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Big data continues to gather increasing interest in the business press as well as within the management literature. While this interest has spilled over into the realm of human resources (HR) management, solid evidence of its positive performance impacts is lacking. I explore three possibilities for this lack of evidence: (1) HR possesses big data but largely lacks the ability to use it; (2) HR does not actually possess big data; and (3) big data is generating value for HR and positively affects organizational performance, but the winners in the race to utilize big data in HR are not publicizing their successes. Following this, I discuss current forms of big data implementation, highlighting an evolutionary progression of implementations in various settings and emphasizing the importance of balancing deductive with inductive analytical approaches. Finally, I discuss conditions under which big data may hold greater value for the HR function, and I suggest ways managers and organizations can make the most of big data.

In 2019, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and the other 179 CEO members of the Business Roundtable argued that the purpose of a corporation must reflect not only the fiduciary interests of owners but also the varied interests of all stakeholders: employees, customers, partners, and broader society. This idea challenges a decades-old norm of shareholder primacy, so it is reasonable for organizational leaders to wonder whether doing so is truly in their firms' best interests, and if so, how to implement this approach to leadership. To answer these questions, we draw on over 200 peer-reviewed articles covering leadership research to demonstrate how servant leadership, a stakeholder-focused approach to management, outperforms other leadership approaches across both shareholder and stakeholder criteria. We leverage case studies of organizational leaders from SAS, Zappos, Starbucks, and Jason's Deli, financially successful organizations that exemplify how managers provide value and sustainability to stakeholders and shareholders through servant leadership. We also include practical steps managers can take to begin putting this form of leadership into practice.

As government-mandated lockdowns and steep declines in trade set in because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a common theme became apparent in the advertising of the time: It was all the same. Regardless of the product category or brand personality, many ads were remarkably similar. They began with melancholy music, voiceovers reminding the audience that the brand is here for them, and referred to these times as "unprecedented" and "extraordinary." Ads reassured viewers that "together, we can get through this." In this installment of Marketing & Technology, we articulate the problem of advertising sameness and explore how and why it likely arises during a time of crisis. We then discuss why advertising uniformity is a problem and present a series of strategic, media, and creative considerations - taking into account the constraints of a crisis - to help marketing professionals produce more effective advertising in the context of a disaster.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing organizational decision-making processes. With the abilities to self-learn and to improve decision quality, AI is now taking over many decision responsibilities that were formerly assigned to humans alone. However, the effectiveness of AI for ill-structured and uncertain decision environments is still in question. In such decision contexts that have no precedent on which to base a solution, humans have historically relied on their intuition to make decisions. Yet intuition, too, has been found to have weaknesses that restrict decision quality. Therefore, this article introduces a decision-making model that effectively integrates the strengths of both intuition and AI while minimizing the vulnerabilities of each method. The model specifies when and how both modes should be combined for effective organizational decision-making. In addition, the article presents important future research considerations relating to AI for both practitioners and academics.

Mindsets are individuals' mental lenses that selectively organize and encode information, thereby orienting them toward a unique way of understanding their experiences and guiding them toward corresponding actions and responses. Decades of research have demonstrated that mindsets are foundational to how individuals process and operate. Despite this research, mindsets have largely been overlooked by practitioners when developing leaders. In this article, we seek to illuminate the foundational role mindsets play in leadership effectiveness to elicit greater emphasis on mindsets in leadership development. To do so, we explore what mindsets are, why they are so important for leadership development and effectiveness, and which mindsets leaders could further develop to operate more effectively. Specifically, we review the research associated with four different sets of mindsets - (1) fixed and growth mindsets, (2) goal orientations, (3) implemental and deliberative mindsets, and (4) prevention and promotion mindsets - to demonstrate how each affects leaders' effectiveness. We conclude by discussing how leadership developers and leaders themselves can focus on mindsets to improve leadership effectiveness.

This article features a moderated conversation between the author and five leading researchers and practitioners in the field of quantitative content analysis and, more specifically, computer-aided textual analysis (CATA). The interview subjects discuss the factors contributing to CATA's rise as a research method as well as the benefits and pitfalls of using CATA. The conversation also covers best-practice advice that companies may employ to increase the accuracy of CATA results. These include using different programs or algorithms for the same problem, known as algorithm error.

As the sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) systems develop and AI becomes a key element of organizational strategy across a wide spectrum of industries, new demands are being placed on senior leaders. To understand the growing challenges leaders will face in the age of AI, we conducted interviews with 33 senior leaders in several countries across a wide range of industries. Our research highlights key capabilities and skills that leaders will require. Underlying these capabilities is a mindset oriented toward continuous learning and self-development, which will enable ongoing and rapid adaptation to change. Our findings identified the following key capabilities: digital know-how, data-driven focus, networking, ethics, and agility. To successfully navigate the coming era, senior leaders will need to focus on reskilling the workforce, recruiting and retaining highly skilled talent, building an intrapreneurial culture, and managing unprecedented changes in technologies and the nature of work.

Why are so few organizations selling beneficial products at the base of the pyramid (BoP) successful? This is not simply a story of companies failing, and it is one with a dramatic consequence as low-income people do not benefit from products that can improve their way of life. Instead, they continue to drink unsafe water, cook on stoves that emit fumes that kill over 1 million people per year, light their homes with dangerous kerosene lamps, and fall ill from a mosquito bite. Based on a multiyear field research program conducted in 25 countries, we argue that having a specific mindset about BoP customers is consequential to an organization's success. Many organizations start with the assumption that BoP customers lack money, knowledge, and jobs. By contrast, successful organizations start from the assumption that customers can and will pay if they are provided with a satisfactory solution to their needs and are reassured about the level of risk involved. We detail the different practices that follow from this mindset change in the areas of value proposition, communication, and distribution and show how these practices can make or break the organization's financial sustainability.

As the workplace continues to change, a new generational cohort - Generation Z, sometimes referred to as iGen - is beginning to enter the workforce. At the same time, millennials are now progressing in their careers and will be challenged with managing these incoming workers. The purpose of this article is to provide a contextual overview that identifies and illuminates some of the defining work-related characteristics of these two youngest generations in the workplace to increase understanding of the potential intergenerational conflict between these cohorts and develop leadership strategies that can be utilized to increase employee morale and productivity. This article analyzes the millennial supervisor-Gen Z subordinate relationship based on generational cohort theory, leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, and the work values framework.

Firms face various critical challenges when pursuing a coherent course of action that seeks to create value for the long term. They are required to balance myopic and hyperopic behavior. They must ensure coordination, adopt a holistic view of various functional perspectives, and foster commitment among key decision makers. They need to develop a credible and compelling line of reasoning that employees understand and can act on. Adopting the perspective of roadmapping as a strategy tool, this article advances the argument that roadmapping is especially suitable in helping firms to surmount these three critical strategic challenges. This article distills three core features of the roadmap: graphical representation, multidisciplinary integration, and scaling. It then reviews the three critical strategic challenges and shows how roadmapping can help to overcome each of these. Following this explanation, the article describes ten key principles for effective strategic roadmapping that support firms in obtaining the strategic benefits promised. The article concludes with additional insights for practice with the intent of encouraging further exploitation of roadmapping's potential.

A large body of research has well established that changes in net balances between labor supply and demand can drive competition for human capital. We propose that AI-enabled recruiting tools constitute a force that will intensify the war for talent above and beyond episodic changes in net balances. We also propose that three seismic shifts will further intensify the war for talent by increasing the value of human capital and lowering its switching costs. Lastly, we bridge human resource management and military escalation literatures and examine how three key onset conditions relative to the use of AI-enabled recruiting tools have the potential to spark an arms race for those tools. Finally, we examine the managerial implications of these dynamics so that managers prevail not just in short-term skirmishes but also in the long-term war for talent.

Until its highly publicized downfall, Theranos was a so-called unicorn with a compelling proposition to popularize routine blood testing by making it more convenient, using a smaller sample of blood, and testing at a lower cost than conventional, often fear-inducing needles. Holmes and Theranos were reliant on the development of new technology to bring their idea to life. Instead, they became perhaps one of the most infamous examples of failed product innovation. In this article, we contend that although character failings and alleged criminal activity could not have been mitigated realistically, valuable strategic and operational lessons can be learned for future technology startups. By conducting a counterfactual thought experiment and examining Theranos through the lens of Design Innovation (DI), we provide evaluations and predictions across strategic and operational constructs from both an internal and external perspective. We use Theranos to demonstrate the value of DI to future technology-driven entrepreneurs, proposing alternative approaches to medical device startups.

Negotiation abilities are difficult to assess, and negotiation outcomes are difficult to predict. This leads to possible deficiencies in resource allocation for negotiation tasks. In this article, we discuss the merits of a data-based approach for the allocation of negotiators to negotiation tasks. We provide a framework for negotiation allocation management that includes a method for assessing negotiator strength. The negotiator strength measure compares observable negotiation outcomes relative to similar outcomes in similar situations. We provide examples for using our framework and show evidence for its appeal when using industry data. We discuss implications for managers and provide key takeaways.

In the last two decades, industry-university collaborations (IUCs) in research and development in the hard sciences have become increasingly more successful and common. In contrast, successful IUCs in softer social sciences, such as business, remain relatively uncommon. But business research requires an even higher degree of collaboration than research in the hard sciences if its results are to be relevant to businesspeople. Fortunately, business academics are becoming more and more interested in collaborating with businesspeople. The purpose of this article is to motivate businesspeople to collaborate as well. We do this by showing the businessperson the historical origins of business research's irrelevance, by describing the benefits the business world could receive from collaborative research, by showing why collaboration is especially needed in social sciences such as business, and by showing why academics cannot do relevant business research without practitioners' help. Specifically, we will show that the businessperson's help is needed to ensure that their priorities are met, to formulate the right research questions, to provide relevant data, and to contribute their problem solving inventiveness.

Changing employers has been linked to larger pay increases for executives and managers. Although survey-based studies suggest that men gain more than women, an analysis of more than 2,000 job moves found that executive women are commanding bigger increases than men when switching employers. In certain contexts, female executives can use these external moves to increase their own compensation and perhaps narrow the gender pay gap overall.

Front-line employees can offer essential insights to be used in strategic decision-making, yet top management teams rarely ask these employees about strategic issues. In so doing, leaders are depriving themselves of new information that could improve their analyses, and they risk making decisions in isolation within the C-suite echo chamber. But the right tools and training can equip employees to better understand forecasting and teach executives to recognize their insights.

"One of the hardest disciplines in business and in life is tearing down what you've built to build something better," writes the founder and former CEO of Qualtrics--among the hottest tech companies of the past decade. He explains how the company grew from a family start-up in Provo, Utah, to be acquired by SAP in January 2019 for $8 billion: "the largest private enterprise-software acquisition in history." At its IPO two years later, the opening price valued Qualtrics at three times that amount. Qualtrics transitioned from a single-product market research company primarily serving academia to a multiproduct company serving enterprises with customer-experience, employee-insights, and market research offerings. Along the way, Smith had to ask his colleagues and coworkers more than once to rebuild the technology stack, replace code, and realign a portion of the 300-person workforce.

As they deal with a business landscape that is evolving constantly, rapidly, and unpredictably, executives all over the world are full of questions about change: "How much?" "How fast?" "How sustainable?" And sometimes just "How?" They can't hope to answer those questions unless they understand their companies' capacity for change--but they've lacked good tools for measuring that. To address this problem, Michels and Murphy, partners at Bain, devised a way of systematically measuring what they call "change power." In this article they explain how they devised their system, describe the nine main factors that they believe determine a company's change power, and present data suggesting that companies that rank high on their Change Power Index tend to perform remarkably well financially and have more-satisfied employees. Most organizations have a change-power profile that corresponds to one of four archetypes. Using company examples, the authors suggest a specific approach to improvement for each one.

More and more manufacturing companies are talking about what's often called the circular economy--in which businesses can create supply chains that recover or recycle the resources used to create their products. Shrinking their environmental footprint, trimming operational waste, and using expensive resources more efficiently are certainly appealing to CEOs. But creating a circular business model is challenging--and taking the wrong approach can be expensive. The authors argue that success depends on many factors, but perhaps the most important is choosing a strategy that aligns with the company's capabilities and resources--and addresses the constraints on its operations. In this article they identify the three basic strategies to achieve circularity and offer a tool to help manufacturers identify which is most likely to be economically sustainable. Their recommendations draw on decades of research and consulting with dozens of manufacturers across the world.

Today it's not unusual for corporations that have dominated their markets for decades to be blindsided by upstarts with radical new business models. A lot of young ventures, on the other hand, raise vast sums of money and attract tens of millions of customers, only to collapse when they can't figure out how to fend off imitators. In these situations and many others, the underlying cause is often a failure to take a holistic approach to strategy. Strategy today demands more than classic competitive positioning. It requires making carefully coordinated choices about the opportunities to pursue; the business model with the highest potential to create value; how to capture as much of that value as possible; and the implementation processes that help a firm adapt activities and build capabilities that allow it to realize long-term value. Neglecting any of those imperatives can derail a strategy, but CEOs frequently zero in on just one. Entrepreneurs tend to focus on identifying a golden opportunity and don't think enough about how to monetize it; leaders of incumbents, on capturing value but not new ways to create it. By tackling all the elements of strategy and integrating them well, however, firms will greatly increase their odds of success.