MIT Sloan Management Review articles from September 2005

MIT Sloan Management Review archives from September 2005

The great expectations effect: asking customers about their wants increases the probability that they will be dissatisfied.(marketing)
September 22, 2005... 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. In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Marketing Research,...

Can shareholders be wrong? For boards dealing with an embattled CEO, doing nothing may pay off in the long run.(GOVERNANCE)
September 22, 2005... 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. Such lax oversight is deemed...

Predicting customer choices: recent research has greatly improved management's ability to anticipate customer wants.(RESEARCH BRIEF)(Cover Story)
September 22, 2005... 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." At the same time, in the best-selling book...

Managing stakeholder ambiguity: companies increasingly need to engage a wide range of stakeholders, but managers often underestimate the complexity of the task.(RESEARCH BRIEF)
September 22, 2005... Stakeholder management--especially that of secondary stakeholders--is becoming increasingly important in many industries, although its effects may vary from sector to sector and company to company. Multinationals, particularly in natural...

The risks of customer intimacy: too much familiarity with customers can backfire, but engaging them in multisided conversations, or "polylogues," can manage the risks and get better results.(IN PRACTICE)
September 22, 2005... In the past several years, marketers have become enthusiastic about the possibility of establishing personal relationships with their customers. They long for the return to an idealized past, when most transactions were conducted face to face...

2005-2006 Executive education planning guide.(MIT Sloan School of Management)
September 22, 2005... MIT SLOAN EXECUTIVE EDUCATION "Few if any institutions can match MIT for its range of expertise and proven track record of innovation in both management and technology. Its executive education provides the best of proven theory and...

The serious business of play: some managers are discovering that the process of purposeful play can inject much needed vitality into their organizations.(FIELDWORK)
September 22, 2005... Most managers see strategy development as serious business. The military origin of the Greek word for army generals, strategoi, suggests that strategy is meant to be rational, analytical and top-down. It is ironic, then, that some of the most...

What really drives the market? 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.(CONTRARIA)
September 22, 2005... The principle that financial markets accurately reflect the underlying value of traded stocks has been widely accepted in the investment world since the 1960s. It is predicated on the assumption that investors make buy or sell decisions based...

Achieving excellence in global sourcing: 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.
September 22, 2005... As organizations search for new and better ways to compete, global business strategies will continue to receive increasing attention. One area in which globalization can move from concept to practice is global sourcing, an advanced approach...

Creating Sustainable Local Enterprise Networks: in developing countries, examples of successful sustainable enterprise often involve informal networks that include businesses, not-for-profit organizations and communities.
September 22, 2005... In the decade between the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, the private sector's influence in...

A supply chain view of the resilient enterprise: 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.
September 22, 2005... After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. government closed the country's borders and shut down all incoming and outgoing flights. The impact on many supply lines was immediate. Ford Motor Co. had to idle several assembly...

The keys to rethinking corporate philanthropy: 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.
September 22, 2005... Corporate philanthropy has gained substantial relevance to daily business operations. In the United Kingdom alone, leading publicly traded companies made donations to nonprofit organizations in 2003 and 2004 that were valued at more than $1.6...

Managing service inventory to improve 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.
September 22, 2005... In recent years, the practice of pushing product by building inventory in anticipation of demand has fallen out of favor. Many companies have shifted to a "pull" environment, in which they build product only in response to actual demand....

The 2005 MIT Sloan Management Review/PricewaterhouseCoopers Awards.
September 22, 2005... MIT Sloan Management Review and PricewaterhouseCoopers are once again pleased to honor those articles that have contributed most significantly to the enhancement of management practice. Choosing from among the articles published in SMR in...

How should board directors evaluate themselves? Board self-evaluations are now a requirement at many companies. But what's the most effective way for directors to assess their own performance?
September 22, 2005... Board directors are facing increasing scrutiny. In the wake of the New York Stock Exchange's own scandal with its former CEO Richard Grasso, (1) the NYSE now requires the boards of all the companies it lists to conduct periodic...

Using commitments to manage across units: 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.
September 22, 2005... Executives must often manage nonroutine projects, such as integrating company mergers, filling market gaps that fall between current business units, rolling out large-scale IT systems and developing innovative solutions to new customer needs....

The coming era of "brand in the hand" marketing: the growing popularity of cell phones and other hand-held mobile devices has opened up new marketing possibilities.
September 22, 2005... Mobile marketing is the most personal medium available. People run their lives off of mobile. It's business, it's personal, it's information gathering. It's on 24/7. We call it the "brand in the hand." --Global Media Manager, Adidas...

Developing the big picture: organizations must return to cultivating strategic thinking, not just functional achievements.(OPINION)(Column)
September 22, 2005... 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...