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Infosys' global delivery model was being challenged by the United States backlash against outsourcing. Tax incentives and H1B visas for foreign workers were being reformed to support this policy. The tax incentives being proposed were meant to save American taxpayers $210 billion over ten years by repatriating taxes on foreign profits. Arguments for the H-1B reform advocate ensuring that where there are qualified American workers, those jobs are filled with those individuals before foreign workers. Also, competitors like Wipro and Tata were challenging Infosys' global consulting strategy. How should Infosys react to pressure to hire costly local talent while trying to remain competitive?

Sunpharma Group, a chain of pharmacies in Slovakia, had recently come under new ownership, and the new CEO recognized the need for better customer service in order for the company's expansion strategy to be successful. The company had, as its stated strategic goal, "to be a long time favorite and most in-demand pharmacy renowned for world class professionals, comprehensive services, and individual approach." Typical pharmacy training only addressed physiological and pharmacological concerns, so it was up to the company to address customer service needs for its pharmacists and technicians. Results from a "mystery shopper" project, which investigated the quality of services in pharmacies in standard situations, highlighted the lack of interpersonal skills among pharmacy staff. This case describes the first steps undertaken by the Human Resources department to analyze work behaviors and identify training needs. The student is asked to design a training program for the company that the HR manager can present to the CEO.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Leaders and human resources professionals are searching for ways to generate more value from their employees. Recent studies show that companies perform at a higher level when they have integrated talent management programs that are aligned with business strategy and operations. Organizations can get more from their investments in talent management, the authors argue, by focusing on collaboration.<BR> <BR>Job design and performance management are typically based on individual accountability despite the fact that most work today is collaborative. Talent management practices tend to focus on individual competencies and experiences, while overlooking the importance of employee networks. By examining individual performance data together with the results of organizational network analysis, the authors say, senior managers can look at talent along two important dimensions. In addition to looking at individual employee performance for the purpose of succession or work force planning, they can take a network view to assess the same employees in terms of their broader collaborative contributions to the organization.<BR> <BR>The authors show how applying a network lens reveals a significant number of key players (including marginalized talent, hidden talent and underutilized talent) that traditional performance management systems miss. They identify best practices for nurturing networks through talent management initiatives, illustrating them with examples from organizations including IDEO, Nokia, Dow Chemical, Best Buy, Gallo and the U.S. Army.<BR>

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. One of the biggest challenges facing multinational companies is building and sustaining a strong talent pipeline. To learn how leading multinational companies are facing up to the talent test, the team of authors examined both qualitative and quantitative data at leading companies from a wide range of industries. The research drew on 18 in-depth case studies, including IBM, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Shell, Siemens, IKEA, Infosys and Samsung.<BR> <BR>The companies the authors studied held two distinct views on how best to evaluate and manage talent. One group assumed that some employees had more "value"or "potential"than others and that, as a result, companies should focus the lion's share of corporate attention and resources on them; the second group had a more inclusive view, believing that too much emphasis on the top players could damage morale and hurt opportunities to achieve broader gains.<BR> <BR>Although organizations must pay attention to recruiting, employee development, performance management, compensation and reward systems, and retention, the authors found that competitive advantage in talent management doesn't just come from identifying key activities (for example, recruiting and training) and then implementing "best practices."Rather, they found that successful companies subscribe to six key principles: 1) alignment with strategy, 2) internal consistency, 3) cultural embeddedness, 4) management involvement, 5) balance of global and local needs, and 6) employer branding through differentiation. Adopting a "set of principles"rather than "best practices"may challenge current thinking, but the authors argue that best practices are only "best"in the context for which they were designed; what works for one company may not work in another. The principles, by contrast, have broad application.<BR>

In the past few years, some companies have not just weathered the economic storm: They've emerged stronger than ever. How did such players as Four Seasons, Sephora, and Standard Chartered Bank defy conventional logic? Instead of pursuing a single ambition, such as profits, employees defined a collective ambition. As a result, those organizations deepened their engagement with employees and other stakeholders and became sustainably profitable. Purpose, a company's reason for existence, is the central element of collective ambition. The other elements--vision, targets and milestones, strategic and operational priorities, brand promise, core values, and leader behaviors--must be aligned to serve the company's purpose. Articulating the elements of collective ambition can give everyone in the organization a better sense of the company's purpose and how they can contribute to it. Purpose does not have to be about saving the world; providing excellent entertainment or banking services is just as meaningful a purpose as improving health care in emerging economies--as long as it is an authentic representation of why the company exists. To shape and then achieve a collective ambition, companies must strengthen their organizational glue (the collaborative engagement that creates a unified culture) and grease (the disciplined execution that enterprisewide change initiatives require).

Tiny verbal clues can speak volumes about your personality. New research from the chair of psychology at the University of Texas reveals that someone's use of function words--the pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs that are the connective tissue of language--offers deep insights into his or her honesty, stability, and sense of self.

Nuru International was founded in 2008 as a social venture with the goal to eradicate extreme poverty around the world by helping the rural poor achieve self-sufficiency. The case follows Jake Harriman, founder and executive director, through the multiple human resource challenges he must face in building his nonprofit organization. The first of four vignettes involves Kevin Newton, one of Nuru's first employees, after his promotion to international agricultural director. In his new role, Newton become increasingly vocal and adversarial, voicing his opinions throughout the organization, and Jake must decide how to best handle the situation. The second vignette describes the poorly-handled termination of Nuru's contract grant writer and how Jake must deal with the employee and his supervisor. Finally, an unfortunate accident leads to Jake's absence at the company offsite resulting in two unfortunate situations. In the first, Nuru's recently terminated director of development publicly misrepresents the circumstances leading to his dismissal to the full group of employees attending the offsite. In the second, the employees compile an overwhelming list of gripes about the company, in Jake's absence, which he must ultimately address.

The (B) case presents Foxconn's plan to replace manual labor with robots and move some of its employees to more interesting and sophisticated jobs.

In 2011, Celeritas is a leading data communications company in the crowded, highly competitive, and ever-evolving enterprise-network optimization market. Having experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2003, Celeritas has recently seen sales decline and has begun to lose market share along with its status as the top player. The CEO, concerned about several problems that may have contributed to this decline, engages an organizational development consultant who leads the firm's senior vice presidents through a two-day offsite exercise in team building. A followup meeting with a lower level of management raises questions about the effectiveness of those efforts.

Sara Horowitz faces a major strategic decision. Founder and CEO of the Freelancers Union, Horowitz has worked tirelessly to operationalize her new mutualist ideals, which comprise collective strength, independence, and shared protections. In 2008, she plans to move the organization into the health insurance industry in an effort to support a multi-generational outlook for the well-being of the union's members. Over the past 17 years, she has worked to create a culture of innovative thinking and member-oriented service. Horowitz sees a more active role in managing the health care of members as the logical next step. As objections from member representatives mount, she and her team must decide how to proceed.

These vignettes are based on a fictional organization, Starling Systems, in which Jack Swain, Starling's COO, has been selected by the company's board of directors to replace the recently departed CEO. Jack must deal with four challenging situations in his early days as CEO. The first involves managing a difficult conversation with Robert Cortez, Starling's senior vice president of finance, who was also vying for the CEO position. Jack cannot use title or compensation to convince Cortez not to leave so must somehow come up with alternate reasons to compel this valuable management team member to stay. The second vignette deals with Jack's revelation based on a conversation with Starling's recently department director of business development that the company's vice president of sales may be mistreating his employees. The third vignette finds Jack in a sticky situation where he has offered the COO position to an outside candidate, and he now must explain to his vice president of operations, currently serving as interim COO, why she was not offered the position. Finally, Jack must deal with infighting between his top performing customer service representative and his newly-hired vice president of customer service.

When Ana Lobato was transferred from Streuvels Chemicals' Brazilian operations to the company's Brussels headquarters, she was eager to apply her considerable expertise in this foreign assignment and to expose her children to another culture. Her husband, Oswald, a doctor, seemed up for the adventure. But just over a year after their arrival in Brussels, Oswald is increasingly unhappy. He is not able to practice medicine in Belgium, and the research position that Ana's company helped him find is not all he hoped it would be. Anton Danois, the head of Streuvels's international mobility program, fears that Oswald's unhappiness will prompt Ana to consider moving back home to Brazil before the end of her assignment. In fact, Anton, who's been in HR only a few years, wonders about the logic of an international mobility program that is expensive, does not necessarily provide clear-cut returns, and poses problems not just for spouses but also for the employees who need to be reintegrated after their stints abroad. Experts John Bollman and Ann Judge comment on this fictional case study.

When Ana Lobato was transferred from Streuvels Chemicals' Brazilian operations to the company's Brussels headquarters, she was eager to apply her considerable expertise in this foreign assignment and to expose her children to another culture. Her husband, Oswald, a doctor, seemed up for the adventure. But just over a year after their arrival in Brussels, Oswald is increasingly unhappy. He is not able to practice medicine in Belgium, and the research position that Ana's company helped him find is not all he hoped it would be. Anton Danois, the head of Streuvels's international mobility program, fears that Oswald's unhappiness will prompt Ana to consider moving back home to Brazil before the end of her assignment. In fact, Anton, who's been in HR only a few years, wonders about the logic of an international mobility program that is expensive, does not necessarily provide clear-cut returns, and poses problems not just for spouses but also for the employees who need to be reintegrated after their stints abroad.

When Ana Lobato was transferred from Streuvels Chemicals' Brazilian operations to the company's Brussels headquarters, she was eager to apply her considerable expertise in this foreign assignment and to expose her children to another culture. Her husband, Oswald, a doctor, seemed up for the adventure. But just over a year after their arrival in Brussels, Oswald is increasingly unhappy. He is not able to practice medicine in Belgium, and the research position that Ana's company helped him find is not all he hoped it would be. Anton Danois, the head of Streuvels's international mobility program, fears that Oswald's unhappiness will prompt Ana to consider moving back home to Brazil before the end of her assignment. In fact, Anton, who's been in HR only a few years, wonders about the logic of an international mobility program that is expensive, does not necessarily provide clear-cut returns, and poses problems not just for spouses but also for the employees who need to be reintegrated after their stints abroad. Experts John Bollman and Ann Judge comment on this fictional case study.

This fictional short case sets up a hiring scenario that can be analyzed through the lens of the best practices found in "Note on Best Practices in Hiring" (GSB Case E-416). A CEO wants to hire a VP of Strategy and Business Development. How will he know what he is looking for and when he has found the right person?

In January 2010, U. S. luxury goods retailer Raleigh & Rosse is being sued by its employees for encouraging "off the clock" hours. At the center of the class action lawsuit is the famous Raleigh & Rosse performance measurement system previously thought to be the core of the retailer's success. The system uses a sales-per-hour model to reward salespeople for time well spent on the floor. However, in this industry, where strong customer service is essential, many sales representatives feel they are encouraged to spend time off the clock tending to client needs; this issue and others have led to consequences that the company did not envision. The case illustrates how rapid company growth, decentralized management, and unrelenting pressure to perform can distort performance measurement systems and lead to undesirable consequences.

Top management teams in highly dynamic businesses perform better when they accept, even relish, interruptions and do multiple tasks at once.

If people want to fix health care in the U.S., they need to set aside the prevailing myths that the system is broken or just needs to become more competitive and "businesslike." Instead, they should focus on spreading the adoption of good, effective management practices that are already in use.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, financial storms or mine collapses, can be divided into three phases, each calling for distinct forms of preparation or response. In this article, the authors look at the collapse of a mine in Chile in 2010 and the successful rescue of the trapped miners 69 days later to draw leadership lessons for decision making during a crisis. Following the decisions of Laurence Golborne, Chile's Minister of Mining, was made easier by the intense media focus on this event. His management of the miners'rescue was closely followed by people around the world. In addition to using news coverage of the rescue, the authors interviewed the key members of the top team, including top government officials, the manager of the El Teniente mine and the chief engineer on the site. Building on their previous work on leadership, the authors found 12 leadership principles that emerged from Golborne's actions. These are applicable to managers facing any kind of unprecedented crisis, one with which they have no prior experience. These include taking charge if you are best positioned to make a difference; assembling essential experts on your top team, but keeping the numbers small; delegating decisions beyond your expertise but retaining oversight of them; and being transparent about potential outcomes to sustain stakeholder support.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cisco Systems, Genzyme, General Electric and Intel are often credited with having attained market leadership through open innovation strategies. By tapping into and exploiting the technological knowledge that resided beyond their own R&D structures, these companies outmaneuvered rivals. But while other organizations try to follow their example, this research shows that many are failing because they neglect to ensure that the outside ideas reach the people best equipped to exploit them. R&D leaders need to think not only about combing the outside world for new and potentially applicable ideas but also about how to ensure that those ideas receive serious consideration. By understanding the roles of two types of innovation brokers -"idea scouts" and "idea connectors"-in the open innovation process, and by utilizing their talents effectively, managers can preside over major improvements in the conversion of external knowledge into successful outcomes. The authors provide numerous examples, pointing out that success at open innovation depends on the presence of both types of innovation brokers. But despite these innovation brokers'importance to the organization, the people who wound up as idea scouts and connectors often came as a complete surprise to management. Innovation is too important to be left to chance, however. If innovation brokers do not exist, management is obliged to "invent" them -i.e., recruit the right people to perform these valuable roles.