Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2021 från Rotman Management

Even before COVID-19 hit, there was evidence that globalization was unravelling. Please describe the scenario——and how the pandemic has affected it. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and before COVID-19, slowing growth and declining economic standards led governments around the world onto a path of deglobalization. Facing growing populist pressure, many adopted protectionist policies they hoped would shield their industries and workers. Growth in trade stalled or declined for some countries and we started to see more regionalization and balkanization. Some even broke away from global trading blocs. Brexit is one example, and President Trump’s ‘America First’ campaign is another Today, the world is even more ‘every nation for itself’ than before the pandemic. As global growth remains weak, countries are focused on making sure that their own…

You open your book by stating that “power is misunderstood.” Describe what you call the three pernicious fallacies about power. My co-author [Harvard Business School Professor] Julie Battilana and I have conducted extensive research on power and change around the world, and on this journey, we have found strikingly common misconceptions in how people think about power. The first myth is that power is a ‘thing’ that someone possesses, and that there are special traits that give power to some people and not to others. The reality is that power is always relative: You can have great influence in one relationship and be completely dependent in another. Second, power and authority are not the same. When we ask people to think about individuals who they consider powerful, the vast majority…

Goal 1: More Black representation on Rotman’s faculty, staff and administration. Goal 2: Redesign Rotman programming to incorporate racial and gender diversity into all curricula, including (but not limited to) refinement of LDT and LPO courses, with the explicit teaching of anti-Black racism, systemic racism, sexism and homophobia. Goal 3: More intentional instruction and extracurricular programming on equity and interdependence, with an explicit focus on exploring the intersections of power and privilege. Goal 4: Rotman’s Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) portfolio should communicate its mandate to students and train the student body on the governance around sensitive diversity topics. Goal 5: Infuse a culture of equity, diversity and inclusion within the Rotman Student Club ecosystem. Goal 6: Design more outreach and service-learning programming to connect students with equity-seeking and/or marginalized communities…

Conscientiousness High conscientiousness is characterized by short-term sacrifice in pursuit of long-term goals. Low conscientiousness is associated with short-term compromise. Agreeableness High agreeableness suggests a more trusting and cooperative personality. Low agreeableness suggests a more inquisitive and challenging personality. Reactiveness High reactiveness suggests a tendency to respond to emotional stress. Low reactiveness is characterized by calmness and emotional stability. Extraversion High extraversion is characterized by an outgoing nature and the tendency to seek attention. Low extraversion is indicative of a more reflective personality. Openness High openness indicates a willigness to experiment in pursuit of ideals or higher ambitions. Low openness is indicative of a safer, more pragmatic personality.…

There is still a lot of confusion around terms like cryptocurrency and blockchain. Can you provide a quick primer? A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography — which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit. ‘Cryptos’ allow for secure online payments that are denominated in terms of virtual ‘tokens’, holding the promise of making it easy to transfer funds directly between two parties without the need for a trusted third party like a bank or credit card company. Unlike traditional currency, cryptos are generally not issued by any central authority, rendering them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation. Blockchains are an essential component of many cryptocurrencies. These are cryptographically protected distributed ledgers made up of ‘blocks’ that contain transaction history. As the blockchain grows…

THE PAST TWO DECADES have seen a resurgence of interest in applied Behavioural Science. With the introduction and subsequent popularization of concepts like nudging and choice architecture in the 2000s, policymakers across the globe have begun applying techniques from the social sciences to design programs and policies that go with the grain of human psychology. However, the conversation around nudging has tended to focus on public sector applications. With the exception of the technology sector — where these concepts have become foundational elements of user-experience design and human-computer interaction — business has been slow to harness the potential of these techniques. As consultants and practitioners in this field, we are excited by the untapped potential of using Behavioural Science to improve the services, products and experiences that private sector organizations…

The pandemic has made stress and anxiety familiar terms for just about everyone. But what does a true case of burnout look like? Part of the problem with the burnout conversation is that we often misapply the word, or use it too loosely. The World Health Organization has updated its definition to clarify that this is something that happens within the context of work. Put simply, burnout is the manifestation of chronic workplace stress. Everyone has everyday work and life stressors to deal with, and this stress exists on a continuum. One way to know if you are moving out of the stress zone into something that looks like burnout is to understand the three dimensions of burnout. The first is chronic physical and emotional exhaustion. We often just stop…

You believe we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in terms of the way we measure the economy. Please explain. The COVID-19 shock put the spotlight on many serious existing problems within our economy. It also provided a platform for traditionally unconventional ways of addressing those issues. For example, we saw the government send cheques to households disrupted by pandemic-related unemployment, and Modern Monetary Theory saw governments spending much more than they ever have historically. It also became clear that childcare — which was traditionally considered a social issue — is a critical part of a functioning economy. The pandemic also made it clear that while our economic data on the stock markets can tell us one part of the story, there is much more to a healthy…

1. Multifaceted, excelling at art, science and the technology of Marketing. 2. Business leader who understands the business. 3. Knowledgeable about foundational and classical aspects of Marketing. 4. Appreciation of contemporary and emerging fields of Marketing. 5. Technologically savvy. 6. Able to connect marketing activities to business outcomes. 7. Inspires other leaders with a big vision. 8. Strong, empathetic leader who can inspire and guide their team. 9. Evangelical about Marketing, able to reach across the aisle and ‘rebrand’ it as something to embrace. 10. Curious, agile, lifelong learner. 11. Global mindset. 12. Team builder. 13. Ambassador of their company. 14. Part of the larger Marketing ecosystem and community. 15. Involved in shaping the new world of Marketing and formulating the regulatory environment. 16. Good partner. 17. Agency realist. 18.…

A few years back, you discovered what you consider to be the scariest scientific result you have ever encountered. What did you find? My team and I were studying Twitter and all of the verified true and false news stories that had spread on the platform over a decade, from its inception in 2006 to 2017. The scary finding was that false news travelled farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth in every category of information that we studied — sometimes by an order of magnitude. That is what led me to focus my research on what I call the Hype Machine. How do you define the Hype Machine—and why is it more relevant now than ever? The Hype Machine is the social media industrial complex, which consists…

IN 1994, THE TORONTO STOCK EXCHANGE (TSX) accepted a new set of guidelines for board governance as developed in the report, “Where Were the Directors?” Triggered by the mixed response from the Canadian corporate sector to the stresses of the 1990-91 recession, the guidelines were meant to urge boards of directors to align with growing expectations concerning the manner in which boards are constituted, and the relationships between boards and shareholders. In the face of climate change, rising economic inequality, systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is once again time for a new set of guidelines. While the 1994 guidelines — which concern best practices around board independence and oversight — continue to be relevant, they served the governance needs of the 1990s. Two-and-a-half decades later, we ask, Where…

THE 1920S BEGAN IN CHAOS. Cataclysmic disruption resulting from World War 1 and the Spanish flu shuttered businesses and provoked xenophobia. Technological marvels like the radio, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, moving assembly line and electronic power transmission generated new growth, even as the wealth gap widened. More than two-thirds of Americans survived on wages too low to sustain everyday living. The pace of scientific innovation — the discovery of insulin, the first modern antibiotics, and insights into theoretical physics and the structure of atoms — forced people to reconsider many of their cherished beliefs. The sheer scale of change and the great uncertainty that came with it produced two factions: Those who wanted to reverse time and return the world to ‘normal’; and those who embraced the chaos, faced forward and…

EVEN BEFORE COVID-19 STRUCK, we knew that the linear growth model that underpins our capitalist economies was failing. In its quest to generate ever-more economic growth, this paradigm had led to severe social inequality and a climate crisis. As we begin to recover from the pandemic, many are hoping to see a new and better economic model emerge that is both socially inclusive and ecologically virtuous. Sadly, as we saw in the aftermath of the Great Recession over a decade ago, attempts to reinvent the capitalist model are often futile. What will it take to transition irrevocably from a deleterious economic system to a virtuous one? In this article I will argue that achieving this will require something of each of us: a major shift in our consciousness. An Evolved…

IF YOU WERE WORKING as a bank loan officer over the past few years, you might have had an uneasy feeling that somebody, somewhere, was creating software that could take your place. Retail managers had similar concerns, as foot traffic to their stores declined. So did automotive factory workers amid the rise of robotics. It’s human nature to think you’ll get an unmistakable signal before your job is truly in danger, so you’ll have enough time to move to something more secure. The pandemic eliminated a lot of that wishful thinking. Globally, more than a third of workers were laid off or had to accept reduced working time because of business closures or slowdowns stemming from COVID-19, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group and The Network. The disruption…

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC put professionals in a box — a virtual one. Overnight, managers and their teams shifted from in-person brainstorming and ideation sessions to those taking place electronically via Zoom, Webex and other online tools. In light of the loss of more spontaneous face-to-face connections and interactions, you might assume that these major changes in how we work are taking a large toll on business creativity. One of my most outspoken executive students — a young, data-driven manager at a technology consulting company — seemed to be making that assumption when he asked how I thought virtual work “thwarted” creative processes like those his teams engage in with their clients, such as defining problem scope, exploring solutions, prototyping and testing. My answer surprised him: Based on research that I…

Generations of Finance and Economics students have learned about fiat currencies—government-issued currencies that are not backed by a physical commodity such as gold or silver, but rather, by the government that issues them. There are currently around 180 such currencies in the global marketplace, including the U.S. and Canadian dollars, the euro and the Chinese yuan. With fiat currencies, the country’s central bank guarantees the currency’s value: A $100-bank note is backed by the central bank’s promise to pay 100 dollars to the bearer. But cryptocurrencies are very different—and their proponents believe that this difference is what justifies their utility. Digital currencies are not regulated by any central bank, or for that matter, by any authority whatsoever. They do away with so-called intermediaries—despite the fact that in the real world,…

1. Default rules (e.g. automatic enrolment in programs.) 2. Simplification (in part to promote take-up of existing programs.) 3. Use of social norms (emphasizing what most people do, e.g. ‘Most people plan to vote’ or ‘Most people pay their taxes on time’.) 4. Increases in ease and convenience (e.g. making low-cost options or healthy foods visible.) 5. Disclosure (e.g. of the economic or environmental costs associated with energy use, or the full cost of certain credit cards—or large amounts of data, as in the cases of data.gov and opengovernmentpartnership.org.) 6. Warnings, graphic or otherwise (as used for cigarettes.) 7. Pre-commitment strategies (by which people commit to a certain course of action.) 8. Reminders (e.g. by e-mail or text message, as for overdue bills and coming obligations or appointments.) 9. Eliciting…

You have said that despite efforts to make innovation a common practice, corporate innovation remains a paradox. How so? Very few leaders would deny the importance of innovation. And yet, there is still nothing harder than trying to innovate within a large corporation. The issue is that many established companies are trapped by their previous success in a manner that limits their capacity to innovate. A classic example is Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft. When Apple introduced the first iPhone in 2007, his response was as follows: “There is no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share!” Leadership teams in successful companies essentially become ‘climate change deniers’: They can see the changes happening around them in the business world, yet they deny those…

THIS PAST YEAR HAS SHOWN US that we have a window of possibility to not simply recover from this pandemic, but transform our society and economy to prioritize care and community. Not long after COVID-19 struck, it became clear that it would not affect people across Canada equally. Women; Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people; Black, Indigenous and racialized communities; those experiencing low income; immigrants; and people with disabilities have all faced the brunt of both economic downturn and health risks. Just three months after the pandemic began, in the summer of 2020, the participation rate of women in the Canadian labour force had returned to what it was in the 1980s. When schools and childcare facilities closed, many women — who disproportionately take on unpaid caregiving — left their jobs to…

The COVID-19 pandemic has projected humanity into an unprecedented era characterized by feelings of helplessness and loss of control. While it is too early to robustly understand the impact of the virus on long-term psychological outcomes, healthcare professionals have already noted a marked increase in anxiety due to the uncertainty brought about by COVID-19. However, we have little understanding of how employees’ COVID-19 health anxiety (‘CovH anxiety’) — feelings of fear and apprehension about having or contracting COVID-19 — has spilled over to affect their work- and home-related behaviours. In recent research co-authored with Nitya Chawla from Texas A&M University, we tested a model indicating how CovH anxiety impacts work, home and health outcomes. In this article, we will summarize our findings. CovH Anxiety’s Impact on Work, Home and Health…

You and your co-author spent a combined 27 years working at Amazon, sharing founder Jeff Bezos’ conviction that the long-term interests of shareholders are perfectly aligned with the interests of customers. Please unpack that belief for us. It’s more than just a belief — it’s an unshakeable conviction that is embedded into the company’s thinking and behaviour. The idea is that if you constantly focus on addressing customer needs and solving their problems, things will work out over the long term for your company. Amazon’s success proves that when you have customers’ best interests in mind, they reward you with trust and ongoing business over a lengthy period of time. Some leaders think that if you adopt this kind of long-term mindset, it will take too long to get where…

You have said the global pandemic teaches us that “change is not a project with a beginning and an end”. What is it, then? If you look back at the 20th century, change was relatively rare. We had some massive shakeups in the forms of wars and economic recessions, but on average, that only happened once in a generation. As a result of the relatively steady environment, we got to a place where the lifecycle for an average business was 75 years. I could graduate from the University of Toronto, go to work for a company, retire from that company and never see one true reinvention in my lifetime. I would see incremental improvements along the way, but no true turnarounds. Today, things are very different. We completed our Global…

The year 2020 was a watershed moment for business, society and politics. While corporate purpose and ‘stakeholder capitalism’ were already understood and embraced to a degree, the pandemic has served to magnify underlying societal faults, fuelling a paradigm shift in the way stakeholders expect companies to engage with the community at large. This movement has been building momentum since 2019, when the Business Roundtable — a group of American CEOs — issued a statement reimagining the conventional definition of a modern corporation and updating it for the 21st century, putting employees, the environment and the wider community front and centre. From inclusive leadership to civil rights and climate change, a growing number of today’s consumers judge companies for the principles they embody and the stance they take on the most…

Wealth Distribution. The distribution of income across a population’s households, the concentration of assets in various communities, the ability for individuals to move up from their existing financial circumstances, and the gap between the top and bottom brackets within an economy. Education. Access to quality primary, secondary and post-secondary education; workforce training; trade apprenticeships; certification programs; the ways in which people learn and the tools they use; and what people are interested in studying. Infrastructure. The physical, organizational and digital structures needed for society to operate — from bridges to power grids, roads to Wi-Fi towers — and the ways an infrastructure of a city, state or country might impact another’s. Government. Local, state, national and international governing bodies; their planning cycles; their elections; and their regulatory decisions. Geopolitics. The…

IN THE REALM OF INVESTING, ‘risk profiling’ is a fundamental aspect of determining suitable investment solutions for an individual. Creating a risk profile entails determining and addressing two things: the individual’s objective risk capacity (their objective ability to take risk), as well as their risk tolerance (their behavioural willingness to take risk). Until recently, these varied traits have been difficult to capture effectively. In this article we will summarize the existing literature on how certain behaviours and psychological factors — in particular, the Big Five personality traits — impact investor’s behaviour around risk. We will then share the findings from our own recent research, published in its entirety in the TD Wealth Behavioural Finance Industry Report: A Behavioural Perspective on Risk. By bridging previous findings with our own, we hope…

The goal of ‘futuring’ is not to predict the future, but to prepare for the possibilities. To rise to this challenge, our response must be human-centred, innovative and radically imaginative. To facilitate this discussion, following are six possible futures we believe will emerge. Each can be consumed individually, or combined with the others to form interesting clusters. 1. Leftover Spaces Physical spaces will become much more dynamic. Our spaces will adapt and change multiple times a day, responding to new metrics for how we value usage and judge capacity. IDEAL CAPACITY NO LONGER MEANS MAXIMUM CAPACITY. In response to increased public health and safety regulations, the max capacity of physical spaces dramatically reduces. Businesses, events and retailers that previously relied on maximizing turnover of guests will fundamentally rethink how to…

ACCORDING TO RESEARCH, THE TOP REASON start-ups fail is that they offer a product or service that nobody wants. Put simply, they have come up with an idea that is viable, but it is not desirable. To establish whether an idea is both viable and desirable, you must engage in a specific type of experimentation. The tightrope of experimentation combines two seemingly contradictory qualities: total focus and total flexibility. By contrast, most conventional experimenters are single-mindedly focused on validating their idea. Typically, a scientist, inventor or entrepreneur develops a hypothesis and then sets out to prove it through experimentation. This emphasis on validation is rooted in the scientific method, which is often held up as the ideal of experimentation. Valid scientific protocols are based on formulating a hypotheses, testing it…

VACCINES ASIDE, the solutions to combating COVID-19 — screening, personal risk management, contact tracing, to name a few — are based on a deeper principle. Specifically, the primary economic tool at our disposal for fighting the economic consequences of pandemics is the collection and use of information about infectious people. I believe, therefore, that our preparation for dealing with inevitable future pandemic threats must involve building our information infrastructure and the decision-making skills to make use of it. In my first book about the brutal economics of COVID-19, The Pandemic Information Gap, I speculated that we would need to invest heavily in supranational institutions to deal with pandemics. From the vantage of 2020, that seemed like the only option. Pandemics always start somewhere, and therefore we need to ensure that…

Remove obstacles: By doing discovery work and starting small, you will have developed an understanding of what is getting in the way of innovation inside your company. The process you design should, at a minimum, remove obstacles such as lack of leadership support, a demand for long business cases and unrealistic ROI expectations. The impact of annual budget cycles should be minimized. Provide incremental resources: Teams need protected funding for innovation. You need to design a process that describes how this funding will be released to innovation teams incrementally. Small amounts of money can be released for intrapreneurs to test their ideas through experiments with customers. These funds should be released without the need for a long business case. If intrapreneurs show progress towards a profitable business model from their…

You believe that the field of Marketing is in crisis. How so? In a recent survey of global companies, nearly 70 per cent of CEOs expressed a lack of confidence that their Marketing Departments could drive profits. Many have already started eliminating the role of CMO, citing a lack of value in the position. Instead, they are introducing new roles such as Chief Growth Officer, Chief Revenue Officer or Chief Customer Officer. Here’s the problem with that: Take away growth, revenue and customers, and all that’s left for marketers is branding. The Classic 4Ps of Marketing (product/price/place/promotion) are being done, almost exclusively, by other departments. Logistically, Marketing is barely hanging on. Even among the new generation of graduates, Marketing no longer has the gravitas it once did. It used to…

IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT an organizational team is like an orchestra, with each member playing a role in creating the melody. This metaphor is not new — but nor is it true. Working in perfect harmony is not what makes a team great. It is actually productive disharmony that leaders should seek. As with the yin and yang of so many things in life, not all harmony is good, and not all disharmony is bad. While many of us aspire to create a positive and productive team culture and environment, striving to maintain congeniality at the expense of exploration and exploiting differences only serves to undercut the value of being a team with diverse views. When team members ‘go along to get along,’ that’s when a team experiences negative…

The majority of entrepreneurial start-ups don’t survive. Why is that? The failure rate is substantial: More than 30 per cent close after five years and about 50 per cent after 10 years. The failure rate is so high because, like all business leaders today, entrepreneurs have to make choices with incomplete information, while facing a high degree of uncertainty about the future. But many entrepreneurs also have limited experience, which makes the first two challenges even harder for them. The number one reason for failure is that start-ups bring a product or service to market that nobody wants. Successful entrepreneurs have to do a lot of experimenting, and that means making a lot of mistakes. Society still perceives failure as a bad thing, and it can be humiliating. The fact…