MIT Sloan Management Review

GM and Toyota launched their joint auto plant where GM’s work force had been at its worst. Here’s what happened next. And why.

Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University

Management, according to Henry Mintzberg, is often misunderstood. Mintzberg, the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, sees a number of ways the managerial role is often mischaracterized.

What’s one of the challenges to successful management or process innovation in an existing business? The array of organizational structures that are designed to keep current processes running smoothly.

Subordinates sometimes make it extremely difficult for their bosses to be good leaders. Executives who fail to understand the forces at play may find their careers in jeopardy.

There’s no sense in denying it: interpreting weak signals into useful decision making takes time and focus. These three stages can help you see the periphery—and act on it—much more clearly.

Recessions are a good time to disengage from businesses and practices that are weak and under pressure—but the volatile environment demands that managers let go of old approaches.

When downsizing is unavoidable, smart managers look for opportunities to improve flexibility, innovation and internal communication to improve trust between managers and employees.

Think product innovation is hard? Management innovation is even harder, according to Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School.

Insiders often find their opinions carry very little weight. Even data from competitors can seem superior.

It often seems that changes and threats come out of nowhere – until we learn later that the signals were there all along and we just didn”t read them correctly. One step toward reading them better is understanding why we misinterpret them in the first place.

A few words from the father of system dynamics on organizational decision making, human frailty and the reasons that managers trying to solve problems so often just make them worse.

This could be the second most important question you ever ask about your business. Here”s how to answer it.

The nominally independent board of directors is in fact often dependent on management for information. But new pressures on companies, more cooperative approaches and new technologies can render directors increasingly effective as evaluators and advisers.

Here's an intriguing finding from a new working paper:  Companies that use modern management best practices tend to also use less energy. A team of researchers from Stanford, the London School of Economics and Cambridge University studied a sample of mid-sized manufacturing companies in the U.K.�

Over the years, researchers have proven that when it comes to retaining employees, money does not buy happiness. Most human resources professionals know that while workers welcome pay raises, the boost in satisfaction that comes with extra money typically does not last, nor do raises alone keep employees loyal.

As research on the National Football League reveals, sometimes the specific nature of a job determines whether a great performer at one company can replicate that performance at another.

The difference between effective and ineffective change makers is that the effective ones don’t rely on a single source of influence. They marshal several sources at once to get superior results.

Most mergers fail because the newly constructed management team has been put in no position to actually lead. Can the pitfalls faced by merged teams be avoided, and the opportunities seized? Here are six guidelines for setting up new management to succeed.

At top companies, where the inspired use of metrics helps to identify potential leaders and develop their skills, the answer is yes.

The Economist this week highlights Lenovo, the Chinese computer company that some years back bought IBM's PC business, as an example of the new era of business innovation emerging from developing economies.