clair015

Last week I was interviewed by a journalist from Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper (the local equivalent of the Financial Times). After quite a lengthy interview, he ended with the question “ How would you define a ‘great company’?” At the time I thought it was a bit of a lame question, but that my answer to him was at least as lame: I babbled something that I would 1) judge a company by its performance – a long-term record of above-average profits – and 2) that employees should really be enjoying being part of that organisation. As said, at the time I thought it wasn’t my sharpest answer of the day, but when I thought about it for a while, afterwards, I started to really like the question; and even appreciate my answer to it! This might be my memory playing dirty tricks on me – in a feeble attempt to protect my self-image – but, admittedly, if asked today, I would likely give more or less the same answer to that superb question. I think most would agree that you cannot say some firm i...

Richard Hunt and Mat Hayward fom the University of Colorado were interested in employees who asked their employer for a loan, because they had no money but, for instance, had to buy a car, pay for their daughter’s wedding, medical bills, buy food and utilities, or faced home eviction. Therefore, they undertook to survey and interview small and medium-sized building contractors in Colorado.   No fewer than 67 percent of companies lent at least one of their employees money, with an average of about $1,100. Hunt and Hayward looked at 83 of them in more depth. The first thing they found out was that, of the 459 loans that these 83 companies in combination handed out to one of their employees, no fewer than 57 percent were completely informal; meaning without any contract or any other formal enforcement mechanism. Why would firms do this? Even if they wanted to lend them money, why not give them a contract for the loan? This was puzzling because making it an informal, instead of form...

It is well-documented in the literature on labour markets that personal connections, friendships, and other types of networks matter a lot for finding a job. For example, applicants with friends in the recruiting organisation are more likely to get a job offer. This may be perfectly rational for the recruiting firm; the friends of the candidate in the organization can be a great source of information about the applicant. As a result, the firm can be more assured of the job qualities of the person. Put differently, the candidate will pose less of a risk – in terms of potentially turning out to be a hiring mistake – if he or she has friends in the firm who have provided inside information. Therefore, employers may be more eager to hire new people who already have friends in the firm. But professor Adina Sterling from Washington University suspected there might be another reason why job applicants with friends in the firm might be more attractive to an employer than those without. F...

Ample research has shown that informal connections between people have a substantial influence on economic life, in terms who deals with whom and how well they perform. We call this “social embeddedness”, meaning that we are all embedded to different degrees in various networks of people, which influences our behaviour and success. One dimension which in a business context has received a lot of research is whether people have a joint educational background, particularly whether they are alumni from the same academic institution. Guoli Chen , Ravee Chittoor and Bala Vissa thought that this embeddedness research that is focused on educational background could perhaps be especially valid in a Western context (where most of the research has taken place) but that in a different context, such as India, different types of affiliations might also play an important role. Specifically, they wanted to focus on the role of caste (i.e. people being of the same or different castes) and language (in ...

We hear more and more talk about how the traditional model of business schools will be annihilated by the disruptive innovation of on-line education, so-called MOOC s (massive open on-line courses). An increasing number of voices can be heard to proclaim that business schools with their lectures and study groups are doomed, antiquated, overpriced, and that people who doubt that are just in denial and one day will wake up finding themselves obsolete and plain wrong. And, arguably, case studies on the effects of disruptive innovation conducted in industries ranging from airlines and newspapers to photography and steel mills, have shown that often the established players in the market are initially in denial, slow to react, suffering from hubris and, eventually, face crisis and extinction. Yet, when it comes to on-line education, and its potentially disruptive influence on higher education, including business schools, I doubt that on-line education will replace face-to-face lectures and ...

In our behaviour and beliefs, we are influenced by various hidden structures and characteristics of the people surrounding us. Over the past decades, for example, hundreds of studies on social networks and "small worlds" have shown that with whom you have had prior relationships, and how these people relate to each other, influences the information we receive, how much personal power we have, how likely we are to find a job, get promoted, how creative and innovatie we are, and so forth. This research on social networks basically draws lines between you and the people you know, and lines between those people you know who also know each other; lines between them and other people you don't know at all, etcetera, to reveal very different structures. We call these structures networks with or without "structural holes", with more or less "indirect ties", "network closure", and so on. Ample research has also revealed that, just like individuals, the...

Most corporations consist of multiple divisions. These divisions, which set their own strategy (what we generally refer to as “business strategy”), more often than not have very little to do with one another. Take Philips Electronics with its lighting, medical equipment, and consumer electronics; ThyssenKrupp with steel, elevators, and engineering services; or smaller companies such as Trinity Mirror with newspapers, printing, and digital services. They may not be like the conglomerates of the 1960s – you can see how their portfolio of somewhat related business came about – but, in reality, the various divisions and business units do operate completely independently from one another. Yet, corporate top management invariably tries hard to formulate an overarching strategy. It endeavors to stimulate cooperation across divisions (by repeatedly shouting really loudly that this should happen), sets up corporate shared services (which invariably are seen as a mere cost and nuisance by its...