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Corporate training isn't all fun and games, but maybe it should be. Most of us have (often grudgingly) used corporate learning systems. We skim through 50-slide PowerPoint decks hoping to correctly guess enough answers to pass so that we can get back to our "real work." Much of what we learn is often forgotten by the time we receive our certificate of completion. But a new study, conducted at the professional services firm KPMG, shows that gamified training done right-lessons conducted carefully and over time, incorporating elements such as progression through challenges and levels, instant feedback, points, and competition-can significantly improve employee performance.

A new series of studies shows that cat owners are drawn to products that reduce risk and prevent problems, while dog owners prefer products that promise gains. That has implications for the messages marketers craft and even for policy makers trying to influence consumer behavior.

Online retailers frequently assume that pleasing customers requires shipping each item in an order as quickly as possible rather than assembling the entire order and delivering a consolidated shipment. But new research with an online fashion marketplace found that customers receiving consolidated shipments were less likely to return items, lowering the retailer's logistics costs and improving sales. The authors suggest how to adapt fulfillment strategies in light of their findings.

A growing web of regulatory minutiae governing flexible working arrangements around the world poses an acute challenge for multinationals. These companies must now contend with different compliance requirements in different jurisdictions, depending on how governments define and interpret terms like remote work, teleworking, and work from home.

Transformational efforts require employees to work in new and unfamiliar ways. Generic knowledge and skills aren't enough to ensure that they can do this new digital-focused work. Leaders should follow the example of P&G's successful digital transformation and bolster employee ability by connecting knowledge and skills to targeted actions and performance outcomes.

This article, adapted from the new book Tomorrowmind, looks at how having siloed HR functions hinders the development and implementation of programs that could better support employee mental health and thriving. The authors discuss four hurdles that make it difficult to proactively prevent the onset of physical or psychological health issues and suggest ways that Benefits and L&D teams can work together to execute effective interventions to mitigate workplace stressors.

At the start of 2023, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposed a ban on noncompete clauses that would prohibit companies from including them new employment contracts and rescind existing agreements. In an interview with MIT Sloan Management Review, University of Maryland associate professor of management Evan Starr, who studies noncompete agreements, discusses why the FTC wants to ban noncompetes and what such a ban could mean for companies and employees.

R&D staff members often proactively pursue unofficial innovation projects, driven by the desire to effect internal change, meet a personal need, or explore a passion. Many of these innovations remain invisible but could offer broader benefits to the organization. Improving processes for bottom-up innovation can help companies take full advantage of this phenomenon.

Smart products like robotic vacuums and smart speakers have become common in many households. However, although consumers value the convenience and time savings smart products offer, the accompanying feeling that they've relinquished some control to a machine is inhibiting the products' broader adoption and customer satisfaction. Based on their research, the authors recommend ways that smart-product companies can increase consumers' sense of control and autonomy when using smart technology.

International acquisitions of large, well-established western organizations by Chinese companies are now common. The cultural differences between the actors are often critical amid these processes. However, they can also be an opportunity for transformation and renewal for the acquired businesses. Regarding the dimension of organizational culture, this article analyzes the transformation of a 100-year-old American firm, General Electric Appliances (GEA), after its acquisition by the Chinese multinational company Haier. As a result, the company went from a nonrevenue growth business to a double-digit growth company in only 5 years. To study this transformation, we apply a cultural analysis framework based on Edgar and Peter Schein's work. This article contributes to the debate on corporate cultural analysis in the context of international acquisitions by providing managers and scholars with a detailed account of GEA's transformation.

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified economic reliance on gig workers that perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad-hoc tasking services within the developed and developing world. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as low-skilled laborers but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. These workers' newly elevated moral and economic status increases consumer demand for corporate social responsibility toward this stakeholder group, specifically for practices that increase worker freedom and rewards. We provide algorithmic tools for online labor platforms to meet this demand, bolstering their social purpose and ethical branding while better protecting themselves against potential reputational crises. To do this, we propose a managerial strategy rooted in moral self awareness theory that leverages customers' self-perceived virtuosity to increase gig-worker freedom.

What is Web3, and what does it mean for established companies? Web3 describes a broad range of emerging internet applications for blockchain technology (i.e., a decentralized, public database that allows information to be securely recorded on a network of computers rather than verified and controlled by centralized entities). Central to this evolution of the internet are four distinct blockchain-enabled applications: fungible tokens (cryptocurrencies), nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and metaverses. In this article, we define each of these applications and discuss their capacity to increase peer-to-peer interactions, decrease large companies' control of information and services, and facilitate access to user networks at a much lower cost than currently possible. These distinctions make Web3 both a natural evolution of Web 2.0 and a broader paradigm shift that may fundamentally alter the online interface, organizational structure, and business practices. We conclude by addressing how established companies can prepare for a more decentralized internet.

Public policy affects businesses in several ways, yet its intersection with the food logistics industry is not well understood. This article explores the case of the Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food Rule--enforced in 2018--and its impact on the food logistics industry. It is one of the most significant rules of the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act and, in many ways, improves the rulebook for U.S. food haulage. The objective is to prevent food contamination during transportation by establishing vehicle design and maintenance requirements, safe transportation operations, transit temperature controls, carrier personnel training, and record-keeping. The Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food Rule also transforms the roles and responsibilities of traditional industry stakeholders (i.e., brokers, shippers, carriers, loaders, and receivers) and creates unique challenges for them. This article works to develop an understanding of stakeholders' evolved roles via the salience model, identify challenges, and suggest relevant solutions, including a compliance checklist for each stakeholder.

To advance their interests by shaping public policies and influencing government decision-making, companies use internal resources, outside lobbyists, or trade associations to lobby. This article examines companies' use of outside lobbyists even though in-house capacity exists and explores how these resources complement each other. The study aims to offer practical advice to companies and lobbying consultancies regarding the optimal use of internal and external government relations resources. Another aim of the study is to examine how companies monitor the lobbying efforts of the consultancies they hire. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 35 in-house government relations managers and executives to accomplish these goals. The research showed that companies engage with outside lobbyists for two leading reasons: to help with specific issues that have no internal expertise and to provide surge capacity. The interviews identified six ways companies use outside lobbyists: they provide (1) strategic advice, (2) external validation, (3) political intelligence, (4) contact plans, (5) logistical support, and (6) assistance with tough conversations.

Success as an entrepreneur requires boldness, creativity, and action in the face of uncertain opportunities and idiosyncratic setbacks. Our recent research elevated and defined the concept of entrepreneurial hustle: an entrepreneur's urgent, unorthodox actions intended to be useful in addressing immediate challenges and opportunities under conditions of uncertainty. We argue this foundational construct is useful for explaining how successful entrepreneurs behave. Early scholarly research on entrepreneurial hustle has generated meaningful theoretical insights into the concept. In this article, we extend those insights into practical prescriptions for entrepreneurs, corporative innovators, and innovative changemakers, identifying what they might do and how they might use the hustle concept to effectively manage uncertain and ambiguous business scenarios. Furthermore, we examine the potential downsides of hustle and provide practical steps that can be taken to mitigate such risks.

Research shows servant leadership has a strong positive impact on employees and the businesses they run. More than 300 peer-reviewed articles support the myriad benefits, including increased profit, improved work climate, and enhanced employee well-being and productivity. Servant leaders are knowledgeable, ethical people who bring value to organizations and the people they serve by developing followers via prioritizing work needs, valuing growth, empowering employees, and being sensitive to personal concerns. By doing this, servant leaders encourage followers to contribute to organizational goals, develop a sense of belonging, and increase confidence in their work and leadership skills, increasing happiness, health, and productivity. Servant leadership also uniquely involves a concern for the community. Our research shows that leaders have the least confidence in this most distinguishing aspect of servant leadership. We offer 32 practical ideas on implementing servant leadership with special attention to the community component to help leaders develop this valuable leadership style.

Improving corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance starts with recognizing that not every dollar of earnings is created equally, as some profit may be earned at the cost of damaging the environment or of harming stakeholder relationships. These costs are often invisible to corporate employees, as they are not recorded. To earn corporate profits that are environmentally and socially responsible, boards and CEOs must overcome two barriers: (1) the ESG issue-assessment barrier, which reflects an organization's inability to fairly assess, prioritize, scope, and plan ESG initiatives that address the invisible environmental and social damage corporations cause, and (2) the shareholder value barrier, which recognizes that corporate employees may resist implementing ESG initiatives owing to their entrenched belief that corporations must maximize shareholder returns. To overcome these two barriers, we propose an ESG mindset model that highlights the pitfalls relating to ESG issue assessment and to the common belief in maximizing shareholder value and then suggests tactics to overcome them. The benefits to corporations that successfully overcome the barriers and improve their corporate ESG performance are threefold: They (1) will be perceived as positively contributing to environmental and societal issues, and thereby (2) avoid accusations of greenwashing and (3) improve their standing with stakeholders.

Synthetic media presents looming threats to managers in a business setting. To address this issue, we first offer a short overview of the evolution of media manipulation to contextualize the new era of synthetic media. Then, we present the problems associated with synthetic media via veridicality and heuristics to illustrate how consumers have little choice but to believe what they see, read, and hear online. We outline the most likely and impactful types of synthetic media threats and attacks and present a synthetic media incident response playbook. Our aim is to inform managers about six specific phases so they can prepare, assess, detect, analyze, and recover from synthetic media incidents and coordinate their lessons learned.

Is there a model of the ideal business school instructor? I asked myself this question many times when first teaching in a business school classroom. Assessing the style and approach of other effective instructors signaled that there are many models for success in the classroom, but how should I think about developing my own successful teaching style and approach? To address this challenge, I developed the concept of the personalized teaching signature, which accounts for teaching as a complex, multidimensional activity that includes preparation, practicality, rigor, entertainment, empathy, experiential engagement, enthusiasm, novelty, and surprise. I argue that an instructor should strive to exceed an expected threshold of proficiency in each teaching dimension and then focus on specific dimensions in which they can excel to develop a personalized teaching signature. In this article, I describe the concept of a personalized teaching signature, outline its basic dimensions, and offer a step-by-step process for using this signature to become a better business school instructor.

The skill of perspective taking can help build psychological safety for creative, collaborative problem-solving in the workplace. This approach is particularly effective with leaders who are skeptical about psychological safety and other concepts or interventions they see as "soft". The authors share a perspective-taking exercise that can help bring diverse team members together to address strategic challenges.