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Hop Compost (Hop) was a Canadian start-up that took food scraps destined for landfill and converted them to an organic, highly nutrient compost using novel, licensed technology. The company was approaching the end of its first year and facing two decisions. First, it had to decide whether to pursue third-party accreditation for its environmental and social impact. The accreditation would demand time and money but could help Hop with its growth plans. Second, the company’s founder wondered how to position Hop’s environmental and social impact to appeal to potential investors, who would be primarily interested in financial returns.

The world needs great leadership like never before. And contrary to popular belief, strength of character can be developed. This article explains why people tend to underestimate the need for leader character and overestimate their personal strength of character. In a recent executive development course, participants from a company took the self-assessment version of the Leadership Character Insight Assessment. The authors noticed that an inordinate number of respondents had self-assessed as 5 out of 5 on all dimensions. These results were at odds with the briefing received from the company’s CEO before the workshop. The CEO had serious concerns about his employees’ performance. After experiencing a change in senior management, the company had moved from a hands-on, command-and-control leadership style to a more open, collaborative approach. After the shift in leadership, employees still functioned in silos, with little collaboration. Despite these problems, participants believed that their self-reported character assessments were true. This allowed the authors to “start an excavation for self-awareness.” As part of an experiment agreed to by the CEO and a pre-selected participant, the authors bullied this participant. This offered an opening for a discussion on the interconnected dimensions of leader character. How was it acceptable to watch and do nothing while a colleague was bullied? Developing character is different than developing competencies. It is like strengthening your body by working out. Unlike physical training, however, there is no limit to how much we can exercise character.

When appointed chief executive in 2014, Mary Barra was tasked with completing the company’s post-bankruptcy recovery while shifting GM’s strategic gears. Shortly after, GM’s restructuring was threatened by a defective ignition switch scandal linked to over 100 deaths. In this Ivey Business Journal interview, topics include the automobile industry’s new trend towards software validation (with an emphasis on constant upgrades and minimum viable products), versus the old approach of mechanical validation (with an emphasis on heavy retesting and seeking initial perfection). Barra has been surprised by autonomous driving, and says that due to emerging technologies, workers of all education levels must be prepared to change careers multiple times. When GM faces a crisis, she assembles a team guided by three principles: doing the right thing for customers, being honest and transparent, and doing everything possible to ensure the issue never recurs. Barra has seen significant positive movement in terms of corporate responsibility versus when she attended business school in the late 1980s, and sees an opportunity for business scholars to study the importance of long-term perspectives over short-term results.

If you want to capture the hearts and minds of globally dispersed virtual team members, you must consider two key factors: situated learning and identity construction. Situated learning encompasses questioning, proposing ideas, discussing issues, and seeking feedback, whereas identity construction is “a process of understanding who one is, what one can do, and to what extent one becomes more or less legitimized and valued by the other members.” As individuals engage in situated learning and identity construction, they move from being peripheral participants to central players. Although individual reasons for joining a virtual community (such as an open-source software community) vary, the authors question: “What motivates and propels people to continue to actively contribute?” Though many open-source software (OSS) projects have failed, others have yielded world-class software like Linux, WordPress, and Firefox. <br><br> The authors split a 715-member community OSS community into three groups of participants: highly active/sustained (9), partially active/unsustained (7), and inactive (699). They suggest four steps to increase virtual team member engagement. First, the success of the project relies on sustained contributions from a few core contributors with strong expertise and skills. Second, to identify and foster the development of core contributors, every contribution must be recorded, tracked, and publishable. Third, to retain core contributors, special privileges should be granted to them. Finally, for contributors to gain recognition and reputation within the community, both direct contributions (e.g., solving software coding problems) and indirect contributions (e.g., offering advice) are needed.

The necessity for organizations to embrace “speaking up” is broader than “speaking truth to power.” Speaking up is about improving group performance by engaging in open dialogue—across all levels of rank, position, and tenure—to ensure that organizations have all available knowledge when addressing challenges. Unfortunately, people often refrain from speaking up and voicing new ideas in order to avoid contradicting a superior or embarrassing a colleague. But while keeping quiet can work for self-protection, it does little for group problem solving and helping organizations avoid mistakes. Leveraging her experience across industry, government, and academia, the author debunks two myths: that speaking up is about having courage, and that only lower-level employees worry about speaking up. This article explains how members of an organization can embrace speaking up by developing dialogue skills and increasing psychological safety while implementing teaming routines (e.g., quarterly dinners and council meetings) that provide the opportunity to speak up. It highlights the author’s work with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to illustrate the benefits of speaking up in a real-life setting. Ultimately, when an organization’s members have dialogue skills, feel psychologically safe, and work in a group where teaming routines support speaking up, needless mistakes are avoided, time is saved, and knowledge is available to make informed decisions.

The chief executive officer of Daimler Trucks and Buses China Ltd. was on an expatriate assignment in China. In November 2016, he faced a discomforting situation that could bring an abrupt halt to his career; an unfortunate incident in which he lost his temper led to fierce outrage in local Chinese and worldwide media. The media reaction threatened China’s prominence as a major source of revenue for Daimler, and sent Daimler’s share price on a downhill spiral. How should Daimler react, and what could it do to restore the company brand image?

Presentation to accompany product 8B18C012.

To survive—and even thrive—amid big bang disruption, companies must learn the new shape of new product diffusion and the four stages of this curve, one that loosely tracks the metaphor of the big bang theory of the universe. They must also embrace the new rules of strategy and competition that follow.

It was September 2009 when 21-year-old entrepreneur Lu Chengdui first considered entering the partnership that led to his becoming the chairman and general manager of Wenzhou Cijueshi Science and Technology Co. Ltd. (Cijueshi) in Zhejiang Province, China. Lu started his entrepreneurial efforts when he was in college; he became a serial entrepreneur and achieved great performance. His story drew the attention of both the media and the public. Lu was known for his perseverance and his courage in overcoming difficulties and pursuing his dreams for success. He was a role model for college students who wanted to be entrepreneurs. As he considered a possible involvement in Cijueshi, a company that specialized in developing, selling, and repairing pottery and porcelain, Lu wondered about entering a business in a field where he had no practical experience. What had made him so confident in his previous entrepreneurial success? How had he motivated himself to realize his entrepreneurial targets? He looked back at his entrepreneurial experiences to date to find answers to these questions and motivation for this new endeavour.

Between 1999 and 2017, the Roaring Dragon Hotel (RDH) evolved from a state-owned enterprise (SOE) into a modern, market-driven 5-star accommodation provider, experiencing a combination of market economy and privatization forces. Its initial operations under the new status progressed from the poor performance and management practices of China’s planned economy to a portfolio of operational and strategic reforms that saw it become semi-privatized in 2005, and a fully privatized 5-star accommodation provider by 2017. On the surface, this model of evolution would make any Chinese national proud. However, what was perceived from the outside did not necessarily reflect what was occurring within. Market evolution had produced complex challenges related to employee loyalty, competition, internal resistance to change, promotion prospects, management, and the continuation of questionable practices. What changes should management make in the second half of 2017 to continue the hotel’s transition to a modern global hotel, turn around its declining revenue, and improve its competitive outcomes?

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B17C049.

Presentation to accompany product 8B17C046.

In late 2014, the deputy minister of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence joined the public service, six months after Ukraine’s revolution and change of government. He joined the ministry as part of the new government’s attempt to reform a bureaucracy crippled by corruption, inefficiencies, and dysfunction. In six months, he had already made notable changes. However, by March 2015, the changes were not resulting in better outcomes where they were urgently needed—in the eastern regions, supporting a tactically and logistically crippled military that was resisting Russian attempts at incursion. What more could the deputy minister do to initiate and lead change?

In March 2017, Ajay Maharaj Bachulal was starting his new position as plant manager at SABMiller plc’s (SABMiller's) plant in Polokwane, South Africa. Bachulal had successfully led change at the company's brewery in another province, and he hoped to be as successful at the new plant. His dilemma was how to approach the workforce in Polokwane, and how to adapt to and make changes within the culture specific to that plant. While both plants adhered to SABMiller’s system, policies, and procedures, Bachulal sensed that the approach of each plant to work and life was different. How would Bachulal's own leadership development process and his efforts to change culture by empowering lower level employees in Polokwane help him in a different province with distinct ethnic compositions, languages, and cultures?

In January 2016, the executive director of Canada's Stratford Festival, one of North America's largest repertory theatre companies, was considering the festival's long-term outlook and the role the organization played in the community. The 2015 season had been successful, and she would be able to report a small surplus to the board at the upcoming annual general meeting. But the long-term outlook wasn't as secure. Annual attendance had dropped below previous levels of more than 500,000, which was the attendance needed to ensure long-term operational sustainability. The festival had returned to its creative roots during a period when the Canadian dollar had been in decline, but it had not been enough to ensure that the organization would survive its next economic tempest. The festival needed a long-term, innovative strategy to generate sustainable growth and strengthen it sufficiently to weather future economic downturns and exchange rate fluctuations.

In early 2017, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Raintree Resorts International, Inc. was contemplating the next moves for the timeshare company he had founded in 1997. He and his team had focused their attention on creating and developing properties in the world’s top destinations. The CEO felt privileged to have built the best vacation destinations for people, but the company was at a turning point. He was intrigued by disrupters in the broader industry of hospitality, such as Airbnb (the largest provider of rooms without hotel ownership) and Uber (the US$66 billion company that provided rides but did not own a single taxi). Should the CEO grow his company’s existing properties, develop new ones, or do something else entirely?

This technical note provides descriptions of the basic forms of organizational structure and the conditions under which each organizational design choice might be made.

Software development company iQmetrix Software Development Corporation (iQmetrix), headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, had enjoyed success and growth for over two decades. In July 2017, iQmetrix was confronted with the challenge of managing this growth while maintaining its organizational culture as a non-hierarchical, innovative, and open place to work—a place where the best ideas could come from anywhere and where people shared ideas openly and transparently with all. iQmetrix was considering the implementation of holacracy, an organizational design based on the fluid structuring of roles and teams and broadly shared leadership. As the company’s five executives prepared to meet, they needed to consider whether the organization could adopt such a radical organizational form and whether this would foster the continued success of the firm.

On December 30, 2013, an account manager in the sales department of UIT India (UIT) filed a complaint with the company’s Ethics & Compliance Cell (ECC). UIT was the Indian branch of a leading U.S. multinational corporation. In his complaint to the ECC, the account manager alleged that he had suffered discrimination by his superior. He was called to a meeting with the ECC where he learned that his superior had received complaints from other employees and was already under investigation. That information made him feel hopeful that his complaint would be resolved quickly and favourably. However, his hopes were shattered when he was placed on a performance improvement plan the next day by the company’s human resource department. According to the plan, he would be terminated if he failed to deliver the set targets within two months. The account manager was furious and felt he was being treated unfairly. However, he was required to accept or refuse the improvement plan within 48 hours. His decision would not only determine his survival at UIT, but also impact his career prospects in the industry.

In early 2013, the founder of Shandong Aspop Clothing Apparel Group Co. Ltd. faced the annual “post-holiday recruitment dilemma.” His challenge was typical of the growth challenges that many labour-intensive original equipment manufacturer clothing enterprises in China encountered. Facing rising domestic labour costs, a change in attitudes among workers, the gradual shift of labour preferences from manufacturing industries to service industries, and a market environment in which international orders had shifted to Southeast Asian countries, the founder needed to make a decision. Should he strive to attract and retain more skilled front-line workers, replace personnel via automation, or set up a factory in a neighbouring country to transfer part of the enterprise’s production capacity?