Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2022 från Rotman Management

PURPOSE IS A CONCEPT often used in managerial communities to signal and define a firm’s benevolent and pluralistic approach to its stakeholders beyond its focus on shareholders. While mounting evidence links purpose to positive organizational outcomes such as growth, employee satisfaction, innovation and superior stock market performance, the definition and application of purpose in management research has been varied and frequently ambiguous. In a recent paper with my colleagues Gerard George (Georgetown University), Martine Haas (University of Pennsylvania), Simon Schillebeeckx (Singapore Management University) and Paul Tracey (University of Cambridge), we present a framework for understanding and implementing purpose in organizations. My co-authors and I view purpose as directed towards a higher-order goal that the firm engages with in an authentic way and that employees find compelling. This is consistent with…

EVERY DAY, it seems there is another announcement about companies making climate commitments, asset managers outlining their plans for environmental, social and governance (ESG) integration, or regulators proposing new disclosures or extending producers’ responsibilities. Corporate coalitions like the World Economic Forum International Business Council and the Business Roundtable endorse a more stakeholder-inclusive corporate capitalism. Meanwhile, industry coalitions are working to solve their members’ shared sustainability challenges and employees and consumers are calling on companies to take environmental and social challenges seriously. Clearly, we have entered a new era for business, one in which sustaining competitive advantage requires companies to transform their business models for sustainability. Company leaders need a broader, more systemic understanding of these dynamic sustainability challenges and the ways that their companies can play a part in addressing…

A RECENT Harvard Business Review article declares that “scale now trumps differentiation” in firm strategy. And LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman has warned, “you have to move faster, because competition from anywhere on the globe may beat you at scale.” Yet despite such attention from practitioners and the media, there has been little discussion of global scaling in the business literature. In a recent paper, we propose the following definition: Global scaling is a logic of multinationalization that seeks rapid growth through the replication of a global business model (i.e., a model based solely on non-location-bound firm-specific advantages) across foreign markets. Although scaling is a term that is often used as a synonym for growth, separate bodies of academic literature have highlighted different facets of it. Following are four perspectives on global…

AS WE COLLECTIVELY WORK to create a more inclusive Canada, academics, community leaders and organizations are increasingly partnering to leverage data in ways that advocate for targeted support to mitigate the challenges that have arisen during the global pandemic. Without these efforts, Canada risks having an uneven recovery that puts racialized Canadians in a worse situation than before the pandemic. Seeking to contribute to this effort, the Canadian Arab Institute (CAI) recently collaborated with Brock University on a research study examining gaps in knowledge about the lived experiences of racialized communities. Together with myself and Brock President Dr. Gervan Fearon, the CAI oversaw a study designed to cultivate dialogue across several groups of racialized Canadians. Our study evaluated the impact of COVID-19 on Arab, Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, South Asian and…

You believe an imperative now exists in the minds of our best leaders around diversity, equity and inclusion. Is a major disruption of the status quo on the horizon? Stella Nkomo: There is good news along with a cautionary tale. The good news is, with international outcry over the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, it does appear that corporate America and businesses around the world have experienced a reckoning and now realize that they have to take action on racism. The question is whether all the talk will be turned into real action. We certainly hope that companies will begin to understand what they need to do to address racism in the workplace. Particularly with respect to the status of Black women and women of…

You believe the time has come to bridge the ‘cultural gulf’ that exists within most organizations. Please explain. Historically, business leaders have had competencies in the physical domain — related to manufacturing and distributing products in an optimal fashion. And that requires a particular set of skills. But as the knowledge economy took shape, a completely different set of skills was required in places like Silicon Valley, where companies were entirely digital, built on code. In recent years, the physical and digital realms have converged, creating very different dynamics in terms of the way things are produced, how organizations are designed and what customer relationships look like. As a result, companies— and their leaders — now need to have competencies in both the digital and the physical worlds. In your…

IF YOU ARE A DIGITAL FIRM with global ambitions, hurry up and figure out your India strategy, if you haven’t already. Or risk losing access to one of the world’s most attractive digital markets. At the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg struck a deal to invest US$5.7 billion for a 9.99 per cent stake in Reliance Jio, the three-year-old telecom company owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. It was Facebook’s biggest deal since acquiring WhatsApp in 2014. Reliance Jio was barely profitable, yet the announcement boosted Facebook’s valuation on Wall Street by eight per cent, or $40 billion. Why? Because India is a strategic market for digital firms. Facebook is already the most popular social network in the country; WhatsApp has five times as many users…

EVERY IMAGINATIVE EFFORT BEGINS with a mental spark. Financial pioneer Omar Selim’s spark came from an unexpected source: his teenage children. Selim, who was Barclays head of global markets for institutional clients at the time, was preparing for a trip the following day to Johannesburg. At dinner, he and his children talked about work and life, what matters and what doesn’t. “Okay, so you’re going to fly there tomorrow, stay in a five-star hotel, give a speech, which probably nobody really cares about,” they said. “And this is the path you’ve chosen to dedicate your life to?” As Selim told us, this blunt exchange with his children actually triggered his imagination, throwing everything into question. And this trigger coincided with a situation at work that gave him a lot of…

OVER THE PAST 18 MONTHS, a majority of consumers — across backgrounds, demographics and geographies — have reimagined their values and purpose. They have made a consequential shift to focusing on what matters most for them in life — and their motivations for what and how they buy are, accordingly, meaningfully different. Our research into these changes reveals an enormous new ‘white space’ in which brands must differentiate themselves anew to survive and discover new paths to growth. Consumers will leave brands that don’t recognize their new priorities—and they will pay more for those that do. It’s time to ask: What will motivate consumers to stay? What will motivate them to pay? The pandemic compelled consumers — en masse — to shift their expectations more rapidly and completely than we’ve…

Tanya Ott: You lived—and thrived—in a male world for the first 50 years of your life. Describe your life today. Katie Dudtschak: I am a parent to four incredible children — two boys and two girls. I am also an executive vice president with RBC in Toronto, where I have the privilege of leading our personal and commercial advisers across Canada — more than 20,000 experts serving 15 million Canadians. But to understand me, we have to rewind 80 years. My parents grew up in Germany during the second world war. My mother was a child refugee and my father was a Russian prisoner of war. They both lost their parents to the war. Unfortunately, when they immigrated to Canada they brought the trauma from the war and their own…

IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, some leaders used their communications with stakeholders to exercise accountability, effect transparency and develop a tone at the top that was intended to promote trust. Some well-known CEOs spoke and wrote with candor, compassion and seemingly authentic positivity. But this pandemic made uninformed positivity — often in defiance of expert medical knowledge — a potentially compromising approach. Many CEOs used language to set a strategic tone for their followers — variously of brutal honesty, compassion or confidence. They sought to encourage followers to have faith in their leadership. Some succeeded. Others failed. Some, it seems, were dishonest. What was clear is that no amount of confected positivity, often in defiance of medical knowledge and advice, could guarantee that followers would also adopt…

COVID-19 HAS BEEN DEVASTATING for Canada, affecting our health, economy and social structures. Recovery from the pandemic will be a significant challenge, but one that provides unique opportunities to address the deeper issues confronting our country. Rarely has there been such goodwill directed toward the government combined with a sense of broad reflection on the part of many citizens. We have learned clear lessons from COVID-19, particularly around our ability to act quickly and collectively in the face of a global threat. These are lessons we need to embrace as we forge a new future. The world is different. We are different. And that’s why now is the moment for us to take bold action to accelerate change and create the world we desire. Beyond the pandemic, Canada is facing…

“ONE DAY EARLY IN MY CAREER I was doing a trade, and something didn’t feel quite right about it.” Chris Clearfield, who was working for a financial firm on Wall Street at the time, told me. “It turned out I had lost on the order of tens of thousands of dollars, which wasn’t a huge amount of money for this firm, but is no small amount either.” The thing is, it was something only Chris knew about. What would you do next? Pretend nothing happened and hope no one noticed? Blame someone else? “After a little while, I went to my manager and brought his attention to it.” Chris owned up to his mistake and then waited for the other shoe to drop. That’s not what happened. “I received feedback…

THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY has been reeling amid COVID-19. As the pandemic took shape, airlines around the globe suffered, and many were brought to a halt. This, in turn, was devastating for businesses that cater to travelers, including the hospitality industry (hotels and restaurants), car rental companies, tourist attractions, taxis and ride-hailing platforms like Uber, and other related lines of business such as tour guides. For Air Canada, the pandemic could not have come at a worse time, as it was already experiencing a major crisis due to the saga of the Boeing 737 Max, which it flew extensively in many of its routes. The 737 Max had experienced recurring failures with a crucial system, causing two fatal crashes. In response to this serious safety issue, the 737 Max was grounded…

FROM AUTONOMOUS CARS to faster mortgage approvals and automated advertising decisions, AI algorithms promise numerous benefits for businesses and customers alike. Machine learning (ML) algorithms can use vast amounts of consumer data and automate key business decisions such as pricing, product offerings and promotions in real time and at micro-targeted levels. Unfortunately, these benefits may not be enjoyed equally. Algorithmic bias — which occurs when algorithms produce discriminatory outcomes against certain categories of individuals — typically minorities and women — may also worsen existing social inequities, particularly when it comes to race and gender. From the recidivism prediction algorithm used in courts to medical care prediction algorithms used by hospitals, studies have found evidence of algorithmic biases that make racial disparities worse for those impacted, not better. Large e-tailers such…

You have referred to our current environment as ‘exponential’. How do you define that term? A linear process is one where something progresses straight from one stage to another. For example, your age increases by a predictable ‘one’ with each revolution of the earth around the sun. An exponential process, on the other hand, is like a savings account with compound interest: It increases by a fixed percentage — say, two per cent every year — but next year’s two per cent applies not just to your original savings but to your savings plus last year’s interest. Such compounding starts out slowly, but at a certain point, the value leaps higher at a dizzying pace. Many natural processes follow an exponential pattern: the number of bacteria in a petri dish,…

As director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute (SRI) for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto, your goal is to ensure that technology produces outcomes that align with society’s values. Can you unpack this mission statement for us? The key thing to know about artificial intelligence (AI) is that in many cases, it automates human judgment and decision-making — which means it is making decisions that impact the world. You could even say we’ve begun to delegate many decisions to machines: Who should get a loan; who should get into an educational program; how a car should steer when a human appears in front of it. We need to make sure that these machines are making decisions that are aligned with what communities and societies want. This is known…

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) describes machines that can simulate some forms of human intelligence. Some conceptualizations of AI refer to machines that act indistinguishably from humans, while others focus more on ‘machine learning’ that can identify patterns, achieve an optimized outcome to a given problem, and/or make predictions and decisions based on prior information. To achieve these goals, AI uses algorithms that ‘learn’ from large data sets and adjust and improve over time based on new data. While not a new concept, AI is increasingly embedded in people’s lives and will only become more pervasive. Organizations across many sectors use AI for a variety of purposes: hiring employees, performing surgeries, tutoring school subjects, making decisions about criminal sentencing, making lending decisions, automating driving, and predicting where crime will occur, to name…

You have said today’s organizations share some common goals and challenges. Please explain. Herminia Ibarra: Pre-pandemic, we were having lots of conversations about innovation and digital transformation, but existential challenges over the past two years have forced that conversation to become much broader. Responding to a global pandemic, an environmental crisis and the quest for racial equity demands what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls shifting from being ‘know-it-alls’ to being ‘learn-it-alls’. At this point in time, most organizations are striving to be six things: agile, customer-centric, innovative, tech-savvy, inclusive and disruption-proof. As we think about leadership skills for the post-pandemic era, I am most interested in what it takes to instill these characteristics in teams and organizations. What leadership skills will be most valuable going forward? Five skills come to…

FEW PEOPLE WOULD ARGUE that innovation plays a pivotal role in shaping the economic fabric of nations. In particular, market-creating innovations — which create new markets by democratizing access to previously-exclusive products — have been a vital force for generating prosperity in wealthy countries, and are integral for building a prosperous future for emerging economies. In order to create new markets for people who have traditionally been unable to purchase certain products due to barriers such as cost and access, organizations not only need to develop a product that meets these customers’ needs, they must also develop a way to get it to them. This involves creating jobs and building infrastructure that wouldn’t be necessary if the organization were targeting existing markets. Lasting prosperity follows — for the organizations creating…

How do you define a ‘net positive’ business? A net positive business is one that improves the well-being of every stakeholder it touches, at every level — through its products, its value chain, its operations and its work on social issues. For the last 50 years, the private sector has embraced an obsession with short-term profits and shareholder primacy, and the results have been extreme. Unfortunately, nobody is going to come along and save us: As my co-author Andrew Winston and I say in the book, “We broke it, and now we have to own it.” Business leaders are now responsible not just to their own companies and investors, but to all of society. Looking ahead, one thing is certain: Taking steps to mitigate the damage will be cheaper than…

Tell us about your S Curve of Learning——and the popular theory behind it. Sociologist E. M. Rogers introduced the S Curve in his 1962 PhD dissertation as a way to help us understand how disruptive ideas and products take hold in society. As he showed, the initial rollout is slow, represented by the base of the S; if adoption reaches 10 to 15 per cent, what had been considered ‘novel’ will now be considered ‘worthy of imitation’. This is the tipping point of the S Curve; and beyond it, the diffusion of an idea can be impossible to halt. Adoption is rapid through the steep back-of-the-S (the ‘sweet spot’), until about 90 per cent saturation is achieved. Then — with little room left to influence change — the pace of…

You open your book by stating that “women are notoriously ambivalent when it comes to leadership.” Why is that? That was the question we pondered throughout the book. I don’t think there’s a simple answer, but if I were to summarize what we discovered, it’s that girls and young women are programmed very differently from childhood. It is rare for a young girl to aspire to lead — but we see boys taking charge all the time, on and off the sports field. It all comes down to how you are raised and what you’re expected to do. In addition, sometimes women are ambivalent about leadership because they lack the confidence — and that is backed by lots of research. They tend to underestimate their own skill set and ambition,…

WHETHER IT’S A NEW PROJECT management platform or a complete company restructure, when organizations attempt to implement change, more often than not they are met with resistance. The question is why. The fact is, there is always a portion of people in every organization who want to maintain the status quo, and another portion who are ready and willing to charge ahead with new behaviours. We can take a variety of approaches to get the laggard half on board — whether it’s taking a hard line, amplifying our communications or reinforcing the logic of the decision. And yet, pushback often persists. It is frequently reported that over 70 per cent of all change efforts fail. However, this mythical figure can be traced back to a 1993 book, Re-engineering the Corporation,…

A few years ago, the World Economic Forum predicted that by 2050, there will be more plastics in the ocean than fish. Describe how this prediction catalyzed you to action. I was a student in the Rotman Commerce program at the time, and I was shocked by this prediction — particularly since I’d been hearing so much about rapid advancements in green technology. Clearly, significant barriers existed to the widespread adoption of sustainable technologies — and they needed to be addressed. I decided to spend some time researching why experts were predicting this dismal future. That’s how it all started. A few months later, through my involvement at Enactus — a global student entrepreneurship organization — I started a project called EcoPackers to produce compostable packaging. I was in my…