MIT Sloan Management Review

It”s time to bring morality back into finance – and time for business leaders to take risk seriously.

What really precipitated the global financial crisis?

To understand the financial crisis, view it as a systems accident.

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.

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.

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.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Three methods for obtaining vital information before the deal happens.

Often companies” budgeting processes don”t result in capital being invested optimally. The reason may be that strong personalities trump even well-designed systems. The authors profile five archetypes of bad behavior that line managers use to subvert logical decision making in order to grab resources. They also show how to counteract such behavior and instill values that lead to better use of investment capital.

In recent years, few business topics have commanded as much research and media attention as mergers and acquisitions, perhaps because of the sheer volume of M&A activity: the value of U.S. merger activity equaled around 16% of GDP in 1999 (Bengt Holmstrom and Steven Kaplan, 2001), and the value of M&A worldwide reached a peak [...]

Europeans and Americans have traditionally viewed bankruptcy and financial recovery differently. There”s a commitment in the United States to explore options for a “second chance”