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Oil and energy corporation BP was well aware of the importance of its work group managers on the front lines. Their decisions, in aggregate, make an enormous difference in BP's turnover, costs, quality control, safety, innovation, and environmental performance. There were about 10,000 such supervisors, working in every part of the company--from solar plants in Spain, to drilling platforms in the North Sea, to marketing teams in Chicago. Some 70% to 80% of BP employees reported directly to these lower level managers. Yet, until recently, the corporation didn't have a comprehensive training program for them. For their part, the frontline managers felt disconnected; it was often hard for them to understand how their individual decisions contributed to the growth and reputation of BP as a whole. In this article, BP executive Andreas Priestland and Dialogos VP Robert Hanig describe how BP in the past five years has learned to connect with this population of managers. After one and a half years of design and development, there is now a companywide name--"first-level leaders"--and a comprehensive training program for this cohort. The authors describe the collaborative effort they led to create the program's four components: Supervisory Essentials, Context and Connections, the Leadership Event, and Peer Partnerships. The design team surveyed those it had deemed first-level leaders and others throughout BP; extensively benchmarked other companies' training efforts for lower level managers; and conducted a series of pilot programs that involved dozens of advisers. The training sessions were first offered early in 2002 and, since then, more than 8,000 of BP's first-level leaders have attended. The managers who've been through training are consistently ranked higher in performance than those who haven't, both by their bosses and by the employees who report to them, the authors say.

Surveys indicate that when new rules on expensing stock options take effect, many companies are likely to limit the number of employees who can receive equity compensation. But companies that reserve equity for executives are bound to suffer in the long run. Study after study proves that broad-based ownership, when done right, leads to higher productivity, lower workforce turnover, better recruits, and bigger profits. "Done right" is the key. Here are the four most important factors in implementing a broad-based employee equity plan: A significant portion of the workforce--generally, most of the full-time people--must hold equity; employees must think the amounts they hold can significantly improve their financial prospects; managerial practices and policies must reinforce the plan; and employees must feel a true sense of company ownership. Those factors add up to an ownership culture in which employees' interests are aligned with the company's. The result is a workforce that is loyal, cooperative, and willing to go above and beyond to make the organization successful. A wide variety of companies have recorded exceptional business performance with the help of employee-ownership programs supported by management policies. The authors examine two: Science Applications International, a research and development contractor, and Scot Forge, which shapes metal and other materials for industrial machinery. At both companies, every employee with a year or so of service holds equity, and employees who stay on can accumulate a comfortable nest egg. Management's sharing of financial information reinforces workers' sense of ownership. So does the expectation that employees will accept the responsibilities of ownership. Workers with an ownership stake internalize their responsibilities and feel they have an obligation not only to management but to one another.

A 2004 McKinsey survey of more than 30 companies reveals that at least 70% of them have major alliances that are underperforming and in need of restructuring. Moreover, JVs that broaden or otherwise adjust their scope have a 79% success rate, vs. 33% for ventures that remain essentially unchanged. Yet, most firms don't routinely evaluate the need to overhaul their alliances or intervene to correct performance problems. That means corporations are missing huge opportunities: By revamping just one large alliance, a company can generate $100 million to $300 million in extra income a year. Here's how to unlock more value from alliances: (1) Launch the process. Don't wait until your venture is in the middle of a crisis; regularly scan your major alliances to determine which need restructuring. Once you've targeted one, designate a restructuring team and find a senior sponsor to push the process along. Then delineate the scope of the team's work. (2) Diagnose performance. Evaluate the venture on the following performance dimensions: ownership and financials, strategy, operations, governance, and organization and talent. Identify the root causes of the venture's problems, not just the symptoms, and estimate how much each problem is costing the company. (3) Generate restructuring options. Based on the diagnosis, decide whether to fix, grow, or exit the alliance. Assuming the answer is fix or grow, determine whether fundamental or incremental changes are needed, using the five performance dimensions above as a framework. Then assemble three or four packages of restructuring options, test them with shareholders, and gain parents' approval. (4) Execute the changes. Embark on a widespread and consistent communication effort, building support among executives in the JV and the parent companies. So the process stays on track, assign accountability to certain groups or individuals.

In business lore, the eureka moment overshadows the more important matter of how an invention reaches the marketplace, says author Sir Harold Evans.

An energy company's integration of a $2 billion firm it had acquired was smooth because much of the back end was outsourced, says consultant Jane C. Linder.

Does the ad jingle have a future? HBR senior editor Leigh Buchanan points out the appeal of simplicity in a complicated age.

To make legitimate and effective use of vote buying, managers should act with the company's best interests in mind, say Luh Luh Lan at the National University of Singapore and Loizos Heracleous at Oxford.

Collective decisions are often better than individual ones, says researcher Laurence Prusak.

Consultant Frank Rohde describes a system for evaluating frontline workers' interactions with customers.

Blind since childhood, Herb Greenberg emphasizes character above presentation when he advises companies on how to make job interviews more meaningful.

Most consumers don't care where, how, or by whom products are made, says David Vogel at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Improved measurement methods show marketing is losing its magic, say consultants Kevin J. Clancy and Randy L. Stone.

Workplace incivility can be as costly as sexual harassment, reports HBR senior editor Gardiner Morse.

Coal is looking better as an energy source, says Amy Salzhauer of Ignition Ventures.

Eliza Hermann is vice-president of Human Resources Strategy at BP plc, based in London, England. Her career in the energy business began in 1986 when she joined Amoco Corp., where she earned a series of promotions in the international oil business, which exposed her to markets ranging from Argentina to Azerbaijan. She was a member of the team involved in the successful integration of Amoco when BP acquired the company in 1998. During the past several years at BP, she has served as manager, Strategy and Business Transformation-Global Aromatics, leading a team responsible for strategic planning and business development in the company's petrochemical segment and, more recently, as VP of human resources for BP's global gas, power, and renewables segment. Throughout her career, Hermann has traveled extensively, with particular focus on Asia, Western Europe, North America, South America, Russia, and the republics of the former Soviet Union. Hermann holds an MBA degree from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, and a BA degree in social and behavioral sciences from John Hopkins University. She serves on the board of directors of Brightpoint, Inc., where she is chairperson of the Compensation and Human Resources Committee, as well as a member of the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee.

It has become fashionable to discuss business models, but there is much confusion about what business models are and how they can be used. In fact, business models can serve a positive and powerful role in corporate management. Although authors have offered definitions of "business model," none appears to be generally accepted. This lack of consensus may, in part, be attributed to interest in the concept from a wide range of disciplines, all of which have found a connection to the term. To help managers better understand business models, this paper reviews the extant literature and identifies and classifies the components of business models cited therein. Components were classified into four primary categories: strategic choices, the value network, creating value, and capturing value. Offers a definition of "business model" that integrates and synthesizes earlier work. Based on the proposed definition, the case contrasts business models with strategy. Also, discusses four problems associated with business models.

Discusses launching an entrepreneurial venture by acquiring a once popular brand name and reviving it. Ten executives were interviewed who acquired dormant brands and successfully relaunched them into the market. Their comments suggest that, with proper planning, an entrepreneur may be able to increase chances of success substantially by reviving brands, rather than spending the enormous amount of capital required to build a new brand image. Conclusions suggest that nostalgia targeting is not enough; the revived brand must be repositioned to satisfy today's customer values. Evidence also suggests that licensing a revived brand name to unrelated industries may prove very profitable for the entrepreneur.

It has been 20 years since R. Edward Freeman (1984) first proposed his stakeholder approach to strategic management, which stated that corporations must consider the needs and demands not only of their shareholders but also those of a wide range of other external constituencies, or "stakeholders." Examples of stakeholders include customers, employees, suppliers, and communities. Freeman's theory has generated an extensive body of research, including not only the efforts of the management researchers who have tested, revised, and refined the theory, but also the views of corporate executives who have used the stakeholder approach in their strategic planning. This article, based on a review of that literature, identifies five important lessons from the stakeholder model for today's business leaders. These lessons are particularly timely, given the inappropriate behavior that has occurred in the business world during recent years.

Scholars and practitioners have long suggested that smaller teams perform better teamwork, yet it is surprising to find that many organizations are using teams of 10 and more members. Explains how large team size affects teamwork and suggests four ways to keep teams small: (1) Create a multiteam project; (2) create a core team and an extended team; (3) outsource tasks and define team-external contributions; and (4) keep members on the team only for specific project phases.

At what point does legitimate competitive intelligence gathering cross the line into industrial espionage, and what is it about certain intelligence-gathering practices that opens them up to criticism? Examines three recent cases of industrial espionage, involving major multinationals such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Canal Plus, and Ericsson. The argument is made that, from an ethical point of view, industrial espionage can be assessed according to three main considerations: the tactics used in the acquisition of information, the privacy of the information concerned, and the consequences for the public interest as a result of the deployment of the information by the intelligence gatherer.