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Examines knowledge sharing in business environments and cultures that are hostile to knowledge sharing, focusing on knowledge sharing as it relates to individual behavior. Looks at knowledge hoarding, apprehension about failures, and the Not-Invented-Here syndrome, drawing on the examples of six Russian companies, including three with western ownership. In knowledge-sharing hostile environments, it is inadequate to apply traditional means for managing knowledge-sharing processes. Instead of encouraging, stimulating, and aligning incentives, managers need initially to force knowledge sharing to transform their organizations into knowledge-embracing cultures. Outlines concrete guidelines for overcoming the barriers to knowledge sharing.

Recent decades have witnessed the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the emergence of activism across a wide variety of issue areas. On topics ranging from human rights to labor conditions, NGOs and activists represent an increasingly important constituency in a firm's nonmarket environment. Explores the different ways in which firms manage NGO pressure, noting instances of preemption, capitulation, and resistance. Considers three case studies--Unocal, Nike, and Novartis--and evaluates a series of hypotheses about the economic and noneconomic factors that drive the varying firm responses to NGO activism.

Requiring manufacturers to manage their products when they become waste is an innovative form of regulation, one that countries in Asia, Europe, and North America have adopted on a variety of products, ranging from vehicles to appliances to batteries. However, even in many unregulated industries, some manufacturers are voluntarily assuming more responsibility for their end-of-life products, driven by customer demand and cost efficiencies. Explores various forms of take-back regulation and highlights some of the key features of the institutions that emerge in response. Also presents seven strategic product recovery alternatives and discusses some factors managers should consider in developing a take-back strategy.

Firms put enormous intellectual and financial resources into creating differentiated products or services for their consumers. However, in many situations, differentiation may not be a profitable strategy. Spells out the conditions under which it is profitable to differentiate and those when it is not. Consumers learn about alternatives from advertising, and many consumers do not see advertising for all relevant alternatives. As a result, a significant fraction of consumers make decisions with limited information about the available alternatives. The value of creating differentiated products is ambiguous when awareness of products and their characteristics is the key determinant of consumer behavior.

The profitability of many firms hinges on their ability to extract the maximum amount of revenue from a fixed quantity of perishable goods and/or services. Yet, most firms in this situation have not invested in yield management systems. Explains why minimal use of yield management techniques may have been appropriate in the pre-Internet era. Discusses the major changes to the marketing landscape fostered by the Internet that enable the effective practice of yield management. Many yield management approaches have the potential to increase profitability significantly. Highlights the most important factors for managers to consider when reassessing the viability of yield management systems at their firms.

Nobody likes performance reviews. Subordinates are terrified they'll hear nothing but criticism. Bosses, for their part, think their direct reports will respond to even the mildest criticism with stonewalling, anger, or tears. The result? Everyone keeps quiet and says as little as possible. That's unfortunate, because most people need help figuring out how they can improve their performance and advance their careers. This fear of feedback doesn't come into play just during annual reviews. At least half the executives with whom the authors have worked never ask for feedback. People avoid the truth and instead try to guess what their bosses are thinking. Fears and assumptions about feedback often manifest themselves in psychologically maladaptive behaviors such as procrastination, denial, brooding, jealousy, and self-sabotage. But there's hope, say the authors. Those who learn adaptive techniques can free themselves from these destructive responses. They'll be able to deal with feedback better if they acknowledge negative emotions, reframe fear and criticism constructively, develop realistic goals, create support systems, and reward themselves for achievements along the way. The authors take you through four manageable steps for doing just that: self-assessment, external assessment, absorbing the feedback, and taking action toward change.

Given the prevailing sentiment over the ineffectiveness of vertical integration, it is surprising how resilient this type of strategy has proven to be. Shedding more light on its continued appeal in today's business environment, the argument here holds that such popularity marks a departure from traditional motivations based on manipulating industry structure or minimizing transaction costs. Instead, contemporary vertical integration, especially downstream integration of the customer interface, is motivated by the associated learning benefits.

Some brands become icons. Think of Nike, Apple, Harley-Davidson. But they are not built according to the principles of conventional marketing, says Harvard Business School marketing professor Douglas Holt. Iconic brands beat the competition not just by delivering innovative benefits, services, or technologies, but by forging a deep connection with the culture. A brand becomes an icon when it offers a compelling myth. In America, the most potent myths are depictions of rebels. Mountain Dew has long offered a rebel myth in ads showing exciting, vital men who are far from the ideological model of success. Loyal customers drink the beverage to consume the myth. But Mountain Dew's greatest achievement is that it has retained its iconic power by creating fresh rebel myths to suit the tensions of each era. Holt says marketers can learn from Mountain Dew and other iconic brands if they are willing to move beyond conventional brand management. They must learn to target national contradictions instead of just consumer segments, create myths that make sense of confusing societal changes, and speak with a rebel's voice.

Marketing experts tell companies to analyze their customer portfolios and weed out buyer segments that don't generate attractive returns. Loyalty experts stress the need to aim retention programs at "good" customers--profitable ones--and encourage the "bad" ones to buy from competitors. And customer relationship management software provides evermore sophisticated ways to identify and eliminate poorly performing customers. On the surface, the movement to banish unprofitable customers seems reasonable. But writing off a customer relationship simply because it is currently unprofitable is at best rash and at worst counterproductive. Executives need to ask, "How can we make money off the customers that everyone else is shunning?" Consider Paychex, a payroll-processing company that built a nearly billion-dollar business by serving small companies. Established players had ignored these customers on the assumption that small companies couldn't afford the service. When founder Tom Golisano couldn't convince his bosses at Electronic Accounting Systems that they were missing a major opportunity, he started a company that now serves 390,000 U.S. customers, each employing around 14 people. In this article, the authors look closely at bottom-feeders--companies that assessed the needs of supposedly unattractive customers and redesigned their business models to turn a profit by fulfilling those needs. And they offer lessons that other executives can use to do the same.

Should stock options be recorded as an expense on a company's income statement and balance sheet, or should they remain where they are, relegated to footnotes? The authors believe the case for expensing options is overwhelming. In this article, Nobel laureate Robert Merton, one of the inventors of the Black-Scholes option-pricing model; his co-author on the classic textbook Finance, Zvi Bodie; and Robert Kaplan, creator of the Balanced Scorecard, examine and dismiss the principal claims put forward by those who continue to oppose options expensing. They demonstrate that stock-option grants have real cash-flow implications that need to be reported and detail the distortions that relegating stock-option accounting to footnotes creates. The authors agree that options are a powerful incentive, and failing to record a transaction that creates such powerful effects is economically indefensible. Worse, it encourages companies to favor options over alternative incentive systems.

Think hard about the problems in your organization or about potential upheavals in the markets in which you operate. Could some of those problems--ones no one is attending to--turn into disasters? As Harvard Business School professors Michael Watkins and Max Bazerman illustrate in this timely article, most of the "unexpected" events that buffet companies should have been anticipated--they're "predictable surprises." Such disasters take many forms, from financial scandals to disruptions in operations, from organizational upheavals to product failures. The bad news is that all companies, including your own, are vulnerable to predictable surprises. The good news is that recent research helps explain why that's so and what companies can do to minimize their risk. The authors contend that organizations' inability to prepare for predictable surprises can be traced to three sets of vulnerabilities: psychological, organizational, and political. To address these vulnerabilities, the authors recommend the RPM approach. More than just the usual environmental scanning and contingency planning, RPM requires a chain of actions--recognizing, prioritizing, and mobilizing--that companies must meticulously adhere to. Failure to apply any one of these steps, the authors say, can leave an organization vulnerable.

The causes of many corporate governance problems lie well below the surface--specifically, in critical relationships that are not structured to support the players involved. In other words, the very foundation of the system is flawed. And unless we correct the structural problems, surface changes are unlikely to have a lasting impact. When shareholders, management, and the board of directors work together as a system, they provide a powerful set of checks and balances. But the relationship between shareholders and directors is fraught with weaknesses, undermining the entire system's equilibrium. As the authors explain, the exchange of information between these two players is poor. The authors suggest several ways to improve the relationship between shareholders and directors: Increase board accountability by recording individual directors' votes on key corporate resolutions, separate the positions of chairman and CEO, reinvigorate shareholders, and give boards funding to pay for outside experts who can provide perspective on crucial issues.

Hardly anyone has a good word to say about hierarchies. They routinely transform motivated and loyal employees into disaffected Dilberts. Yet, the intensity with which we struggle against hierarchies only serves to highlight their durability. In this article, organizational behavior expert Harold J. Leavitt presents neither a defense of human hierarchies nor another attack on them. Instead, he offers a reality check, a reminder that hierarchy remains the basic structure of most, if not all, large, ongoing human organizations. That's because although they are often depicted as being out of date, hierarchies have proved to be extraordinarily adaptive. Over the past 50 years, for example, they have co-opted the three major managerial movements--human relations, analytic management, and communities of practice. Hierarchies also persist because they deliver real practical and psychological value, and they fulfill our deep need for order and security. Despite the good they may do, however, hierarchies are inevitably authoritarian.

Most organizations struggle with leadership development. They promote top performers into management roles, put them through a few workshops and seminars, then throw them to the wolves. Managers with the ability to survive and thrive are rewarded; those without it are disciplined or reassigned. The problem is, an alarming number of people fall into the second category. This happens not because managers lack skills but because companies fail to realize that there is no single kind of leader-in-training. In this article, Natalie Shope Griffin, a consultant in executive and organizational development at Nationwide Financial, describes four kinds of managers-in-training, each embodying unique challenges and opportunities: reluctant leaders, arrogant leaders, unknown leaders, and workaholics. The author outlines specific training approaches tailored to each type of prospective leader. By focusing on the unique circumstances of individual managers, investing in them early in their careers, offering effective coaching, and providing real-life management experiences, Nationwide's leadership-development program has produced hundreds of successful leaders.

Most new product ideas are either uninspired or impractical. So how can developers hit the innovation sweet spot--far enough from existing products to attract real interest but close enough that they are feasible to make and market? They can apply five innovation patterns that manipulate existing components of a product and its immediate environment to come up with something both ingenious and viable, say the authors. The subtraction pattern works by removing product components, particularly those that seem desirable or indispensable. Think of the legless high chair that attaches to the kitchen table. The multiplication pattern makes one or more copies of an existing component, then alters those copies in some important way. For example, the Gillette double-bladed razor features a second blade that cuts whiskers at a slightly different angle. By dividing an existing product into its component parts--the division pattern--you can see something that was an integrated whole in an entirely different light. Think of the modern home stereo--it has modular speakers, tuners, and CD and tape players, which allow users to customize their sound systems. The task unification pattern involves assigning a new task to an existing product element or environmental attribute, thereby unifying two tasks in a single component. An example is the defrosting filament in an automobile windshield that also serves as a radio antenna. Finally, the attribute dependency pattern alters or creates the dependent relationships between a product and its environment. For example, by creating a dependent relationship between lens color and external lighting conditions, eyeglass developers came up with a lens that changes color when exposed to sunlight.

The companies that are most successful at creating long-term shareholder value tend to be those that systematically make acquisitions through good times and bad.

Companies typically divide up the aspects of major marketing campaigns, assuming that the efforts of a half-dozen or more specialty agencies and internal groups will reinforce one another. But a better approach is to "systems engineer" a campaign, which may require that each component be compromised to serve the needs of the whole.

When Bruce Chizen took over as president and CEO from Adobe's legendary founders in 2000, he knew he had to confront the skeptics who doubted he had the technological grounding to lead the company. In this interview, Chizen describes how he won converts by acknowledging his shortcomings and discusses the leadership lessons he learned along the way.

Some public pension funds aggressively pursue their pro-labor or social-issue agendas by submitting proxy proposals on topics ranging from employment practices to environmental concerns. But research shows that the stock market reacts negatively to corporations that receive such proposals.

No one's surprised when executives of a newly acquired company leave in droves. But, new research shows, executive turnover rates are twice as high after a merger as before one--even nine years after the acquisition. Those initial departures have a lot to do with it.