Hiring people to create fake online profiles and post comments on web sites is a booming business in China. This custom-written spam “poses a concrete threat to online communities,” say researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Organizations, like people, have essential natures defined by their formative experiences, their beliefs, their knowledge bases and their core competences. Attempts at change that are in conflict with this core identity are often doomed to failure. Managers can learn to recognize such conflicts and initiate identity change to make their companies more adaptive.