Emotional investment improves relationships and promotes satisfying, enduring agreements. In a difficult economy, when other kinds of rewards are scarce, making people in your organization feel upbeat and engaged can yield considerable value.

When a UK insurance company is plagued with a securities fraud scandal that results in the ouster of the CEO, the head of human resources seizes the opportunity to shake up the culture with a bold replacement. But the chairman of the board is uncomfortable with that strategy, preferring to focus on candidates of a more traditional stamp. How far can - and should - the HR director go to influence the high-stakes appointment? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0911B and R0911Z. CIPD's Vanessa Robinson acknowledges that the HR director has painted herself into a corner by making her case to the board chairman first. To get out, she needs to gather hard data to bolster her argument and demonstrate in business terms the downsides of maintaining the status quo. Debating the relative merits of various CEO candidates is fiddling while Rome burns, says Richard Hermon-Taylor, a management consultant. The company is in jeopardy of imploding, and the search for a new CEO could take weeks or months. The board chairman must take swift action: He should form a special committee to deal with the crisis, retain independent forensic accountants and counsel, announce the appointment of an interim CEO, and develop a communications program to reassure employees, investors, and customers. Charu G. Raheja, an assistant professor of finance at Wake Forest University, warns that the HR director is treading on thin ice. As corporate monitors and advisers to top management, directors must respect one other, the chairman, and, eventually, the new CEO. If that respect is compromised, serious problems can result.

Before the internet, organizations had far more time to monitor and respond to community activity, but that luxury is long gone, leaving them in dire need of a coherent outreach strategy, fresh skills, and adaptive tactics. Drawing on the authors' study of more than two dozen firms, this article describes the changes wrought by social media in particular and shows managers how to take advantage of them - lessons that Kaiser Permanente, Domino's, and others learned the hard way. Social media platforms enhance the power of communities by promoting deep relationships, facilitating rapid organization, improving the creation and synthesis of knowledge, and enabling robust filtering of information. The authors cite many examples from the health care industry, where social media participation is vigorous and influential. For instance, members of Sermo, an online network exclusively for doctors, used the site to call attention to and organize against insurers' proposed reimbursement cuts. And on PatientsLikeMe, where people share details about their chronic diseases and the treatments they've pursued, charts and progress curves help members visualize their own complex histories and allow comparisons and feedback among peers. As you modernize your company's approach to community outreach, you'll need to assemble a social media team equipped to identify new opportunities for engagement and prevent brand damage. In the most successful firms the authors studied, community management was a dedicated function, combining marketing, public relations, and information technology skills.

Billions of dollars worldwide are pumped into the search for clean technology and renewable energy. So far, however, most investment has been in companies that are using conventional business models to fit new technologies into existing systems. A far better approach, say Johnson and Suskewicz, is to create whole new systems. The authors propose a framework for thinking about clean tech that consists of four interdependent components: an enabling technology, an innovative business model, a careful market-adoption strategy, and a favorable government policy. Two recent experiments show how this framework can be applied: Better Place, founded by the software executive Shai Agassi, has a network of battery-recharging and -switching stations to support its electric cars and a business model based on selling electricity (miles) rather than vehicles. It has a foothold market in Israel, where gas-powered cars are taxed far higher than electric ones. Masdar City, now under construction in Abu Dhabi, will be a carbon-neutral incubator of clean technologies, supported by the investment, manufacturing, strategy, and academic units of a government initiative. The city is itself a foothold market and will benefit from government subsidies, "free zone" status, and favorable regulations. Both enterprises provide hope for supplanting the oilbased economy.

Heeding the wisdom of Peter Drucker might have helped us avoid - and will help us solve - numerous challenges, from restoring trust in business to tackling climate change. He issued early warnings about excessive executive pay, the auto industry's failure to adapt and innovate, competitive threats from emerging markets, and the perils of neglecting nonprofit organizations and other agents of societal reform. If he were still here, a century after his birth, what would he say about the path forward? The essential Drucker can be summarized in three themes: First, management should be a profession, and executives and managers should remember that their primary job is to look out for the long-term health of their organizations. That means taking responsibility for social well-being, not just wealth. Second, knowledge workers cannot be controlled; they must be motivated. Such employees must see a purpose more meaningful than personal profit. And third, nonprofits are necessary ingredients for producing a good society, one in which businesses can thrive. It is critical to invest in them. Drucker was not a revolutionary. He merely asked that we constantly challenge our assumptions. He preached steadiness and vision, recognizing that leading in turbulent times requires foresight about where things are heading as well as judgment about what not to change.

Peter Drucker's extensive writings, including more than 30 HBR essays, are landmarks of the managerial profession. They've influenced the practice and teaching of management for decades and no doubt line thousands of bookshelves. But does anyone read his works? More important, ought they? More important still, what will they gain if they do? In this 1980 article, Kantrow maintains that Drucker's real contribution to the discipline of management lies not so much in the cash value of his ideas but in the rigorous activity of mind by which they are formulated. One can learn far more deeply from watching Drucker think, says Kantrow, than from studying the content of his thought. Using specific passages from many of Drucker's books, the author demonstrates how Drucker's broadly contextual, logical, holistic play of thought enacts a kind of ongoing drama of perspective and how, combined with his fair-minded approach and commonsense flow of reasoning, Drucker so effectively convinces the reader. Kantrow also classifies Drucker's works into four groups - social and political thought, business and management analyses, views of what might logically develop in the future, and how-to primers on business tasks - and offers a guide for how to choose the best book for you. Accompanying Kantrow's article are essays by five leaders who write about Peter Drucker's influence on them: A.G. Lafley, of Procter & Gamble; Frances Hesselbein, of the Leader to Leader Institute; Oscar Motomura, of the Amana-Key Group; Peter Paschek, of Delta Management Consultants; and Zhang Ruimin, of Haier.

When the credit markets seized up in 2008, many heaped blame on "mark to market" accounting rules, which require banks to write down their troubled assets to the prices they'd fetch if sold on the open market - at the time, next to nothing. Recording those assets below their "true" value, critics argued, drove financial institutions toward insolvency. Proponents of marking to market, on the other hand, said it exposed executives' bad decisions. If not for this fair value accounting practice, investors would be kept in the dark about the banks' real state of affairs. In this article, Pozen, the chairman of MFS Investment Management, dispels the myths about fair value accounting. For example, it's untrue that most bank assets are marked to market - in 2008 just a third were. Not all write-downs reduce the banks' regulatory capital. Nor is it true that under historical cost accounting, companies don't have to acknowledge changes in market value; they're required to record permanent impairments to assets. After explaining the controversy, Pozen proposes a solution: new, transparent practices that would draw on the best of both historical cost and fair value accounting. If adopted, they could balance the banks' desire to present assets in a good light with investors' need to understand the banks' exposures - and perhaps make everyone happy.

Most firms are trying to combine products and services into innovative offerings in an effort to boost revenue and profit streams and balance cash flows. These hybrid solutions can help companies attract new customers and increase demand among existing ones by offering them superior value. Such offerings are commonplace - think Apple (the iPod product combined with the iTunes service). While the promise of combined offerings is great, it's easy to get them wrong. The problem is that too many companies, expecting to catch the brass ring, don't think through exactly how to structure, market, and sell their combined offerings. Over the past three years, the authors have analyzed more than 100 winning hybrid offerings from a variety of B2B and B2C companies. Their research shows that most companies stumble in at least one of four ways: failure to differentiate, failure to scale, failure to assess markets and prices appropriately, and failure to invest in the brand. The authors identify common types of hybrids: A flexible product-and-service combination allows buyers to customize their purchase. A "peace-of-mind" bundle offers the best of breed in both product and service. A multibenefit bundle offers customers an increasing number of add-on features or benefits. A "one-stop" bundle focuses on convenience shopping. The authors also offer a practical set of guidelines for identifying the opportunities to create a successful hybrid offering in your own company.

Although real estate is the largest, or second-largest, asset for most companies, it rarely captures senior management's attention. And real estate decisions, many of which are made within business units and driven by short-term needs, don't usually reflect a company's broader strategy. Apgar presents five maxims that will help executives make the most of this critical resource. Manage the portfolio. Instead of making site-by-site analyses, executives need to cultivate an overall understanding of their holdings, including a snapshot of the company's existing footprint and a view of its future needs. Build in flexibility. Companies that prize flexibility own less and lease more. They favor space that can be subdivided and converted from one use to another, and they decrease their real estate costs by offering such workplace options as telecommuting. Cultivate intelligence. In order to connect real estate decisions to corporate strategy, executives need accurate data. And they must pay more attention to internal measures than to fluctuations in the real estate market. Team with professionals. Companies that maintain the most efficient and flexible real estate portfolios often do so by enlisting partners that offer expertise and efficiencies. Embrace sustainability. Companies of all types are transforming the buildings they use in order to reduce harmful emissions. Green buildings can cost more up front, but they deliver high returns over the long term.

Philanthropic organizations, exempt from the accountability imposed on business by markets or on government by voters, are free to experiment and take risks. But they have little experience in objectively evaluating their own performance or figuring out how to improve it. Regardless of the economic climate, the authors say, developing a philanthropic strategy is an iterative process - one they've labeled "getting clear, getting real, and getting better." Getting clear means selecting a few strategic anchors - people, problems, or philosophies the institution truly cares about - and using them to guide decisions about programs and grantees. In addition, hard evidence should be examined in light of values and beliefs. Getting real means pragmatically assessing the resources and time required to bring about desired change and soliciting candid feedback from the field. Getting better means regularly reviewing the organization's entire funding strategy in light of both outside perspectives and nonfinancial assets. Ditkoff and Colby outline the traps that funding institutions must avoid if they are to optimize their resources and organizational outcomes, and they offer stories from the James Irvine, Bill & Melinda Gates, Annie E. Casey, David and Lucile Packard, and Edna McConnell Clark foundations as examples of success. The pursuit of excellence, they say, can be imposed only by philanthropic investors themselves.

Traditionally, decision making in organizations has rarely been the focus of systematic analysis. That may account for the astounding number of recent poor calls, such as decisions to invest in and securitize subprime mortgage loans or to hedge risk with credit default swaps. Business books are rich with insights about the decision process, but organizations have been slow to adopt their recommendations. It's time to focus on decision making, Davenport says, and he proposes four steps: (1) List and prioritize the decisions that must be made; (2) assess the factors that go into each, such as who plays what role, how often the decision must be made, and what information is available to support it; (3) design the roles, processes, systems, and behaviors your organization needs; and (4) institutionalize decision tools and assistance. The Educational Testing Service and The Stanley Works, among others, have succeeded in improving their decisions. ETS established a centralized deliberative body to make evidence-based decisions about new-product offerings, and Stanley has a Pricing Center of Excellence with internal consultants dedicated to its various business units. Leaders should bring multiple perspectives to their decision making, beware of analytical models that managers don't understand, be clear about their assumptions, practice "model management," and - because only people can revise decision criteria over time - cultivate human backups.

When a UK insurance company is plagued with a securities fraud scandal that results in the ouster of the CEO, the head of human resources seizes the opportunity to shake up the culture with a bold replacement. But the chairman of the board is uncomfortable with that strategy, preferring to focus on candidates of a more traditional stamp. How far can - and should - the HR director go to influence the high-stakes appointment? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0911B and R0911Z. CIPD's Vanessa Robinson acknowledges that the HR director has painted herself into a corner by making her case to the board chairman first. To get out, she needs to gather hard data to bolster her argument and demonstrate in business terms the downsides of maintaining the status quo. Debating the relative merits of various CEO candidates is fiddling while Rome burns, says Richard Hermon-Taylor, a management consultant. The company is in jeopardy of imploding, and the search for a new CEO could take weeks or months. The board chairman must take swift action: He should form a special committee to deal with the crisis, retain independent forensic accountants and counsel, announce the appointment of an interim CEO, and develop a communications program to reassure employees, investors, and customers. Charu G. Raheja, an assistant professor of finance at Wake Forest University, warns that the HR director is treading on thin ice. As corporate monitors and advisers to top management, directors must respect one other, the chairman, and, eventually, the new CEO. If that respect is compromised, serious problems can result.

When a UK insurance company is plagued with a securities fraud scandal that results in the ouster of the CEO, the head of human resources seizes the opportunity to shake up the culture with a bold replacement. But the chairman of the board is uncomfortable with that strategy, preferring to focus on candidates of a more traditional stamp. How far can - and should - the HR director go to influence the high-stakes appointment? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0911B and R0911Z. CIPD's Vanessa Robinson acknowledges that the HR director has painted herself into a corner by making her case to the board chairman first. To get out, she needs to gather hard data to bolster her argument and demonstrate in business terms the downsides of maintaining the status quo. Debating the relative merits of various CEO candidates is fiddling while Rome burns, says Richard Hermon-Taylor, a management consultant. The company is in jeopardy of imploding, and the search for a new CEO could take weeks or months. The board chairman must take swift action: He should form a special committee to deal with the crisis, retain independent forensic accountants and counsel, announce the appointment of an interim CEO, and develop a communications program to reassure employees, investors, and customers. Charu G. Raheja, an assistant professor of finance at Wake Forest University, warns that the HR director is treading on thin ice. As corporate monitors and advisers to top management, directors must respect one other, the chairman, and, eventually, the new CEO. If that respect is compromised, serious problems can result.

One Acre Fund (OAF) was founded by Andrew Youn in 2005 for the purpose of helping to solve the chronic hunger problem in Africa. The idea is to provide the resources (seed, fertilizer, and education) necessary for African farm families to feed themselves when their land holdings are one acre or less. The business model of OAF is that of a cooperative: OAF buys resources like seeds and fertilizer in bulk at reduced prices and distributes them to small farmers who otherwise could not afford them. This case concerns the negotiation that OAF's manager of external relations and research, Moises Postigo, conducted to buy fertilizer in the last quarter of 2007. The case provides an opportunity for students to analyze a real-world deal-making negotiation in a developing economy. A number of aspects of the context of the negotiation and the negotiation process itself make for good class discussion. Postigo did a good job preparing for the negotiation, making the case one that emphasizes proper use of negotiation planning and sensitive understanding of the negotiation environment. Some of the elements that make for good discussion include the following: OAF was a new organization, unknown to the five major providers of fertilizer in Kenya. The negotiations were entirely conducted by cell phone. Negotiations went through stages of request for a bid, discussion with multiple bidders, selection of a provider, and negotiation. There were multiple issues, including price delivery and form of payment. Postigo was negotiating in the shadow of the possibility that the Kenyan government would start selling subsidized fertilizer to small farmers.

Fiserv, a pioneer in electronic payments, would like to increase the number of consumers who receive bills electronically. Currently, adoption is relatively low. To help guide their efforts, Fiserv managers have done extensive customer research and have segmented the market based on customer perceptions of e-billing. Students must recommend which segments to target and why. To support their recommendations, students must calculate the likely financial costs and benefits of adoption, estimate the likely returns for targeting different segments, and make targeting and positioning recommendations based on these calculations. Because Fiserv's direct customers are billers (such as utilities and credit card companies) and its end users are individual consumers, the case allows a focus on both B2B and B2C issues.

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Key topics include designing teams, managing teams, managing conflict, group dynamics, project management, product development, interdepartmental relations, and organizational change. MediSys, a U.S.-based medical equipment maker, has been developing IntensCare, a new medical system for monitoring intensive-care patients. MediSys has invested heavily in IntensCare, which is eagerly awaited by the market. The product development team, representing several functional areas of the company, has been working on the product for six months but is now running into significant problems with the product design, the schedule, and their own group dynamics. Recently, pressure increased when they learned that two more powerful competitors had begun work on their own products for this market. Several team members are concerned about meeting the team's targets. Struggling especially hard to overcome the various problems is the marketing manager who has profit-and-loss responsibility for IntensCare.

Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated, smiled as he reflected on the success of Qualcomm's code division multiple access (CDMA) technology. By the summer of 2009, CDMA was the basis for all third generation technologies available for cellular transmissions. However, while Qualcomm seemed poised for growth, Jacobs wondered how successful the company's contributions to new generation technologies would be and if they should aggressively develop their new service offerings into profitable business units.

Tengion is a young biotech company that is at the frontier of regenerative medicine; a nascent field that seeks to promote the creation of new cells and tissue to repair or replace tissue or organ function lost due to age, disease, damage, or congenital defects. In late 2008 Tengion management faces a difficult dilemma. In light of the financial crises, the company needs to manage cash burn by prioritizing its R&D efforts. CEO Nichtberger needs to recommend to the board which of two promising new medical treatments to keep developing while placing the other on hold. In comparing the two options, a host of factors need to be considered-- these range from assessing the regulatory challenges, manufacturing challenges, marketing challenges (in particular pricing), and partnering challenges. Each of the treatments would target a unique patient population, that differ in both size and composition. Tengion must also consider how quickly it might expect to bring each of the two treatments to market. The decision could have significant long-term implications for the company's ultimate survival and success.

Babeeze in Arms Doula Centre, a small London, Ontario-based business, offers services to women during pregnancy, labour and after childbirth. As a certified doula, the sole proprietor provides emotional and physical support to mother and complements the medical care provided by doctors and midwives. Along with two other doulas and an instructor, the proprietor offers labour services, postpartum services and childbirth education classes. She has a solid reputation in the community for providing excellent care. The proprietor is heavily involved as an active doula, but she would like to step back from practice to focus on improving community awareness of doulas and advocating for more options and better care for mothers and babies. She is interested in opening a private birth centre, which would be an alternative venue for women to give birth and a new facility from which to offer Babeeze's services and classes.