How to Come Back Stronger From Organizational Trauma

1. R.M. Vogel and M.C. Bolino, “Recurring Nightmares and Silver Linings: Understanding How Past Abusive Supervision May Lead to Post-Traumatic Stress and Post-Traumatic Growth,” Academy of Management Review 45, no. 3 (July 2020): 549-569. 2. R. Janoff-Bulman, “Assumptive Worlds and the Stress of Traumatic Events: Applications of the Schema Construct,” Social Cognition 7, no. 2 (June 1989): 113-136. 3. R.G. Tedeschi and L.G. Calhoun, “Post-Traumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical…

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To Navigate Conflict, Prioritize Dignity

Frontiers Four interrelated practices can bolster dignity, leading to more constructive problem-solving and collaboration. Merrick Hoben May 20, 2024 Reading Time: 5 min  Topics Frontiers An MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. More in this series Rafael Lopez/theispot.com Conflicts between businesses pursuing commercial objectives and communities defending their interests arise regularly and often inevitably, especially when companies don’t prioritize engagement with their neighbors. Consider…

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AI Hype and Skepticism: Economist Paul Romer

The Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy initiative explores the growing use of artificial intelligence in the business landscape. The exploration looks specifically at how AI is affecting the development and execution of strategy in organizations. Paul Romer once considered himself the most optimistic economist. He rightfully predicted that technology would blow up as an economic driver coming out of the inflation of the 1970s but acknowledges he did not foresee…

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Tap Employee-Creators to Transform Your Social Media Strategy

Frontiers Businesses that help employees become social media stars have a cost-effective way to generate enormous brand visibility. Aaron Dinin May 15, 2024 Reading Time: 9 min  Topics Frontiers An MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. More in this series James Yang/theispot.com On Jan. 2, 2023, 19 refugees from Cuba who were adrift on a makeshift boat in the Straits of Florida were spotted…

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Building a Data-Driven Culture: Three Mistakes to Avoid

Topics Data, AI, & Machine Learning Data & Data Culture Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images When one of the largest global telecom companies grappled with high customer attrition, the marketing team used a heuristics-driven approach to retain customers. For example, if a customer hadn’t made any…

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How AI Skews Our Sense of Responsibility

Frontiers Research shows how using an AI-augmented system may affect humans’ perception of their own agency and responsibility. Ryad Titah May 13, 2024 Reading Time: 5 min  Topics Frontiers An MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. More in this series Matt Chinworth/theispot.com As artificial intelligence plays an ever-larger role in automated systems and decision-making processes, the question of how it affects humans’ sense of…

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The Hazards of Putting Ethics on Autopilot

Frontiers Research Highlight Research shows that employees who are steered by digital nudges may lose some ethical competency. That has implications for how we use the new generation of AI assistants. Julian Friedland, David B. Balkin, and Kristian Ove R. Myrseth May 08, 2024 Reading Time: 6 min  Topics Frontiers An MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. More in this series Aad Goudappel/theispot.com The…

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How the Smartest CEOs Start

Find the right balance between listening and learning versus acting in this excerpt from The New CEO. Ty Wiggins May 07, 2024 Reading Time: 7 min  subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR The hardest part of a CEO transition is finding the right balance between listening and learning versus acting. How fast is too fast? How slow is too slow? Do you come in and take immediate action to make…

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Hard Truths About the Meeting After the Meeting

Leaders must encourage respectful debate during meetings and use related strategies to avoid toxic post-meeting dynamics. Phillip G. Clampitt May 06, 2024 Reading Time: 13 min  Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images A leader attempting to quash the meeting after the meeting would be like a coach trying to stop fans from opining, snarking, or rejoicing after a big game. The hard truth: Win or lose, there will be post-meeting…

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Why Territorial Managers Stifle Innovation — and What to Do About It

Topics Frontiers An MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. More in this series Gary Waters/Ikon Images Dilip has been working hard on a game-changing idea for a new product. But when he excitedly approaches his boss to share it and get approval for further development and testing, his proposal is quickly rejected. Instead of offering constructive feedback on how to make the idea workable,…

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What Successful Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Get Right

From virtual snowstorms to golden locker boxes, today’s thriving stores feature experiences shoppers can’t get online. Consider five successful tactics. Rob Angell May 02, 2024 Reading Time: 9 min  Neil Webb/Ikon Images Many retailers with physical stores have felt as if they have been fighting for their lives during the past decade. A constant stream of media and industry analysis has poured cold water on the retail channel, documenting how…

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The CEO’s Cyber Resilience Playbook

Research Feature What do CEOs who led through a serious cyberattack regret? Use this guide to learn from their experiences and take smarter actions before, during, and after an attack. Manuel Hepfer, Rashmy Chatterjee, and Michael Smets May 01, 2024 Reading Time: 13 min  Michael Glenwood Gibbs/theispot.com On May 7, 2021, executives at Colonial Pipeline discovered that cybercriminals had launched a ransomware attack on its IT systems. To prevent the…

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Lights, AI, Action: Wonder Dynamics’s Tye Sheridan

Topics Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy The Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy initiative explores the growing use of artificial intelligence in the business landscape. The exploration looks specifically at how AI is affecting the development and execution of strategy in organizations. In collaboration with More in this series Get updates by email Please enter a valid email address Thank you for signing up Privacy Policy Actor Tye Sheridan may not…

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The Anomalies of Disruption

Topics Innovation Disruption Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Paolo Beghini/Ikon Images On his office door, Clayton Christensen — who at one point I called my teacher, mentor, boss, colleague, coauthor, and, most importantly, friend — had a handcrafted sign saying, “Anomalies Wanted.” Like a good scientist, Christensen believed that the things you…

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Effective Leaders Articulate Values — and Live by Them

Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Values lie at the heart of effective leadership, serving as the foundation for decisions and organizational cultures. Yet in the lecture halls, meeting rooms, and offices where we teach leadership, we regularly see a muddiness around how to think about…

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Why You Should Let Your Favorite Employee Move to Another Team

Neil Webb/Ikon Images The Research The authors analyzed 96,712 internal applications submitted to 9,896 open jobs posted by 3,431 hiring managers in the U.S. operations of a Fortune 50 company over a four-year period. This data allowed them to calculate the rate at which a manager’s subordinates were promoted, which in turn enabled them to examine whether managers whose subordinates frequently moved to higher-level jobs elsewhere in the organization were…

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Why Companies Need to Lobby for Climate Policy

Frontiers Organizations that want to make real progress on sustainability need to build a business case for climate lobbying. Richard Roberts April 22, 2024 Reading Time: 10 min  Topics Frontiers An MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. More in this series MIT SMR/Joshua Sukoff/Unsplash In recent years, thousands of companies worldwide have made net-zero commitments to meet the urgent challenge of climate change. Many…

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The Unexpected Upsides of Letting Employees Define Their Jobs

Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Brian Stauffer/theispot.com In today’s corporate landscape, the pursuit of heightened employee engagement and job satisfaction is imperative. Traditional job structures, often rigid and narrowly scoped, can lead to diminished motivation, lower productivity, and elevated turnover rates. The key challenge for contemporary organizations is to rekindle passion…

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AI-Related Risks Test the Limits of Organizational Risk Management

Topics Responsible AI The Responsible AI initiative looks at how organizations define and approach responsible AI practices, policies, and standards. Drawing on global executive surveys and smaller, curated expert panels, the program gathers perspectives from diverse sectors and geographies with the aim of delivering actionable insights on this nascent yet important focus area for leaders across industry. In collaboration with More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share For the third…

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The Politics of Place and What It Means for Talent Strategy

Politics increasingly drives where your team wants to live. Here’s how leaders can navigate the red and blue tensions inherent in place. Kimberly Merriman April 17, 2024 Reading Time: 9 min  Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The influence of politics on where workers want to live now has key implications for a company’s talent strategy. A survey of 500 U.S. real estate agents shows 32% of agents had at…

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AI and Statistics: Perfect Together

Many companies develop AI models without a solid foundation on which to base predictions — leading to mistrust and failures. Here’s how statistics can help improve results. Thomas C. Redman and Roger W. Hoerl April 16, 2024 Reading Time: 9 min  Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images People are often unsure why artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms work. More importantly, people can’t always anticipate when they won’t work. Ali…

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Serve More Customers With Inclusive Product Design

Sjoerd van Leeuwen/theispot.com Imagine a product that millions of people find frustrating to use because of a design choice that could have easily been avoided. If it were your product, wouldn’t you want to know who was frustrated by it and why, how to fix the problem, and how your organization could avoid making similar mistakes in the future? Obviously, letting a customer down is bad for business. Yet some…

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When AI Investments Pay Off in Marketing

Research Highlight Marketing leaders are realizing gains from AI in three key areas, new research shows: increasing sales productivity, increasing customer satisfaction, and reducing marketing overhead costs. Christine Moorman and Colleen Hickey April 09, 2024 Reading Time: 5 min  Patrick George / Ikon Images From content creation to software coding and customer segmentation, artificial intelligence deployment fever is real. But amid a great deal of media, analyst, and executive speculation…

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A Tale of Two Hot Sauces: Spicing Up Diversification

The contrasting paths of two hot sauce manufacturers show that managing exposure on multiple fronts is essential. Achal Bassamboo and James G. Conley April 08, 2024 Reading Time: 5 min  Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The divergent fates of two rival condiment businesses — the best of times for McIlhenny Company, maker of well-known Tabasco-brand hot sauces,…

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Why We Need to, Have to, Want to Act on Climate

Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The battle to get companies to take sustainability seriously is essentially over. Even in the face of the “anti-ESG” movement — a very American phenomenon — there are vanishingly few large organizations around the world that really question the need…

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Want a More Ethical Team? Build Expertise, Not Just Guidelines

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Ethics is often associated with the abstract realm of philosophers. But there’s nothing abstract about the risks for business leaders: Ethical missteps can expose their companies to a host of reputational, regulatory, and legal risks. In response, companies develop ethical guidelines or codes for decision makers and set up boards to govern guideline usage. For example, companies under growing pressure to fight bias are…

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Reinventing the Organization for GenAI and LLMs

Previous waves of technology have ushered in innovations that strengthened traditional organizational structure. Not so for generative AI and large language models. Ethan Mollick April 02, 2024 Reading Time: 11 min  Topics Data, AI, & Machine Learning AI & Machine Learning Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Consider this an early eulogy for the traditional organizational structure, which began in 1855 with the first modern organizational chart and thrived, more…

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How to Create Slides That Suit Your Superiors: 11 Tips

Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images I recently interviewed 20 of my customers, all in senior roles at Fortune 100 companies, and asked them their biggest pain point in presenting to higher-ups and even colleagues. What I heard consistently was that it can feel like Goldilocks…

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How AI Changes Your Workforce

In this short video, two experts share insights on how AI is reshaping work, workers, and talent ecosystems. MIT Sloan Management Review March 28, 2024 Reading Time: 1 min  subscribe-icon Subscribe Share [embedded content] Today’s leaders must grapple with big expectations for the impact of AI on the workforce — and an even larger amount of hype. Will AI automate away a huge number of jobs? How do companies use…

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Mayo Clinic’s Healthy Model for AI Success

Topics AI in Action This column series looks at the biggest data and analytics challenges facing modern companies and dives deep into successful use cases that can help other organizations accelerate their AI progress. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Alice Mollon / Ikon Images In 2022, we argued in the MIT Sloan Management Review AI in Action series that Mayo Clinic was probably the most aggressive adopter of…

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In AI We Trust — Too Much?

Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Andrew Baker / Ikon Images I’ve been thinking about technology and trust for much of my career. Here’s one example: Back in 2011, my research focused on the intersection of human trust, robots, and highly critical, time-sensitive scenarios. The research team I was on centered on…

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Driving Manufacturing Efficiency With AI in Pirelli

Daniele Petecchi didn’t realize how complex the process of producing tires was until he joined Pirelli, a company that’s been in the business of manufacturing tires for more than 150 years. But now, as head of data management and AI, he’s focused on leveraging the company’s wealth of data to meet the stringent technical, quality, and performance requirements of the Formula One racers and luxury vehicle makers — like Ferrari,…

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A Five-Step Guide to Improving Your Employer Brand

Burnish your brand to meet the challenge of talent acquisition by taking some cues from consumer branding. Kimberly A. Whitler and Richard Mosley March 25, 2024 Reading Time: 14 min  Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR A consistent priority issue for boards of directors and CEOs is the acquisition and retention of talent. In a 2023 Manpower study of more than 30,000 employers in 41 countries, 75% of employers indicated that they were…

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Return-to-Office Mandates: How to Lose Your Best Performers

Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Recent return-to-office (RTO) mandates like those at UPS and Boeing have a simple message: Come back to the office five days a week. CEOs cite productivity as a core reason for these proclamations, even in the face of employee resistance.…

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Diverse Teams Thrive With Four Elements of Belonging

Learn how to better support neurodiversity, as explained in this excerpt from the forthcoming book The Canary Code. Ludmila N. Praslova March 19, 2024 Reading Time: 12 min  subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Jessica is an ace data analyst; her mind excels at seeing connections that others miss. For many years, she delivered outstanding work and supported her company with system improvement suggestions. And then her…

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How AT&T Employees Turned Process Gripes Into $230 Million Saved

AT&T found a way to help workers kill outdated processes and tools that wasted time, energy, and money — one drop at a time. Here’s how the approach works. Jeremy Legg March 18, 2024 Reading Time: 8 min  Kevin Foley/MIT SMR; Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR An $8 expense — rejected because of a travel policy technicality — led to my own first “raindrop.” That term is unique to AT&T, but the…

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Three Things to Know About the Workplace Generation Gap

Magazine Spring 2024 Issue Radar Younger employees have high expectations for themselves, their leaders, and their weekends. Cynthia E. Clark March 11, 2024 Reading Time: 2 min  Topics Radar Brief insights on emerging trends in management from the opening pages of MIT Sloan Management Review’s quarterly print magazine. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images What is the purpose of business, and what is…

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Who Profits the Most From Generative AI?

Magazine Spring 2024 Issue Unpacking what it takes to build and deploy a large language model reveals which players stand to gain the most — and where newer entrants might have the best prospects. Kartik Hosanagar and Ramayya Krishnan March 12, 2024 Reading Time: 18 min  Topics Data, AI, & Machine Learning AI & Machine Learning Jon Krause In the months since the public launch of ChatGPT, massive investments have…

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Steer Clear of Corporate Venture Capital Pitfalls

Magazine Spring 2024 Issue Big companies and risk capital can be awkward partners. Here’s how to get corporate venturing right. Ilya A. Strebulaev and Amanda Wang March 12, 2024 Reading Time: 22 min  Jon Krause The Research The authors set out to investigate factors in the success or failure of corporate venture capital initiatives. They interviewed leaders of 164 CVC units and probed for details on how their organizations are…

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Our Guide to the Spring 2024 Issue

subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Who Profits the Most From Generative AI? Kartik Hosanagar and Ramayya Krishnan Key Insight: A breakdown of what it takes to build and deploy a large language model shows where incumbents have the best prospects for success and where newer companies have an edge. Top Takeaways: Since the launch of ChatGPT, interest and investments in generative AI models have surged. Which players stand to gain the most…

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