Harvard Business Review July - August 2017

Public sentiment about globalization has taken a sharp turn. The election of Donald Trump, Brexit, and the rise of ultra-right parties in Europe are all signs of growing popular displeasure with the free movement of trade, capital, people, and information. Even among business leaders, doubts about the benefits of global interconnectedness surfaced during the 2008 financial meltdown and haven’t fully receded. In “Globalization in the Age of Trump” (page 112), Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor of global strategy at NYU’s Stern School and at IESE Business School, acknowledges these shifts. But he predicts that their impact will be limited, in large part because the world was never as “flat” as many thought. “The contrast between the mixed-to-positive data on actual international flows and the sharply negative swing in the discourse about globalization may…

While serving as a marketing executive at three companies in the early 2000s, Kim Whitler noticed how frequently CMOs changed jobs. When she left to study for a doctorate at Indiana University, in 2009, she began looking at why. “My research is designed to help CMOs perform and succeed,” says Whitler, now an assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School. “If this article causes just one CEO to think differently about the best way to manage the CMO role, I’ll be thrilled.” As a management consultant right out of college, Leslie Perlow was stunned by the long, unpredictable hours that she and her colleagues were putting in. Did it really have to be this way? Years later, as a professor, she did research to shed light on that question.…

HBR ARTICLE BY JOSEPH L. BOWER AND LYNN S. PAINE, MAY–JUNE The idea of shareholder primacy is rooted in agency theory, laid out by academic economists in the 1970s. Simply put, the notion is that shareholders own the corporation and, by virtue of that, have ultimate authority over its business. The authors demonstrate the flaws in the theory, particularly its inability to deal with the “accountability vacuum” that arises because shareholders—many of whom are merely shortterm investors—have no real responsibility to the companies whose stock they own. They argue that the current orthodoxy is an “extreme version of shareholder centricity” that is “confused” as a matter of law and harmful to society. It forces executives to focus excessively on the short term, weakening companies’ long-term prospects and damaging the overall economy. I…

Why You Should Have (at Least) Two Careers BY KABIR SEHGAL The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time BY JUSTIN TALBOTZORN AND LEIGH MARZ A New, More Rigorous Study Confirms: The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel BY HOLLY B. SHAKYA AND NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS Employee Burnout Is a Problem with the Company, Not the Person BY ERIC GARTON I Joined Airbnb at 52, and Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and the Tech Industry BY CHIP CONLEY If Humble People Make the Best Leaders, Why Do We Fall for Charismatic Narcissists? BY MARGARITA MAYO The Blockchain Will Do to the Financial System What the Internet Did to Media BY JOICHI ITO, NEHA NARULA, AND ROBLEH ALI…

Why do teams fail? The authors, both at Deloitte, say it comes down to differing work styles. By teaming up with Rutgers’s Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, and others, they developed an assessment that helped them identify four work-style categories: pioneers, drivers, integrators, and guardians. Most of us are composites, with one or two styles predominating. Pioneers love spontaneity and hate process; guardians love predictability and hate disorder. Those two styles may alienate each other, but they don’t have to. The key to leading productive teams is managing the four styles with greater awareness. The real challenge is how people use this data to make an impact on themselves and their organizations. When I use assessments in business settings (which I do infrequently), I point out that you should get three…

ompanies worry about employee attrition in every department, but it’s especially costly in one function: sales. Estimates of annual turnover among U.S. salespeople run as high as 27%— twice the rate in the overall labor force. In many industries, the average tenure is less than two years. While some attrition is desirable, such as when poor performers quit or are terminated, much of it isn’t—and every time a solid performer leaves, his or her company faces a number of direct and indirect costs. U.S. firms spend $15 billion a year training salespeople and another $800 billion on incentives, and attrition reduces the return on those investments. Turnover also hurts sales: Positions may sit empty while companies recruit replacements, and the new employees must learn the ropes and rebuild client relationships.…