unethical practices become ‘normalized’ in some organizations? Why do errant employees sometimes go unpunished for long periods of time? These are questions that many people will have asked in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at News of the World and the recent interest-rate-rigging scandals at major banks. One explanation is that […]
Read More… from Profits Vs Principles: Market Competition and Moral Transgression
Recent decades have seen increased focus on corporate governance and business ethics — and an increased number of ethics-based courses at business schools. While this is true of countries across the world, South Africa can be considered a special case. In South Africa, dramatic changes to the corporate governance regime have coincided with — and, […]
Read More… from Changing Attitudes to Business Ethics: Insights from South Africa
A research team from Wharton and London Business School discovered the benefits of self-reflective job titles almost by accident. Wharton professor Adam Grant, PhD candidate Justin Berg, and London Business School professor Daniel Cable were investigating the impact of a series of initiatives by the Make-a-Wish Foundation’s CEO. These initiatives had the goal of fostering […]
Read More… from Self-Reflective Job Titles Reduce Emotional Exhaustion
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
Developing deeper awareness of our own prejudices is often cited as the solution to racism. Recent research, however, suggests it’s just the first step. In a pilot study conducted at an American university, 75 per cent of white respondents acknowledged and were consciously aware of their own racial prejudices — and in a follow-up study, […]
Read More… from Conquering Racism by Taking Personal Responsibility
The banking crisis and scandals involving companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and, more recently, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, have made the need to understand moral behaviour in organizations more urgent. Research so far has tended to take a leader-focused approach, implying that the ethical behaviour of leaders translates directly to ethical behaviour in followers. […]
Exploring the relation between information that is presented in corporate accountability reports and future financial performance three professors from the Kellogg School of Management’s Accounting Information and Management Department focused on CSR expenditure figures and the future performance of the disclosing firm. Thomas Lys, professor of accounting information and management at the Kellogg School of […]
A large-scale study by Vlerick Business School, in association with three media partners, De Standaard, La Libre Belgique and NRC Handelsblad, underlines the importance of non-financial rewards to employees. The study, based on a poll of 4,877 people in Flanders, Wallonia and the Netherlands working in 18 different sectors, measured attitudes to salary, bonuses and […]
Scenario planning (SP) and early warning scanning (EWS) are considered important to ‘managerial cognition’. They help leaders understand how the future might unfold and they alert top management to new developments and ‘issues’ – typically conceived as opportunities and threats. They help leaders understand how to reconfigure resources to match or create market change – […]
Read More… from Scenarios Planning + Early Warning Scanning = Strategic Advantage
