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Researchers discovered a silver lining when a fire at a supplier's factory forced a temporary shutdown at the plant of a consumer goods manufacturer: The downtime led to a flood of employee ideas for improvements.

To protect employees of South Asian origin from caste-based discrimination, managers everywhere must understand caste and how it shapes organizations and interactions in the workplace. The caste system, a sociocultural-economic system practiced in South Asian countries and by the sizable South Asian diaspora worldwide, can be a source of implicit and explicit forms of discrimination and exclusion. The authors discuss the caste system’s origins and what business leaders can do to mitigate its harm.

For scalable climate action, regulation must be partnered with industrial strategy to incentivize demand for sustainable finance. The authors describe how Japan is working to do this with a balanced mix of incentives and regulation that is in marked contrast to the approaches of the United States (mostly incentives) and the European Union (mostly regulation).

R&D leaders and CTOs are well placed to instigate changes that will ensure that future products and services have a lower carbon footprint, but they must have a clear mandate to do so. Reducing the negative impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may mean using alternative raw materials, reimagining product designs, and implementing more climate-friendly technologies. The authors assert that every R&D conversation should now take GHG into account.

Text-to-image generative AI tools let any consumer become a designer. In this new landscape, consumers and brands like Heinz and Coca-Cola are cocreating campaigns. Brand managers must shift from guarding brand identity to enabling customer participation â€" which entails seizing opportunities and navigating risks. The authors offer advice on creativity, control, and how to experiment safely.

Teams dealing with technological, structural, regulatory, or other fundamental changes perform better when they reskill individual team members before focusing on improved collaboration.

The conventional wisdom in e-commerce is that the purchase process should be seamless and fast, lest consumers stop to reconsider their decisions and abandon their carts. But friction that gives them time to think through buying decisions can result in more satisfied, more engaged customers, the authors argue. Different kinds of online sales might benefit from more or less friction; an assessment that accompanies the article can help managers determine what is appropriate in their own situation.

An exodus of nurses from the profession is leaving health care leaders with a staffing shortage that can’t be ignored. To understand the factors behind the burnout and dissatisfaction driving nurses’ exit, the authors analyzed the free-text employer reviews nurses shared on Glassdoor. The results revealed what actions leaders can take to reverse the trend and resulted in an interactive tool that can be used to compare how 200 large health care systems stack up against one another.

Creating an equitable environment and supporting diverse populations in navigating them are key to sustaining workplace diversity. Organizations can work toward this goal by taking five steps: committing to sponsorship, addressing systemic factors to eliminate glass ceilings, diagnosing “glass cliff” situations, approaching mentoring conversations differently, and measuring and tracking progress.

Pay transparency regulations are designed to close the wage gap. Research shows that despite broad assumptions to the contrary, women do negotiate on salary. It also shows that when pay information is paired with performance data, it leads to clearer comparisons and fairer negotiations and can motivate people to perform better. Robust appraisal systems can make pay transparency an opportunity to improve performance rather than a compliance burden.

Executives engaged in strategic planning tend to work with an implicit view of the future that is deeply embedded in their organization’s strategy as a set of unquestioned assumptions about the future business context. Leaders need to surface what the authors call ghost scenarios or risk implementing strategies that are ripe for disruption due to changes that planners haven’t recognized. The authors offer two case studies and suggest ways leaders can bring these unexamined assumptions into view.

Effective leaders use pushback as an opportunity to boost learning while moving their organizations forward. The authors describe three primary mistakes leaders make when responding to ambivalence, disagreement, or resistance and offer five guidelines to help them better respond.

Poorly designed job roles hurt employee engagement and retention. The problem: Many managers don’t know how to create healthy, productive roles. New research shows that ChatGPT can bridge this knowledge gap and help leaders improve work design. But managers must understand the pros and cons of using generative AI technology for this task and how to do so effectively.

Culture can serve as a lever for implementing organizational change. Leaders must start the process by determining the type of change they’re seeking â€" change that involves reinforcing magnitude, reimagining activity, or rethinking direction. Each approach to change requires leaders to make certain choices about culture. The authors use examples from direct experience in corporate human resources leadership at three different companies to illustrate three different strategies in action.

Initially making its name as the backbone technology of Bitcoin, blockchain has been referred to as a distributed ledger, public database, Internet of value, digital infrastructure, network, and platform. Compared with fluctuating cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) markets, applications of blockchain technology in more diverse business scenarios have received less attention. By analyzing 16 international business use cases under eight categories of blockchain-based solutions, this article offers a contextualized understanding of the potential for blockchain to become a general-purpose technology (GPT). It discusses how the extensiveness, evolvability, and enabling (3Es) aspects of blockchain influence the value, vision, and viability (3Vs) required for successful real-world applications. The article discusses how firms can draw on lessons from failed cases and good practices of existing cases to enhance the 3Vs for blockchain adoption.

Two branches of sound-related machine learning are emerging: sound detection and analysis, and AI-powered sound creation. In industries such as security, health care, retail, and media production, these acoustic technologies have significant potential for business value creation. The author describes several applications of sound detection and analysis technologies powered by machine learning and suggests ways business leaders can capitalize on them.

Many organizations fail to make good decisions about their data monetization strategies because their leaders lack a shared understanding of how to discuss them. This confusion can impede efforts to derive more value from the company's data assets through improvements or innovation. This article shares a simple, practical matrix approach that can help remove friction from discussions about monetizing data and identify areas of business opportunity, now and in the future.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States imposed strict limitations on the use of race in college admissions decisions. Given the outsized nature of US influence on both global perceptions and corporate practice, it is essential to consider how the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) decision is likely to affect corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives around the world. In this article, the authors discuss how an incorrect understanding of the SFFA decision could negatively impact global perceptions of DEI and provide guidance for how to minimize these impacts. Put simply, the Supreme Court decision does not substantially change US corporate DEI methodology. The SFFA opinion is consistent with the “anti-discrimination” approach to advancing racial equality that has long been a feature of US law. Formal US “affirmative action” programs are strictly limited to circumstances where the employer is adopting targeted remedies to correct its own specifically identified discriminatory practices. Policies such as “employment equity” in Canada, “positive action” in Europe, “special measures” in Australia, or “affirmative action” in Brazil require, encourage, or tolerate to varying degrees social identity-based quotas, preferences, and exclusive recruiting measures of the type prohibited in the United States. Finally, understanding the anti-subordination approach—rejected by the Supreme Court majority but embraced by many national laws—allows for a recommitment to “do equity” using explicitly affirmative actions, where they are permitted, and an equity-based approach to all DEI initiatives.

Once scaled, online platforms reconfigure value to remain competitive. Reconfiguration in online platforms may take a different form than in pipelines, as online platforms are intermediaries that generate network effects among the sides they connect. They also face stiff competition from other spheres due to lower barriers to entry. Why and how do online platforms reconfigure value? By examining 13 Indian online platforms that have achieved a certain level of success (such as tipped markets, investor confidence, or profitability), this article offers four strategies for reconfiguring online platforms: enhance interactions, enhance capabilities, offer new services, and nurture new transactions.

Impostor syndrome can make employees question their intelligence, competence, and sense of belonging. But workers who don't speak up in meetings or apply for promotions might actually be feeling the effects of impostorization workplace policies, practices, and interactions that make individuals question their intelligence, competence, and sense of belonging. The author shares examples of the phenomenon, along with tips to help managers avoid triggering impostor syndrome among employees.