MIT Sloan Management Review

The growing popularity of cell phones and other hand-held mobile devices has opened up new marketing possibilities.

Despite the recent popularity of the “behaviorist” view, analysis indicates that, on the whole, investors make rational investment decisions based on their view of future cash flows.

An organization’s ability to recover from disruption quickly can be improved by building redundancy and flexibility into its supply chain. While investing in redundancy represents a pure cost increase, investing in flexibility yields many additional benefits for day-to-day operations.

In developing countries, examples of successful sustainable enterprise often involve informal networks that include businesses, not-for-profit organizations and communities.

Global sourcing is an increasingly popular business strategy, but it’s not easy to execute. There are seven typical characteristics of organizations with outstanding global sourcing.

Some managers are discovering that the process of purposeful play can inject much needed vitality into their organizations.

Too much familiarity with customers can backfire, but engaging them in multisided conversations, or “polylogues,” can manage the risks and get better results.

To coordinate work across different business units, executives should think of the organization as a nexus of commitments, or personal promises between employees, that must be actively managed.

Board self-evaluations are now a requirement at many companies. But what’s the most effective way for directors to assess their own performance?

In service businesses as in others, work can be performed and stored in anticipation of demand. By wisely choosing what kind of inventory to hold, companies can improve quality, response times, customization and pricing.

Although the relevance of corporate philanthropy is widely accepted, few companies achieve significant, lasting societal impact because most lack a cohesive strategy. Effective philanthropy must be run no less professionally than the core business.

In an earlier life, as a marketing executive at a large lending institution, I was given the opportunity to join the company’s strategic leadership team. Because of some recent, significant organizational changes, we had many critical issues to confront.

The textbook approach to satisfying customers is simply to give the people what they want — and a little bit more. The trick, then, is to know what it is that customers want.

Two views of board/CEO relationship persist. One is the common view that boards that are “entrenched” — or insulated from shareholder action — will ignore a struggling CEO to the detriment of shareholder interests.

Vanishing mass markets, the proliferation of products and services and new technologies are requiring many companies to redefine their beloved core business doctrine: “Give customers what they want.â

Companies increasingly need to engage a wide range of stakeholders, but managers often underestimate the complexity of the task.