MIT Sloan Management Review

Many companies have initiated sustainability and corporate social responsibility programs that represent good first steps toward improving the impact of their organizations on the environment and society. However, unless boards change, many of the initial sustainability efforts launched in corporations are likely to be temporary. For organizations to achieve sustainable effectiveness, they need a corporate board that is designed to lead in a sustainably effective way.

A persistent challenge for companies as they grow is how to maintain the high level of dynamism and employee commitment that drove success in the early days. Over the years, thoughtful managers and management theorists have formulated many approaches for dealing with the problem, all aimed at giving managers and employees more responsibility and accountability for the performance of their own profit centers. But few companies have taken things as far as Kyocera Corp.

By understanding the structure of talent networks within companies, managers can foster more effective collaboration.

Finding the expertise to handle complex, knowledge-intensive team projects is challenging. That’s where a project network comes in.

Based on an investigation of the performance of 80 software development projects with varying levels of dispersion — members in different cities, countries or continents — this article asserts that virtual teams offer tremendous opportunities despite their greater managerial challenges.

In fact, dispersed teams outperformed their colocated counterparts when they had the appropriate processes in place. Those processes can be classified in two categories: task-related and socio-emotional.

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.

Conventional wisdom suggests that companies should avoid growing dependent on their business partners.

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

Like most major change initiatives, going lean rarely looks good from the start. The operating efficiencies come quickly, yet sales and profits — for a while — get worse. The solution? Adopt a new financial reporting method that captures what’s really happening in the business.

A CEO’s new vision often blurs into an indistinct image once the initial blitz is over. To ensure that the vision is more than just a daydream, companies should follow a five-phase model that some organizations have used successfully to avoid disaster or complacency.

There is a time and a place when corporate governance has little influence over performance, say two researchers at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, because competitive forces cut away at management fat.

Holger M.

Dual accountability between a buyer and its strategic suppliers, through tools such as a Two-Way Scorecard, is a new and tangible approach to improving supply chain relationships.

At many companies, intellectual property has become an area of focus. Research shows that top-management involvement in IP strategy is associated with better IP performance.

In fast-paced industries, companies should think of strategy as an iterative loop with four steps: making sense of a situation, making choices, making things happen and making revisions.

Many companies are not getting full value from their boards, often because of weak or underutilized directors. A set of best practices can help companies avoid such waste at the top.

Everyone knows conflict in the workplace is a bad thing, right? Perhaps not, answers a team of six researchers. Specifically, they found that Americans, as opposed to East Asians, seem to believe that they can overcome personal conflicts with co-workers when it comes to the pursuit of profits.I

The practice of coaching as a tool for work force and leadership development has gained popularity in recent years. In theory, coaching asks supervisors to spend more time giving constructive, individualized feedback on performance to subordinates, rather than barking orders and sending their troops to boot-camp training programs.

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.

For multinationals, it is increasingly difficult to maintain competitive advantage on the basis of the traditional economies of scale and scope. Future advantage will go to those that can stimulate and support interunit collaboration to leverage their dispersed resources.

Teams that are basically left to run themselves can be highly efficient and productive. To be successful, though, such autonomous groups require a specific type of external leadership.