Harvard Business Review July/August 2022

ONE PRIVILEGE OF MY job is that I meet a lot of CEOs—some for informal chats and some for interviews on The New World of Work, the program I host on LinkedIn. These interactions have given me great respect for the challenges of the role—and for the impact a good CEO can have on an organization. That’s why deciding who should lead a company has such high stakes. In this issue’s Spotlight, “Choosing Your Next CEO,” we explore how the demands of the job are changing—and how boards should respond. In “The C-Suite Skills That Matter Most,” Raffaella Sadun and three coauthors present research showing that boards are focusing less on leaders’ technical skills and more on their ability to deal with people. “Today,” they write, “firms need to hire executives…

Kasra Ferdows has studied global supply chains for roughly 25 years. “In the past decade in particular, you could not do research in this area without getting deeply involved in digital platforms,” the Georgetown University professor says. He has examined the digital platforms of a variety of companies, including IKEA, Estée Lauder, and Inditex. But after several trips to China, he and his coauthors—Hau Lee and Xiande Zhao—decided to write about the platform of Haier Group, the global appliance manufacturer, “because it was the most advanced and innovative one that we’ve seen.” “My path to philosophy was borne of confusion, a tinge of existential angst, and a very low tolerance for pacifying but flimsy arguments,” says the consultant Reid Blackman. “I wanted to figure out what ethics is all about—and how…

IVERSITY ON CORPORATE boards is an urgent priority, emphasized by company leaders and public policy agendas. For example, in 2021 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule requiring most companies on the Nasdaq exchange to have at least two directors from underrepresented groups—minority, female, or LGBTQ+—or to explain why they don’t. Such initiatives are laudable not only for reasons of fairness: Research shows that heterogeneity in groups boosts the quality of decision-making. Yet little evidence has persuasively linked increased board diversity with improved firm outcomes. A new study explores why and suggests conditions that can help. The researchers worked with the auditors of 54 U.S. public companies to code the transcripts of every board meeting from 1994 to 2006 to determine the number of minutes each director spoke. This…

John W. Rogers Jr., a co-CEO of the asset management firm Ariel Investments, quotes the American civil-rights icon John Lewis when he explains the importance of speaking out about diversity issues on corporate boards: “You have to make good trouble.” Rogers, who serves on the boards of McDonald’s, Nike, and the New York Times Company, among others, recently spoke with HBR about how to maximize the value of minority directors. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow. A new study argues that simply appointing a director or two from an underrepresented group isn’t enough to advance diversity. Do you agree? Yes, research from my own company supports that view. In September 2021 Ariel Investments commissioned a survey of the 151 Black, Latino, and Latina Fortune 500 board members who attended our Black Corporate…

GLOBAL TALENT Where It’s Easy (or Not) to Relocate Many countries have facilitated the hiring and relocation of foreign employees. For example, France offers a “talent passport” for entrepreneurs, while Japan has a visa category aimed primarily at tech workers. Two exceptions: the United States, which has hard caps in place for highly skilled workers and struggles with administrative bottlenecks, and China, which implemented strict border controls early in the pandemic. How government rules affect global relocation for skilled talent, 2021 Source: “Building a Globally Diverse Team Is Actually Getting Easier,” by Johann Harnoss, Anna Schwarz, and Martin Reeves (HBR.org, 2022) PERFORMANCE REVIEWS Sunny Skies, Clouded Thinking? You might be hoping for a sunny day when your boss writes your annual review. After all, stock returns are higher and customers tip more generously when the sun is…

Under a popular marketing strategy, managers use prices just below a round number—like $9.99, $79.95, and $399,990—because consumers tend to perceive items to be less expensive than if they were a few cents or dollars higher. New research finds an important exception: If you’re seeking to upsell customers, setting the price of the basic option at or just above a round number gets better results. The researchers set up a coffee stand on a college campus and varied the prices of a small and a large coffee over the course of two days. Some passersby saw a base price of $.95 and $1.20 for the upgrade, while others saw prices of $1.00 and $1.25. Just 29% of purchasers who saw the first set of prices bought the large coffee, versus 56%…