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In his recent book, The Enlightened Capitalists, James O'Toole explores the challenges faced by two centuries of business pioneers who tried to do well by doing good. While many of their firms were financially successful, few of their progressive business practices turned out to be enduring. In light of this mixed historical record, this article explores the future of enlightened business leadership. It critically evaluates six trends that will greatly determine the extent to which corporate executives will introduce virtuous practices in the coming decade, including a new generation of enlightened capitalists, several consortia of socially progressive business leaders, the growth of social entrepreneurship, the emergence of benefit corporations, and changes in investor attitudes.

Managers often engage in risk-averse behavior, and economists, decision analysts, and managers treat risk aversion as a preference. In many cases, acting in a risk-averse manner is a mistake, but managers can correct this mistake with greater reflection. This article provides guidance on how individuals and organizations can move toward greater reflection and a more profitable aggregate portfolio of decisions. Inconsistency in risk preferences across decisions is a costly mistake for both individuals and for organizations.

Facing imminent disruption, many large, established firms have embraced innovation as a way to develop new growth businesses. To succeed in the face of disruptive change requires established firms to master three distinct disciplines: ideation, to generate potential new business ideas; incubation, to validate these ideas in the market; and scaling, to reallocate the assets and capabilities needed to grow the new business. This article illustrates how two successful firms (Amazon and IBM) have developed approaches that address all three disciplines.

The governance of multilateral alliances is an increasingly important strategic option as firms face discontinuities and disruptions. But not all multilateral alliances present the same governance and leadership challenges. The partners' co-specialized contributions to the alliance call for more creative overall alliance management and for more open-ended forms of collaboration. Governance options range from a very autocratic "hub-and-spoke" model to democratic and participative governance. This puts different demands on the approach and the leadership skills required from the alliance managers.

This article examines how firms respond to federal affirmative action regulation when it is temporary. As intended, affirmative action increases a firm's black share of employees. Strikingly, the black share continues to grow at a similar pace even after a firm is deregulated. This persistence is driven in part by affirmative action inducing employers to improve their methods for screening potential hires.

Research has shown that firms tend to suffer financially when a celebrity endorser becomes mired in a scandal, but the literature to date has offered little practical guidance. A new study, involving 128 incidents that generated negative publicity, finds that firms taking no action after an event--the path most follow--generally do poorly. Its authors also discovered a surprise: Companies that engage with a situation and handle it well don't just stanch the bleeding but come out ahead. The study identifies four factors that play a significant role in public reaction to celebrity misbehavior and provides several clear takeaways for endorsers and firms alike.

According to new study led by a professor from Erasmus University, body language sways potential investors more than technical explanations or figurative language do.

As the Age of Disruption heats up, corporate boards can expect to face ever-increasing pressure to become more strategic. The problem remains that boards have neither a template nor a common vocabulary for assessing a proposed transformation strategy. The authors’ research—based on a four-year study of 62 corporate transformations—provides boards with a tool to diagnose gaps or misalignments in strategy. The authors identified a three-layered architecture that characterizes winning transformation efforts, consisting of two imperatives and a choice. Using a sandwich as a metaphor, the choice is like the sandwich filling that provides the special flavour or focus of the transformation effort. The two imperatives are the outer layers of the sandwich. The first imperative states that the pursuit of value is the trigger for any transformation, while the second imperative states that the pursuit of leadership development is what makes the change stick. The choice dictates that the compelling journey is at the heart of any corporate transformation. Ongoing transformation efforts are either derivatives or combinations of quests for the following five qualities: global presence, customer focus, nimbleness, co-innovation, and sustainability. Board members can verify that the executive team has properly debated its priorities by asking three questions: 1) Which of the five themes are you pursuing? 2) Can you explain what drives value? 3) How are you retooling people to support the transformation?

Although evolutionary notions about business often lack direct grounding in Darwin’s work, evolutionary theory can still help us understand how organizations, institutions, and markets change. Unfortunately, when used to illuminate business strategy, many evolutionary concepts are misapplied. This paper strives to address the garbled strategic advice created by misinterpretations of evolutionary theory, which have led to incorrect assessments of markets and market participants. We examine three widely held beliefs that are based on misapplications of evolutionary theory: 1) profit-maximization strategies inevitably lead to the best outcomes, 2) business is survival of the fittest, and 3) specialization makes you stronger. Applying four standard games (Prisoners’ Dilemma, Chicken, Battle of the Sexes, and the Stag Hunt) to the business world, we created models of competition to track interactions between market entities and demonstrate why many business ideas are based on garbled interpretations of the evolutionary concepts of selection, frequency dependence, and adaptation. The key takeaways from our research are: 1) selection on outcomes does not dictate that aiming for profit maximization will always lead to the best outcomes, 2) frequency dependence means there can be no unidimensional fitness to aspire towards, and 3) it is not survival of the fittest, but best fitted for any particular contest. Simply put, adaptation (both proactive and reactive), not specialization, is the key to success. Recognizing this requires a fundamental shift, inverting the normal strategy sequence by suggesting firms change themselves, rather than seeking to change their world.

As bank executives for over 30 years, Kevin Clark and Troy Wright witnessed countless opportunities to support small businesses being missed. That is what attracted them to the fintech revolution now transforming banking and financial services around the world. In this Ivey Business Journal interview, Ivey Professor Michael King sat down with Clark to discuss his transformation from old-school banker to fintech entrepreneur, not to mention his company’s evolution from industry disruptor to industry partner. Clark considers his firm, Lendified, to be a lending technology company that is taking the pain points out of borrowing for small businesses. Lendified provides a frictionless customer experience through the online application process, the speed of making decisions, and rapid access to capital. Lendified, he says, has effectively built two operating companies, but it did not start that way. Clark and Wright thought they were creating a highly effective lending business, but the credit technology turned out to be a successful software-as-a-service (SaaS) business unto itself. Furthermore, they thought their product would be sold on the basis of its efficiency, and yet what has sold the software is the customer experience.

Canada’s SNC-Lavalin affair has been compared to the U.S. Nixon Administration’s Watergate scandal, but the comparison is misguided. This article seeks to separate fact from misinformation in order to enable more constructive public discourse about the scandal. The second goal is to make the case for embracing negotiated settlements as a legitimate corruption-fighting tool based on the author’s experience as a financial-sector whistleblower during the dotcom era (which led to a long career as an investigative journalist covering white-collar crime). Finally, this article identifies key takeaways for managers and directors who are expected to drive growth and profit without breaking the law. In the SNC-Lavalin affair, an opportunity to improve how Canada fights corporate corruption appears to have been lost in the commotion. When fighting corruption, it is important to remember that organizations like SNC-Lavalin can also be victims, and that corporations do not decide to be corrupt—people do. Many corporate boards still rely heavily on senior management to report cultural issues, which is ridiculous, and not just because unethical executives rarely rat themselves out. It is time for more boards to proactively investigate the health of the corporate cultures they govern and doing this requires direct contact with lower-level employees, especially ones in specialist functions such as internal audit, compliance, and risk management.

Hoping a jack-of-all-trades can lead your organization's digital transition is unrealistic. We found four distinct types of successful digital executives who can best provide vision and purpose for digital. Crucially, each type has unique strengths and performs best in different contexts.

Mastering technology is not the only criteria for success in the modern marketing era - the right people and processes must also be put in place to properly develop, manage and nurture the benefits of emerging tools. To be successful in the digital era, marketers should adopt the best new modern practices as well as rethink and refine classic approaches.

Digital collaboration platforms can leverage team diversity and expertise, but business must focus on how distributed teams orchestrate their collaboration and how leaders facilitate innovation. The specific collaboration platform you choose is less important.

Inclusivity continues to be a challenge in most workplaces. These essays and articles lay out statistics about where companies are today and discuss strategies for doing better.

Learn how the agile software development process is being used as a management strategy, with lessons from ING bank, Toyota, Spotify, and others.

The strongest companies today have cultures of continuous education - they are investing in helping employees develop the skills they need to succeed in a changing world.

Common goals and an alignment on strategies enhance collaboration. These articles highlight some best practices, both within an organization and among collaborating companies.

How can we best connect with others, both individually and organizationally? Learn what works (and what doesn't) when directing partnerships.

Discover how organizations can translate strategic complexity into simple and flexible guidelines and achieve strategic objectives.