Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2007 från Rotman Management

IN THE WESTERN WORLD, when we talk about growth or development, we are typically thinking about the distribution and flow of money. A nation’s progress is still most commonly measured in terms of GDP, which until recently, has routinely been assumed to be a reliable proxy for quality of life. However, the sobering truth is that while the production of goods and services has increased exponentially over the past 50 years, measures of life satisfaction have remained stagnant. Clearly, money and material goods are not enough to make us feel satisfied with life. The time is ripe for a redefinition of personal success. What does success mean these days? While there is no simple answer, one thing is certain: the people who are the most inspiring to be around are…

U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) and Mean Life Satisfaction from 1947 to 1998 OVER TIME, GOVERNMENTS HAVE BECOME increasingly involved in the economies of developed nations, virtually all of which now have systems for measuring national production and consumption. Economics plays a central role in policy decisions because it is widely assumed that money increases well-being. However, distressingly large and measurable slippages between economic indicators and well-being have emerged in recent years, indicating that well-being itself needs to be assessed more directly. Since World War II there has been a dramatic divergence between real income (after taxes and inflation) and life satisfaction in the United States, and a similar pattern can be seen in the data from other nations. Even more disparity shows up when ‘ill-being’ measures are considered: depression…

IT HAS BECOME ALL-TOO-APPARENT IN RECENT YEARS that when faced with tough decisions, managers often act in accordance with their vested self-interest. What is less understood is that in many social situations, self-interest is channeled into a group or a society’s interests, which leads to a considerable change in our interpretations of ethics or morality. Executives involved in the Enron scandal, for instance, emphasized the significant influence of their being a ‘team player’ as a cause of a series of immoral acts that harmed the interests of shareholders and the general public. Research to date suggests conflicting logics as to whether groups are more or less ethical than individuals. On the one hand, groups include individuals with diverse perspectives, increasing the likelihood that at least one person will have a…

Today’s business leaders regularly face complex ethical challenges that impact themselves, their businesses, and other stakeholders. Unfortunately, they often unconsciously make decisions using underlying principles that predispose them to biases and errors in judgment. By recognizing some of these challenges, they can learn to avoid ethical danger zones and become more effective leaders. Developing a framework to improve ethical decision making entails a focus on three key areas: quality, breadth, and honesty. We will address each in turn. 1. Quality To increase the quality of the decisions they make, managers must collect and consider all potentially-meaningful facts regarding the decision’s consequences. This process requires recognizing potential risks, making accurate judgments of the risks associated with the strategies, and being aware of the psychological biases of decision making. Following are a…

Today’s marketplace abounds with promises of simplicity. Why has it become such a valued entity? We are at a tipping point right now where complexity has overrun our world, and in such an environment, greater simplicity signifies greater sanity. People are rebelling against technology that’s too complicated – DVD players with too many menus and software accompanied by 75-page manuals. The iPod’s clean lines made simplicity hip, but at the same time, we often find ourselves caught in the simplicity paradox: we want something that’s simple and easy to use, but we also want it to do all sorts of complex things. That’s why it’s important to find a balance between simplicity and complexity – between ‘how simple can you make it?’ and ‘how complex does it have to be?’…

Louis Cheskin established the field of ‘experiential marketing’ in the 1940s (and helped invent such icons as the Marlboro Man, the GerberBaby and McDonald’s golden arches). What is his legacy for your firm? Dr. Cheskin’s legacy has gone far beyond our firm; he exerted a great influence on the development of the fields of marketing, design and consumer research. He was obsessed with understanding the relationship people have with products and services, observing the subtleties of these relationships through rigorous research, and with using design thinking and tools to create value for them as humans. In an era when marketing focused on persuasion and the tactics of creating demand, Cheskin was always focused on the deeper emotional meanings underlying our behaviours and their ability to forge lasting relationships. That was…

You have done extensive research on high achievers. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about success? I think the biggest misconception is that success and achievement in one area will get you everything – that success is like a ‘silver bullet.’ For instance, there is a widespread belief that the acquisition of power and money can buy happiness, but that just isn’t true. Getting caught in a never-ending cycle of achievement can actually hurt you if you don’t also develop an ability to put things down and focus on other aspects of your life that may need immediate attention. Those things can include everything from the need to rest and recuperate, to being there for others so that your family and friends don’t experience a meltdown while you’re on…

Research shows that today’s workplaces are plagued by behaviour that leaves people feeling demeaned and threatened. What is going on? I don’t think this is anything new. Whenever you put people into positions of power, unfortunately these things happen. Studies show that when someone is granted power, they become more focused on satisfying their own needs and less focused on the people around them, and they start to believe that the rules don’t apply to them. This has always been the case, but it may be getting worse because of the long hours many people are working these days. A survey just came out that showed one in every two employees has experienced an abusive supervisor, so it’s pretty widespread. Is management a natural breeding ground for bad behaviour? I…

You had a successful career as a seniorexecutive working for companies like IBM and HSBC before attending the seminary, becoming a Presbyterian minister, and now teaching at Yale. What led you to pursue such an unusual path? I wish I could tell you a dramatic story like the one about Saul on the road to Damascus getting blinded and having a powerful conversion experience. As it was, my faith had always been an important part of my life. While living and working in London, I started having increased interest in deeper theological questions. After about 18 months of prayer and reflection, I came to experience what is many refer to as a ‘calling.’ That is, I discerned that God was calling me into a new field and a new chapter…

What led you to create Right To Play? Seeing how destructive poverty, disease and war have been to children in countries like Eritrea, I wanted to create an organization whose goals included harnessing the best practices of sport (optimism, respect, compassion, courage and leadership) to empower these children to build healthier communities. For example, our SportHealth program teaches the importance of vaccinations, as well as prevention of TB, Malaria and HIV/AIDS. Are there any links between your skills as an Olympic Athlete and those required to run Right To Play? Perseverance is one of the most transferable traits I know of. As an athlete and social entrepreneur, I have used the relentless pursuit of my goals and the ability to transform my mistakes into learning experiences. The two other traits…

MBA / MCOM / DBA Full & Part-Time 1955 Charles Yeates graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1948 and then completed his MCom in ‘55 on a part time basis. “I enjoyed management work in a wide range of consumer products companies before switching to project development assignments, and retired in 1992. Since then, I have relished the adventures and sport of soaring motorless aircraft in various countries – making lots of friends virtually around the world. The attached photo shows Kris and me in Narromine, NSW, Australia last January. No need to settle down, eh?” 1960 Bob Paus writes, “When I enjoyed my 80th birthday last year with a vow to finally retire from active duty, the challenge ahead had not yet been faced seriously. Many times before, when…

September 2007 September 11, 8:00-9:15am The Business of Green Speaker Series @ Rotman Speaker: Ron Dembo, Founder and CEO, Zerofootprint Topic: “Everything You Wanted to Know About Carbon Offsets But Were Afraid to Ask” September 26, 8:00-9:15am Rotman Design Thinking Speaker Series Speaker:Tony Golsby-Smith, Founder and CEO, 2nd Road (Australia) Topic: “How Design Thinking Offers Strategy a New Toolkit” October 2007 October 2, 5:00-6:15pm Rotman Corporate Citizenship Speaker Series Speaker: Greg Dees, Professor of the Practice of Social Entrepreneurship and Nonprofit Management, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University Topic: “Taking Social Entrepreneurship Seriously” October 9, 4:30-6:15pm annual World Mental Health Day Forum @ Rotman Topic: “A Manager’s Guide to Substance Abuse and its Impact on the Workplace” October 9, 5:30-8:00pm (London, UK) Rotman Finance Speaker Series Topic: “What is Really Happening in…

Successful professionals are working harder than ever before, leading you to coin the term ‘extreme jobs’. How do you define an extreme job? My colleagues and I have come up with ten types of performance pressures that are typical of extreme jobs. They range from 24/7 client demands, to working in multiple time zones, to increased mentoring responsibilities. If you are experiencing at least five of these pressures and you work more than 60 hours per week, you have what we classify as an extreme job. We’re not talking about run-of-the-mill long hours here: our definition goes to the heart of the performance pressures involved. It’s the intensity of these jobs that makes them extreme. The fact that your boss can get to you at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday…

Describe Generation Investment Management’s philosophy. Our fundamental philosophy is twofold: that investment results are maximized by adopting a long-term investment horizon, because the majority of a company’s value is determined by its ability to generate cash-flow over the longterm; and that sustainability issues can impact a company’s ability to generate those returns and therefore must be fully integrated with rigorous fundamental equity analysis to achieve optimal long-term results. A big part of our challenge is the fight against ‘short-termism’ in the capital markets. The sustainability research we do is really an analysis of the shareholder implications of long-term environmental as well as social and geo-political change. Investors often pay insufficient attention to issues that are really important for the long-term, such as climate change, and we believe our analysis of…

DISHONESTACTS ARE INCREASINGLY PREVALENT IN DAILY LIFE – and not just in the business arena. More and more citizens and consumers also behave in ways that are ethically questionable, and cheating on exams in schools has reached epidemic proportions in virtually all Western countries. In a recent survey conducted by Accenture on insurance fraud, approximately 25 per cent of American adults approved of overstating the value of claims to insurance companies, and more than 10 per cent indicated that submitting insurance claims for items that were not lost or damaged or for treatments that were not provided is acceptable. According to Accenture’s press release, the Insurance Services Office estimates that the cost of fraud in the U.S. property and casualty industry is approximately 10 per cent of total claims payments,…

UNIVERSITIES ARE SPECIAL institutions in that their mandate does not have to end with research and teaching: by definition, they can do things that other organizations cannot. Consulting firms, profit-maximizing firms and the international institutions may also have access to vast reserves of knowledge, but they are driven by boards of governors reflecting geopolitical and/or shareholder interests. As a result, universities have a unique role to play in development work, with untold potential benefits for research, students, and their stature on the world stage. At universities, structure and roles should follow the world’s most pressing problems. Some of these problems lie within disciplines, while other do not. In my own career, it has turned out that the problems I am most interested in do not fall neatly within disciplines, and…

WHEN INDIVIDUALS ARE CONFRONTED with an angry co-worker, studies show that they tend to develop a negative impression of them, become angry themselves, and be unwilling to interact with that co-worker again. However, studies to date have produced inconsistent findings concerning the effects of anger on negotiation behaviour – specifically, the demands and concessions that are made during negotiation. On the one hand, there is evidence that negotiators become more competitive and demand more value against angry opponents than against non-emotional or happy ones. One study found that negotiators were less likely to make concessions and to accept the offers of opponents who displayed negative rather than positive emotions; while another showed that parties in online dispute resolution negotiations responded competitively to their opponent’s expressions of anger, thereby reducing the…

While still in your thirties, you gave up a teaching post at Harvard Business School to bring the gospel of personal integrity to 125 business schools (including the Rotman School) on five continents. What inspired you to pursue such an unusual path? I’d like to say I was inspired by some great calling, but I was really motivated to start this journey by the pain expressed by some of my students when I was a professor, and by my own frustration at not being able to help them. They wanted meaningful work, and they wanted to see more social and economic justice in the world, and so did I. It seemed there was a ‘hole’ in our collective soul, if you will, that had to be filled. Many of my…

RESEARCHERS HAVE LONG recognized that managers’ allocations of resources are not always efficient and can even destroy investor value. As early as 1911, Joseph Schumpeter referred to managers as ‘empire builders.’ Excessive growth and excessive investment are two forms that empire building may take on. It has become one of the mainstays of the literature on corporate governance that executives will likely turn into empire builders if they are not ‘reined in’ by some tight form of governance. Why do managers behave in this way? Because increasing firm size (or diversifying operations) can serve their private interests in various ways. Motivations for the construction of ‘empires’ presumably reflect executives’ hunger for status, power, compensation, and prestige. Empire building, then, stems from differences in preferences between the board of directors (representing…

The Biodesign Institute brings together different fields of research to tackle serious threats to our health, environment and security. How easy has it been to get the various disciplines to work together? Resources are always a key factor. In 2000, we were very fortunate to receive a new source of funding to attract key people to our activities. The other, single-most important factor was the leadership at the University of Arizona. We had a new president, Michael Crow, who advocated for non-traditional approaches to tackling major issues. The goal of the new institute was to create a horizontal work space where people with disparate interests could come together in one facility and have the opportunity to interact. The president emphasized that there had to be a goal at the end…

Afterworking more than 15 years in strategic marketing and communications, you created a new company, Greenopolis. Describe how that happened. Although my background is in small business and start-ups, I went the corporate route after Rotman, and ended up running the national marketing department for a large investment management company. After six years in that environment, I was ready for a change. I knew that I wanted to go back to my roots, but wasn’t quite sure what form that would take. So in early 2006, I quit my job and went to Johannesburg for a few months to do volunteer work with CIDA City Campus (the free university for blacks in Africa), then returned to Toronto with a completely open mind, lots of questions, and really only knowing that…

Ahmed Abouel Kheir FedEx Canada Parul Agarwal Campbell Alliance Cansel Akyol Yavuz Bell Canada Karim Alidina RBC Financial Group Firas Al-Nasseri Nortel Networks Hedi Amous SmartCentres Anurag Arora inCode Wireless Ellie Avishai Rotman School of Management Natasha Bagchi CIBC Sunil Balki Kraft Canada Inc. Chris Beltgens Tristone Capital Chris Blumas Morningstar Canada Charanpal Brar Capital One Roberto Bucciarelli Deloitte Chris Buck Northern Nanotechnologies Francois Cartier Direct Energy Cristina Ceron Alcan Aditya Chityala CIBC AJ Choudhry BMO Financial Group Andrew Clarfield-Henry Davies, Ward Phillips & Vineberg John Cole UBS Carla Corral Frito Lay Jon Coyne Iovate Health Sciences Nasuh Damer Capital One Michael Dary Accenture Crawford Dedman Ontario Ministry of Education Alfonso Esparza OANDA Tomas Fieg CIBC Jason Galbraith Latham & Watkins LLP Rachel Gillespie Scotia Capital Mariano Gimenez Uriburu RBC…

Upon viewing images of metropolitan India, many people are struck by the jarring images of poverty. Instead, you see a beehive of entrepreneurialism and creativity. What are you seeing that most of us miss? The difference lies in trying to go one step beyond the obvious. The fact that poverty exists, we can all plainly see, but if you are curious, you ask yourself, ‘how are these people able to survive? What are they doing to keep themselves alive?’ The best way to describe it is a sort of childlike curiosity, but with a business focus. Once you ask yourself these questions, you begin to see aspects of their lives that aren’t readily apparent – the entrepreneurial talent, the energy, the persistence and the hopes that these people have that…

The term ‘success’ means many things to many people, but if our conversations with over 200 individuals who have made a difference in their fields has taught us anything, it is this: success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea or business model than it does with discovering what matters to us as individuals. Extraordinary people, teams and organizations are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things that matter to them. Enduringly-successful people – those who define their own success and have achieved lasting impact in their field for at least 20 years – do what they do because they want to build a meaningful life. These ‘Builders,’ as we call them, feel compelled to create something new or better that will endure throughout their…

THE HIGHER WE MOVE UP the organizational ladder, the more those around us let us know how wonderful we are. One night over dinner, I listened as a seasoned military leader shared his wisdom with an eager, newly-minted general. “Recently, have you started to notice that when you tell jokes, everyone erupts into laughter, and that when you say something ‘wise,’ everyone nods their heads in solemn agreement?” The new general replied, “Why, yes, I have.” The older general laughed and continued, “Let me help you: you aren’t that funny, and you aren’t that smart. It’s only that star on your shoulder. Don’t ever let it go to your head.” While our belief in ourselves helps us to become successful, it can also make it very difficult for us to…

Describe the state of being that you call ‘flow’. Flow is a state of consciousness that occurs when the task at hand draws a person in with its complexity to such an extent that they are completely involved in it. People in this state concentrate to the point that they forget their problems, they forget time, and there is no distinction between self and environment. When experiencing flow, people feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious and at the peak of their abilities. Athletes sometimes call it being ‘in the zone,’ and artists feel it when they play music or paint, but it is also reported in workplace settings by people who really like to do something and are able to perform it well. Researchers have interviewed close to 10,000…

In your latest book, The Greatness Guide, you write, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” Please explain. We all see the world through a ‘stained glass window’ of sorts – in other words, through a personal context that is made up of our beliefs, our limiting assumptions, our hopes, fears and experiences. What one person sees as adversity, another can see as an opportunity, based on how he or she views the world. In many ways, what leadership is about is developing an awareness of how we process the world around us. As we begin to see our limiting beliefs more clearly, we can step outside of them and make better choices that create better organizations and better results. You have said that an…

MANAGING MULTIPLE roles and identities has long been a concern for working professionals, and with the erosion of the notion of work and non-work as ‘separate worlds,’ it has become increasingly salient. As organizations attempt to attract and maintain a committed and productive workforce, they have introduced policies and practices designed to help people balance their work and non-work lives. However, as they move toward incorporating more work-life policies, firms must recognize that a given policy may not be beneficial to all employees – and may even have drawbacks for some. Integration vs. Segmentation Boundary Theory examines the ways individuals erect ‘mental fences’ around roles such as work and family, focusing on the temporal and spatial boundaries between roles and how they are enacted. The ways that boundaries are enacted…

IN A BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT where the ‘war for talent’ will only continue to intensify, effective talent management has become a business imperative. Indeed, it is arguably the single most critical driver of a firm’s future competitiveness. As the make up of Canada’s labour force continues to evolve, organizations of all sizes are recognizing the need to adapt to new realities. In the very near future, the bulk of growth in the North American labour force will be from immigration. Employers will have to seek out the best candidates from a much more diverse pool of available labour. There is also a dramatic shift in labour force demographics underway. For example, it is projected that by 2050, 46.6 per cent of the American labour force will be comprised of people of…

Kathy Butler (MBA ’96) Managing Director, Investment Banking, CIBC World Markets Lives and works in: Vancouver, British Columbia BESTTHING ABOUTMYJOB: The clients. MY BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Time management. MOST IMPORTANT SKILL(S) FOR MY JOB: Financial analysis, project management, communication. PROUDEST MOMENT: My promotion to Managing Director. THE WORDS THAT BEST DESCRIBE ME: Energetic. THE MOST INNOVATIVE THING I’VE EVER DONE IS: (In a previous life) sold my car, kept the car loan, and used the money to travel to Europe. HOW I RELAX: Playing at the playground or the beach with my family, spending time in Whistler. MOSTIMPORTANTTHING MYMBA TAUGHT ME: Team work. WORDS OF WISDOM: Treat people with kindness and respect. SOME OF THE THINGS I’M ‘QUESTING’ FOR: A balanced life and a healthy, happy family. Alex Wang (MBA ’00)…