MIT Sloan Management Review Fall 2017

As CEO advisor Dan Ciampa explains in a column in this issue, successful organizational transformation requires a compelling vision — a tangible and engaging view of the future that people can believe in and find energizing. What will success look like in our new world? How will we achieve our organizational goals? Vision gets a change effort started. But change is not executed by a vision; it is executed by individuals. No matter how smart the strategy and how well articulated the plan, only people can bring about actual change. And given that we live in a world in which the unknowns have no end in sight, our ability to embrace the demands of change — and of personal transformation — are prerequisites for professional survival. What does it take, then, to…

This year’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize goes to the summer 2016 MIT SMR article by Emilio J. Castilla, “Achieving Meritocracy in the Workplace.” In this article, the author offers important insights into how workplace meritocracies can be fostered, implemented, and sustained over time so that employees and job applicants are judged according to their efforts, skills, and performance regardless of race, gender, class, national origin, or sexual orientation. Despite the prevalence of merit-based reward policies in organizations in recent decades, demographic biases — both explicit and implicit — are still common. Why? Castilla, the NTU Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, found that managers who believe their organization has formal mechanisms to ensure meritocracy are more likely to display the biases that such systems are designed to forestall;…

We all know that colds, the flu, and other diseases are contagious. They spread from one person to another, with different individuals displaying varying degrees of susceptibility. Similarly, ideas and information can be contagious. Online social networks like Facebook and Twitter amplify the spread of concepts and content — sometimes to such a degree that they’re said to be “going viral.” This phenomenon can play a role in marketing, as customers spread awareness of and interest in products through word-of-mouth interactions. Such social interactions form the basis for network-based demand shifts for specific products. However, today’s platforms can also enable demand to spread across different and potentially competing products. Online retail platforms like Amazon.com provide product recommendations, noting, for instance, on the landing page of Product A that people who bought…

Even when faced with evidence that an algorithm will deliver better results than human judgment, we consistently choose to follow our own minds. Why? MIT Sloan Management Review editor in chief Paul Michelman sat down with Berkeley Dietvorst, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, to discuss a phenomenon Dietvorst has studied in great detail. (See “Related Research.”) What follows is an edited and condensed version of their conversation. MIT Sloan Management Review: What prompted you to investigate people’s acceptance or lack thereof of algorithms in decision-making? Dietvorst: When I was a Ph.D. student, some of my favorite papers were old works by [the late psychology scholar and behavioral decision research expert] Robyn Dawes showing that algorithms outperform human experts at making certain types of predictions. The algorithms…

Hanesbrands Inc., a manufacturer and marketer of basic apparel based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is using analytics to close the gap between insight and supply chain responsiveness. For example, the company recognizes that knowledge of a shortage of men’s T-shirts two weeks from now is of no benefit if the minimum lead time necessary to acquire more T-shirts is four weeks. So Hanesbrands is turning to machine learning to design predictive models to sense supply chain issues in time to execute prescriptive measures. The predictive models incorporate supply chain data from external and internal sources to determine the likelihood of an inability to satisfy demand at a particular time. Once an impending supply chain issue is detected, a prescriptive action can be launched to mitigate it. For example, if an inventory…

What distinguishes companies that have built advanced digital capabilities? The ability to collaborate. MIT Sloan Management Review’s research finds that a focus on collaboration — both within organizations and with external partners and stakeholders — is central to how digitally advanced companies create business value and establish competitive advantage. These companies recognize that digital transformation blurs — and sometimes obliterates — traditional organizational boundaries and demands a focus on cooperation and collaboration that is unprecedented for most enterprises. The broad implications of this finding are evident in three separate research projects MIT SMR conducted over the past three years: a recent survey-based research report on digital business trends, “Achieving Digital Maturity,” produced in partnership with Deloitte Digital; a separate survey-based research project focused on the internet of things (IoT); and a…