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Too much competition diminishes motivation and creativity.

When members experience service failures, they get more upset than nonmembers. Here's how to mitigate the damage. plus BLM and the fortunes of black entrepreneurs, how knowledge work has changed in the pandemic, and more.

The skills needed in many roles are continually changing--and sources of talent are too. PLUS a silver lining for female founders, bankruptcy in the time of Covid, the psychology of jargon, and more.

Experienced executives rely too much on old playbooks PLUS the downside of creative superstars, a better way to manage virtual queues, and more.

Employer-sponsored fintech products can enhance financial resilience and inclusion. PLUS the benefits of a morning routine, the recruitment problem on all-white boards, and more.

Simple changes to employee training can improve results. Plus: How to push past an ultimatum, the case for acquiring during a downturn, a vote for generalists, and more.

Companies need to focus on how people feel about them, even in a recession. PLUS the unanticipated effect of price promotions, building trust during the pandemic, hiding emotions at the office, and more.

After United Airlines baggage handlers damaged Dave Carroll's guitar, he spent months fruitlessly seeking compensation. Then he created a music video about the experience and posted it on YouTube. Within three days "United Breaks Guitars" had been viewed by 1.5 million people, many of whom chimed in with their own grievances. United's stock plunged, with many observers attributing the drop in part to the PR debacle.This incident and others like it prompted researchers led by KEDGE Business School's Dennis Herhausen to analyze nearly half a million negative comments posted in the public Facebook communities of 89 companies, along with the firms' responses. As a result of that work, they developed recommendations for detecting and preventing potential online firestorms and limiting the damage if one erupts. Among the findings: Posts containing intense emotions were more likely than others to spread. Strong ties between a post's author and the community drove contagion, as did linguistic similarities. Companies should respond to negative posts, and fast; the worst thing a firm can do is ignore an unhappy customer. Apologies and requests to switch to a private channel lowered virality, as long as they were communicated right away. But offering compensation early on had the opposite effect; it sometimes prompted other customers to post complaints in the hope of being rewarded themselves.

Philanthropic organizations rely heavily on point-of-sale solicitations--but a new series of studies shows that consumers often react negatively, perceiving the request as a violation of their social contract with the retailer. This can lead to diminished satisfaction and a decreased likelihood of revisiting and recommending the store. The researchers outline several strategies for inspiring customers to donate while minimizing the risk of a backlash. Retailers can reward customers for donations, with a small gift such as a reusable shopping bag; keep the process simple--for example, make the request via PIN pad, and ask customers to round up to the nearest full dollar amount; train employees to serve as the charity's ambassadors; demonstrate altruism and be transparent about how much will go to the charity in question; and carefully choose the charity partner and the time to launch.

New research links leaders' actions in their personal lives with outcomes for their firms. The researchers used crime databases, private investigators, tax and property records, and other sources to identify executives with personal legal records and ones with unusually materialistic lifestyles. They then looked for correlations between those traits and certain on-the-job behaviors. Across four studies, they found that leaders with legal records were more likely than their law-abiding counterparts to engage in stock trades made on the basis of insider information and that their companies were more likely than others to have submitted fraudulent financial statements to the SEC. Materialistic leaders, for their part, tended to helm firms in which other executives made intentional and unintentional reporting errors. They were more likely than frugal leaders to take risks, and they got lower scores on CSR measures. Simply having governance structures in place across a firm is not enough, the researchers conclude, because individuals have very different appetites for taking chances and breaking rules.

One oft-cited reason why more female executives don't advance to top management jobs is their lack of access to informal organizational and industry networks. Some blame unconscious bias; others cite obligations such as office housekeeping and child-rearing that disproportionately fall to women. But some female leaders do establish strong networks, winning greater influence and more-senior positions as a result. A new study sheds light on their strategies and behavior. When shaping their professional networks, top women are efficient, resisting nonessential appointments, deflecting low-priority decisions, and running streamlined meetings. They are nimble, changing up the people in their networks as their needs evolve. They span boundaries, connecting with people in a wide variety of functions, geographies, and business units. And they balance their energy, demonstrating both competence and warmth, both intelligence and emotional intelligence.

Many people thought the #MeToo movement would have a deterrent effect. A group of researchers weren't so sure. In early 2018 they began a survey to determine whether their fears of fallout were justified. Indeed, both men and women predicted that men would be more reluctant now to engage with women at work in certain ways, such as meeting one-on-one or going for after-work drinks, even though such activities can be crucial for advancement. People of both genders also said they would be more reluctant to hire attractive women and to hire women for jobs that require close interpersonal interactions with men (for example, traveling). And a follow-up survey found that the backlash was even bigger than respondents had anticipated. The study shows that traditional sexual harassment training has little effect; instead, the researchers say, companies should educate employees about sexism and character.

CEOs often talk about wanting to create a high-performance culture--but many go about it ineffectively. New research from Gartner, based on surveys and interviews with HR leaders around the globe, identifies three common pitfalls. Instead of using single buzzwords to describe the culture they aspire to--collaborative, innovative, and so on--leaders should illustrate it by acknowledging the tension between the ideal and the present reality. They should avoid measuring culture with data alone and seek unfiltered feedback from open-response survey questions and by encouraging employees to speak up at any time. And they shouldn't forget to alter policies to support the desired cultural change. The article includes a Q&A with Oscar Rivera, the chief culture officer of the Guatemalan conglomerate CMI.

Research has shown that firms tend to suffer financially when a celebrity endorser becomes mired in a scandal, but the literature to date has offered little practical guidance. A new study, involving 128 incidents that generated negative publicity, finds that firms taking no action after an event--the path most follow--generally do poorly. Its authors also discovered a surprise: Companies that engage with a situation and handle it well don't just stanch the bleeding but come out ahead. The study identifies four factors that play a significant role in public reaction to celebrity misbehavior and provides several clear takeaways for endorsers and firms alike.

Researchers have learned to mine a unique set of data that serves as a slow-motion replay of how an organization and its people function: the company's e-mail. Although e-mail analysis has largely focused on internal communications, a new study uses it to examine how employees interact with clients. Researchers studied the e-mail behaviors of teams working with key client accounts at a global professional services firm. Each month during the study, team leaders attended a "virtual mirroring" session in which they were shown key metrics from their team's e-mails--measures of such things as the simplicity of language in the subject line and the speed of responses to client messages. The feedback from these sessions led to positive changes in team members' e-mail behavior and boosted client satisfaction. In an accompanying Q&A, the firm's head of innovation discusses the research and the company's response.

Three leading researchers--a marketing professor, a philosopher, and a neuroscientist--talk with HBR about the ethical implications of neuromarketing. Although consumers typically accept that their purchase behavior is public, these experts say, they think of their brains and thoughts as private, which can lead to backlash against organizations that use neuromarketing tools. And while informed consent is standard in the academic world, it's not always strictly adhered to on the industry side. Another big concern, particularly among consumer advocacy groups, is subconscious influence. But, says one of these researchers, "nothing neuroscience could ever measure could definitively drive a particular purchase," because so many other factors have input: mood, hunger, the presence of friends, how a product is displayed. Nevertheless, neurotesting could be used to target vulnerable populations--say, by trying to create ads that will induce more teenagers to vape. Conversely, it has been shown to increase the effectiveness of public service announcements. "One way to think about all these issues," says another of these experts, "is that neuroscience incrementally improves our ability to generate effective marketing messages in many areas--it's like turning up the dial a bit on the effectiveness of marketing. That dial turns up the ethical implications, too."

Although the global cost of natural disasters has increased sharply, traditional sources of funding--governments, nonprofits, and NGOs--have not kept pace. Corporations have taken up the slack, prompting researchers to ask: Does it matter whether the companies pitching in have local ties? And are they and their shareholders benefiting? The resulting studies show that countries with a large share of aid from locally active companies get help more quickly than their counterparts and recover more fully, and that the business impact of donations varies according to firm reputation rather than the amount donated. In particular, if the first donor is well regarded, that company and others that make similar donations stand to gain--but if the first donor has a poor reputation, it and others that follow suit will see a dip in local revenue that can't be explained by the impact of the disaster alone.

Managers have long been obsessed with improving business processes, and a host of initiatives, such as lean production and Six Sigma, have gained traction in recent years. But a new study shows that the gains from such initiatives often fade quickly. Examining 204 lean projects launched at a European bank, the researchers found that just one-third held on to their gains after two years, and only about the same number were still showing continuous improvement. They identify several factors that can lead to sustained improvements: visible support from the board and senior leadership; consistent measuring and monitoring; communication in a clear narrative that aligns with organizational purpose; directing efforts toward pain points whose easing would clearly benefit employees; and ensuring that senior leaders act as coaches. Includes a Q&A with Helen Bevan who oversees change initiatives at England's National Health Service.

Researchers from INSEAD and Kellogg conducted a statistical analysis of R&D spending and growth, using data on the world's top 2,500 companies. This revealed that consumer packaged goods firms often see better returns on R&D spending when they focus on small changes (such as modifications to packaging) rather than on ambitious "moon shots." Companies operate under two distinctly different philosophies, the researchers found. "The motto of companies with big R&D budgets is 'bigger, better, faster,'" they say, whereas firms with modest R&D budgets "seem to do extremely well by tweaking and improving things in their brands and creating a lot more sales."

What's the optimal number of new products to launch in a given time frame? Does it matter whether the launches are spread out or bunched together, and whether a new product is similar to the rest of a company's portfolio? To answer those questions, researchers studied 1,904 new drugs launched by U.S. pharmaceutical firms from 1991 to 2015. This article describes their findings, including the calculation that the average firm in the study could increase its market value by more than $700 million if it reduced the irregularity of its launches by 10%. Also included is a Q&A with Ellen Donahue-Dalton, executive vice president and chief marketing and customer experience officer at Medecision, about how that company has put the research findings into practice.