Leadership
When Crises Hit, Shovel-Ready Ideas Can Get Greenlighted Quickly
Frontline staff and managers often face years of resistance and red tape when they try to improve organizational processes. But a Yale SOM study suggests that crises can create windows of opportunity to get those changes implemented—if advocates move fast and demonstrate the short- and long-term value of their ideas.
Should business be personal?
How can managers integrate their values into business decisions? Trish Karter '82 talks about the decision to keep her company's headquarters in inner-city Boston, and how it grew from her sense of self.
A company in good standing?
Could the market do more to improve ethical performance than professionalization? Professor Jim Baron proposes that voluntary certification of various facets of corporate responsibility could create a market for good behavior.
What can a professional association accomplish?
Venture capitalists seed companies that are not yet a gleam in the public market's eye. Their investments can sprout and transform industries. Anne Glover '78, a past chairman of the British Venture Capital Association, says a professional association helps the industry self-police.
The chief professional?
With their power, their prominence, and their pay packages, CEOs are cynosures in the business universe. Could the structures of a management profession take in these corporate chiefs? Or should CEOs of publicly traded companies be treated as members of a separate profession, with its own rules and responsibilities?
Who were the managers?
While technologies and social structures change through the ages, the basic need for efficient and skillful management of resources and organizations is a constant. An archaeologist and a historian describe how past societies have met the challenge of training effective and accountable managers.