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Job seekers would like guidance on how to find a job with a firm whose values reinforce their own, a place that would be a good personal fit. At the same time, because of legal compliance requirements, it is crucial that employers find employees that fit the company's value system so that the company can maintain an effective ethics and compliance program. This article looks at the legal, regulatory structure in both the U.S. and E.U. with an emphasis on reflexive corporate governance. It also reports the findings of a survey of E.U. and U.S. executives with a reputation for nurturing ethical business culture to discover what virtues and factors are most important and, thus, something a job seeker might look for in finding a strong, ethical company. Finally, the article raises the cognitive issues of the importance for job seekers to examine their own psychological biases so they are evaluating a position based on what really fits their values.

Influencer marketing is the practice of compensating individuals for posting about a product or service on social media. Influencer marketing is on the rise, and many marketers now plan either to start using influencers or to increase their use of them in their media mixes. Despite such growth, relatively little strategic or academic insight exists that is specific to influencers. In this article, we describe the roots of influencer marketing and the many different types of influencers that now exist. We identify influencers' three functional components: the audience, the endorser, and the social media manager. We then detail for each of these components the different sources of value influencers potentially offer marketers. We draw on relevant academic research to offer advice about how to leverage each component strategically. We close by describing how the interplay of these functional components makes influencers a potentially powerful-and undervalued-marketing tool.

Framing in business is frequently found in the digital economy with dramatic and innovative new products and disruptive value propositions. However, framing in business is not an exclusively digital economic strategy. Creating or revising frames of reference, value propositions, and pricing based on either new or newly framed offerings is a basic strategy skill that brings new differential value creation to customers and new price-setting models to firms. In this article, I define framing and explain its influence on managerial cognition as well as its application to value-based marketing and price setting. Using economic value theory and behavioral economics, I propose steps managers and decision makers can take in an effort to achieve framing innovation as a way to leverage the disruptive competitive advantages that flow from strategic frames of reference in the marketplace.

Organizations increasingly introduce wearable devices, hoping to improve organizational performance. Wearables provide new and unique opportunities for engaging employees with their work and their organizational environment. The performance-related feedback these devices provide is supposed to help both employees and managers navigate the work environment more effectively. Despite the compelling benefits of wearables, they may prove to be detrimental to organizational performance unless a number of ethical issues are addressed. This article provides an overview of the benefits that certain wearable technologies can provide employees and managers, as well as the challenges they may create for organizations.

The angel investing space has transformed as investors have moved from individual deal seeking to more collaborative models of investing. Angel networks are formal investor organizations that pursue investment deals with entrepreneurs, assist with deal screening, and coordinate due diligence. These coordination activities have clear benefits for angel network members, but they also give rise to a dynamic of reliant judgment in which the espoused opinions of network peers are taken as evidence that weighs heavily on the investment decision. In this article, we provide evidence from an experiment set in an angel investment pitch meeting that reveals the positive bias an angel investor shows toward peer opinions. By revealing these potentially hidden forces in angel network deliberations, we raise awareness and, by extension, offer response strategies for angels and angel network directors to properly manage the influence of peer opinion in angel network discussions.

Companies are making substantial investments in placing sensors out in the field and within products and equipment. These Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to harness data-driven insights to improve business performance. While the IoT is often framed as a next-generation technology, many businesses already are awash in these data because their existing operational technologies and other equipment generate substantial amounts of data. These data, along with the insights they generate, remain dark-out of sight and unused. Many managers are unaware of the existence and uses of such data. To shed light on the business opportunities afforded by exploiting dark data, this article provides managerial advice and demonstrative case studies in four strategic categories: improving returns on assets, reengaging customers, creating new products and business lines, and transforming business models.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are among the least mature and most vulnerable in terms of their cybersecurity risk and resilience. In this article, we describe a methodology developed using the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) as a starting point. The NIST CSF does not meet all the needs of the SME IT leader, but it offers a solid foundation for a useful evaluation and recommendation methodology. We propose an SME cybersecurity evaluation tool (CET) that consists of a 35-question online survey to be completed by IT leaders to self-rate their maturity within the five NIST framework categories: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. We outline this approach to cybersecurity risk management before discussing its effectiveness and implications for practitioners.

Crowdfunding has proliferated over the past decade, creating various platforms on which new entrepreneurs signal their value to potential backers in order to attract funding. The boons of crowdfunding have blinded both practitioners and scholars alike, leaving potential negative unintended consequences underexplored. Copycats, for example, are a potential problem for crowdfunding ventures. In this article, we examine the consequences of signaling to these ill-intentioned, opportunistic audiences on crowdfunding platforms and propose a solution to aid novice entrepreneurs in making a more informed decision on platform selection. Specifically, we provide guidance on when to select an open, semi-open, or closed crowdfunding platform to reduce the impact of copycats. We conclude with prescriptive advice to novice entrepreneurs.

Globalization, advances in technology, and shifting consumer preferences affect almost everyone. Because of pressures from the external environment, organizations face rapid and constant change. The nature of work has been complicated; it is difficult for individuals to achieve much on their own. Consequently, organizations rely heavily on expert, innovative work teams. These highly evolved teams do not develop overnight; rather, they evolve and develop in stages, and the team's leadership must change over time. In this article, we present the building blocks of team innovation, outline the internal processes that lie at the core of innovative performance, and provide critical leadership strategies for each stage of team development. We conclude with implications for developing leaders with the capabilities to nurture and build innovative teams.

Resist pressure from shareholders and others who seek short-term gains. Instead, build compacts with employees, communities, investors, and other stakeholders that will create long-term shareholder value, benefitting all parties.

The widespread implementation and adoption of digital technologies by organizations has given rise to a massive transformation with the potential to affect many organizations' internal operations and processes. This transformation affects different levels and steps of output creation in companies, which eventually triggers changes in their organizational structures. This article develops an integrated picture on how digital transformation affects organization design by classifying and analyzing the effect on the process of output creation in firms. Based on this picture, it develops and elaborates on potential opportunities and challenges for companies resulting from digital transformation. Finally, it offers recommendations and decisions rules for dealing with these issues.

COVID-19 may hurt innovation because it has reduced knowledge transmission globally. The direct causes include government restrictions on immigration, the dismantling of global value chains, a reduction in travel, and the isolation of knowledge workers in home offices.

Technology silos can wreak havoc on strategic priorities and trigger a cascade of effects throughout an organization. When leaders focus on better communication, with special attention to difficult conversations, organizations can improve collaboration and unlock creative solutions to business problems.

The rapid growth of digital technologies and the extraordinary amount of data that devices and applications collect each day are increasingly driving companies to radically transform the business architecture through which they create and appropriate value. However, companies may fail to extract value from digital transformation due to the disconnection between strategy formulation and strategy implementation. Through the analysis of three case studies of firms that digitally transformed their business-namely ABB, CNH Industrial, and Vodafone-this article presents a framework than can help companies implement their digital transformation strategy and thereby renovate their business model.

Slack was launched in 2014, went public in 2019, and is now a global operation with more than 2,000 employees and 100,000-plus customers. But it hasn't lost its start-up mentality. And never did it move with more speed and clarity of focus than in March 2020, when the Covid-19 crisis brought on two challenges: dramatically increasing customer demand and an extremely abrupt transition to working remotely.The company's customer success and experience teams delivered nearly round-the-clock support free, both to existing customers and to newcomers who needed help getting set up with the product. Interviews with job candidates and the employee onboarding process were moved online. Marketing developed a public service ad for television, committing to help any groups that were working on a Covid-19 response. Slack's engineers ensured that its systems were operational 99.9% of the time in a period of soaring demand. Customers with 1,000 or 10,000 Slack users suddenly wanted to expand to 50,000. New customers wanted comprehensive proposals immediately. Organizations of all kinds had to transform the way they worked, all at once. This crisis, Butterfield writes, "has created an opportunity for us and others to become more agile, to take on changes that once seemed daunting, to reimagine organizational culture...and to reposition for future growth."

In a 2018 Workforce Institute survey of 3,000 managers across eight industrialized nations, the majority of respondents described artificial intelligence as a valuable productivity tool. But respondents to that survey also expressed fears that AI would take their jobs. They are not alone. The Guardian recently reported that in the UK "more than 6 million workers fear being replaced by machines." AI's advantages can be cast in a dark light: Why would humans be needed when machines can do a better job? To allay such fears, employers must set AI up to succeed rather than to fail. The authors draw on their own and others' research and consulting on AI and information systems implementation, along with organizational studies of innovation and work practices, to present a four-phase approach to implementing AI. It allows organizations to cultivate people's trust--a key condition for adoption--and to work toward a distributed cognitive system in which humans and artificial intelligence both continually improve.

Leaders often view power as a purely personal quality, derived from their formal roles and titles, accreditations, skills, and experience; from the information they control and the reputation they've built; and from their charisma, resilience, and energy. But as most discover, effectively wielding power is rarely straightforward. Simply exercising control over others--the traditional concept of power--is often not the best strategy; it may not even be an option. Indeed, the most potent uses of power often involve no direct influence tactics at all. The authors have developed an approach to power that goes beyond exerting control and mobilizes others' energy and commitment. It focuses on three core dimensions: Situational power rests on the ability to align objectives, the environment, and bases of power. Relational power is about connections and coalitions: They can be a major source of support, advice, information, and resources--but if neglected or ignored, they can loom as potential points of resistance. Dynamic power involves continually adapting influence strategies to changes in organizational and social systems. The degree to which leaders draw on all three dimensions of power determines how effectively they get things done.

Many people don't tackle negotiations in a proactive way; instead, they simply react to moves the other side makes. While that approach may work in a lot of instances, complex deals demand a much more strategic approach. The best negotiators look beyond their immediate counterparts to see if other constituencies have a stake in the deal's outcome or value to contribute; rethink the scope and timing of talks; and search for connections across multiple deals. They also get creative about the process and framing of negotiations, ditching the binary thinking that can lock negotiators into unproductive zero-sum postures. Applying such strategic techniques will allow dealmakers to find novel sources of leverage, realize bigger opportunities, and achieve outcomes that maximize value for both sides.

The view of manual employees as mindless machines dates back to the Industrial Revolution, when most workers were poorly educated, and was entrenched by Frederick Taylor, whose bureaucratic model institutionalized a caste system of thinkers and doers that still persists. Which is unfortunate, because that model allows a vast reservoir of human ingenuity to go untapped. As a result, firm performance suffers. But there is a path out of this trap, as the French tire manufacturer Michelin has found. Since 2012, under the banner of "responsabilisation" (French for empowerment), the company has dramatically increased the authority and accountability of workers on the front lines. The firm kick-started this change through a bottom-up process involving targeted experiments in a handful of plants and slowly scaled up successful approaches. The outcome: A workforce that's deeply knowledgeable and relentlessly inventive, and that had delivered half a billion dollars in manufacturing improvements by 2020.

Humor is widely considered essential in personal relationships, but in leaders, it's seen as an ancillary behavior. Though some leaders use humor instinctively, many more could wield it purposefully. Humor helps build interpersonal trust and high-quality work relationships and influences behaviors and attitudes that matter to leadership effectiveness, including employee performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and creativity. These benefits don't come without potential costs. The guidelines in this article suggest ways to capture the benefits of humor while avoiding the downside risks.