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Corporate leaders have long subscribed to the belief that the sole purpose of business is to make money. That narrow view, deeply embedded in the American capitalist system, molds the actions of most corporations, constraining them to focus on maximizing short-term profits and returns to shareholders at the expense of worker safety and health, the environment, and society in general. In this article, HBS professor Kanter argues that a very different logic informs the practices of most high-performing and sustainable companies: an institutional logic. These companies believe that they are more than money making machines; they are also a vehicle for advancing societal goals. They deliver more than just financial returns; they also build enduring institutions. At great companies, institutional logic takes its place alongside economic logic in research, analysis, and managerial decision making. Six facets of institutional logic-a common purpose, a long-term focus, emotional engagement, partnering with the public, innovation, and self-organization-radically alter leadership and corporate behavior and form the building blocks of a more sustainable competitive advantage.

This case explores a shift in strategic direction at PepsiCo, the second-largest food and beverage company in the world. It concentrates on the formation of a new group, the Global Nutrition Group, whose purpose was to bring focus to the company's efforts to significantly expand its offerings in nutritious food and beverages. The case explores the background to that decision and the complexities the company faced in altering its product portfolio over the long run (which also included efforts to make its core snack and soft drink products healthier), while at the same time maintaining short-term profitability. The evolution of the product portfolio was part of a larger effort to implement a new strategic vision, encapsulated in the phrase, "Performance with Purpose." The phrase, in brief, expressed a commitment to deliver financial results in a way that was good for the world as well as good for the company.

The best way to counter the effects of a horrible boss is to cultivate a strong network of colleagues.

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Throughout its first two decades, City Year, a non-profit organization, was dedicated to recruiting young adults to give a year of public service. It had passed through several growth phases but by 2010 a new challenge, and opportunity, had arisen when City Year and its partners in a school turnaround collaboration - Diplomas Now - won a prestigious Department of Education Investing in Innovation grant. This accelerated City Year's role in turning around low performing schools, but added pressure on the organization. New systems and practices had been developed, but more needed to be done to ensure that City Year became efficient in deploying its limited resources, in maintaining its funding sources, and employing the right interventions in schools. In November 2011, Jim Balfanz, City Year President, and Michael Brown, CEO and co-founder, wondered what else the changes would mean for City Year.

One difference between winners and losers is how they handle losing. Even a winning team might make mistakes, fumble, and lag behind before the game is over. But it recovers quickly and gets back on course. Kanter's Law is "Anything can look like a failure in the middle." The culture that surrounds high performers helps them resist the behaviors that losing can produce: panicking and throwing out the game plan; scrambling for self-protection and abandoning the rest of the group; hiding the facts and hoping things will get better by themselves; denying that anything needs to be learned or changed. Performance under pressure is the key.

Zoom buttons on digital devices let us examine images from many viewpoints. They also provide an apt metaphor for modes of strategic thinking. Some people prefer to see things up close, others from afar. Both perspectives have virtues. But they should not be fixed positions, says Harvard Business School's Kanter. To get a complete picture, leaders need to zoom in and zoom out. A close-in perspective is often found in relationship-intensive settings. It brings details into sharp focus and makes opportunities look large and compelling. But it can have significant downsides. Leaders who prefer to zoom in tend to create policies and systems that depend too much on politics and favors. They can focus too closely on personal status and on turf protection. And they often miss the big picture. When leaders zoom out, they can see events in context and as examples of general trends. They are able to make decisions based on principles. Yet a far-out perspective also has traps. Leaders can be so high above the fray that they don't recognize emerging threats. Having zoomed out to examine all possible routes, they may fail to notice when the moment is right for action on one path. They may also seem too remote and aloof to their staffs. The best leaders can zoom in to examine problems and then zoom out to look for patterns and causes. They don't divide the world into extremes-idiosyncratic or structural, situational or strategic, emotional or contextual. The point is not to choose one over the other but to learn to move across a continuum of perspectives.

Jorge Tarasuk, VP of Operations and Supply Chain for PepsiCo South America Foods, and his team had worked for 10 years to realize their dream of creating an agro research center in Peru that could provide more productive and healthier varieties of potatoes for the Frito-Lay businesses in PepsiCo's tropical regions, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, where much of its future growth would come. They were denied several times but kept the idea alive through other projects until conditions presented themselves. But now that they had secured initial funding for the center, the hard work would begin.

The modern workplace may have made progress toward achieving work-life balance, but many issues remain. They include stress on the job, the underutilized potential of working remotely, the division of labor at home, and pay equity for women.

Get ready: In the near future, companies will be held accountable not just for financial performance but for their societal impact up and down the value chain-the supplies they use and where they came from; what customers do with their purchase and whether it improves their lives; and the costs and benefits to communities touched along the way.

Powerlessness damages organizations-especially in the middle ranks, says HBR columnist Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Hemmed in by rules and treated as unimportant, people get even with management by overcontrolling their own turf. Kanter urges leaders to give employees opportunities to make meaningful contributions, because small wins along those lines can propel big changes.

Anand Piramal and his team sought to "democratize healthcare" in India through the development of a new service delivery model. If Henry Ford could build and deliver cars to everyone in the United States, Piramal thought, then why can't India deliver healthcare to the 70% of its citizens who lack access to it? They began pilots in 2008 but soon ran into unexpected difficulties. After a second round of pilots in early 2010, they had to decide whether to proceed and if so how.

Executives often find themselves debating the merits of incremental innovations versus game-changers, but that's a false dichotomy, says HBR columnist Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Even if a company is lucky enough to come up with the next Kindle, Swiffer, or smartphone, blockbuster products don't spring to life or work in the marketplace without the many small changes that make breakthroughs possible, such as tweaks to processes and market development. Kanter proposes a systemic approach to generating all kinds and levels of innovation.

The greatest future breakthroughs will come from leaders who encourage thinking that extends beyond the company.

Large-scale societal issues increasingly appear on the agenda of business leaders, including poverty, health, education, business-government relations, and the degradation of the environment. These problems are not entirely new, but the forces of globalization and the economic crisis have made them more visible and increase their urgency. They share several characteristics that signal the need for new kinds of societal leadership and academic scholarship. From the perspective of leadership, one common characteristic of these global problems is that they include both technical and political components. The political context surrounding any problem must be understood and managed, and a variety of institutions across sectors must be mobilized before technical solutions can be applied. Along similar lines, technical knowledge of solutions alone is not enough to scale successful demonstration projects that address these complex problems. That step involves resources and skills centered on forging appropriate systemic connections to effectively distribute solutions. Thus, these challenges cannot be dealt with by one profession or institution acting alone; indeed, effective action most often occurs at the intersections of professional and institutional fields. Holistic solutions, however, can be difficult to implement because of the complex interactions (or failures to interact) among many participants who deal with just one piece of an issue. Finally, solutions to these problems require concurrent actions at several system levels and/or among many stakeholders. This means that social capital as well as financial capital is required to forge relationships, influence opinion leaders and gatekeepers, and ensure cultural appropriateness.

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.

The mergers that thrive postrecession will be those that focus not just on the numbers but on integrating and motivating employees. To extract lessons on how to manage the human side of M&A, Harvard Business School's Kanter studied a dozen deals that overcame the usual barriers to success: employee shock, protests, and anxiety, all of which can fuel supplier unrest, government disapproval, and customer defections. Procter & Gamble, for instance, faced the prospect of "blood on the floor" in its ranks when it bought Gillette, because headhunters went after Gillette managers. Yet P&G managed to retain a large percentage of them, and it enlisted employees in keeping suppliers, distributors, and customers happy. The company met cost and revenue targets within the first year, incorporated Gillette's superior go-to-market processes, and continued to position itself for growth even as the current recession loomed. Kanter highlights the key strategies behind effective integration by describing practices at P&G and two other companies: CEMEX, which needed to transfer know-how to acquired employees so they could absorb its processes quickly and meet global standards, and Publicis Groupe, which treated its mergers like reverse takeovers, allowing acquired talent to take the lead in building new capabilities.

James Musyoki, Lemmy Mutahi, and Ken Kariuki, all from East African Breweries Limited (EABL), a subsidiary of London-based Diageo, heard the disheartening news in the first week of December 2008. For the second time in six months, the Kenyan Finance Ministry had raised excise taxes on alcoholic beverages in an effort to plug the country's budget deficit; the bill was awaiting the President's signature. The price increase would put EABL's Allsops, Citizen, and President Beers out of the reach of their target markets, and Musyoki, Kariuki, and Mutahi hoped that the increase would not affect the excise-exempt Senator Keg lager - a lower-income brew which had created significant social and economic gains in Kenya since its launch in 2004. What would it take to save Senator Beer?

"Dr. Benjamin Hooks and Children's Health Forum" charts the many different career paths of Hooks, a civil right activist and pioneer. Hooks' positions ranged from lawyer, judge, preacher, entrepreneur to the first African American commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and to the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to the co-founder of the non-profit Children's Health Forum (CHF). CHF's mission was to eradicate lead poisoning in children in the United States. The case provides an overview of lead poisoning in the U.S., including how it is measured, its causes, and legislation enacted to prevent it. The case asks students to reflect on Hooks' leadership choices and his decision to launch CHF. How would they assess Hooks as a leader? What made him a strong leader? Given Hooks' past experiences, do they think that Hooks made the right decision to focus on lead poisoning after leaving the NAACP? Is this an area where he could have the most impact?

Describes the conception, development and implementation of the Corporate Services Corps (CSC), an international community service assignment for high-potential IBM employees. The year 2008 was the pilot year of the CSC program, and 100 of IBM's best global employees were deployed to work for local partners, frequently non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in locations such as Ghana, Tanzania, Romania, Philippines and Vietnam. The case provides data for students to assess the first year of operation and recommend what changes IBM should make to the program moving forward. Also considered is how the CSC fits into IBM's broader corporate citizenship portfolio and IBM's globalization strategy.