A semiannual magazine for business leaders

Featured Articles

Stimulus Spending and Transparency: A False Sense of Security?
David Williams
A $787 billion U.S. government stimulus package presents vast opportunities for businesses. But there are strings attached. Many companies may underestimate the government’s intent to show accountability to the electorate and to weed out fraud. Whether by miscalculation or simple misunderstanding of how far government mandates extend, failure to comply could leave unsuspecting companies vulnerable.

The Long Unwinding Road
Global consumers and the economic imbalance
Ira Kalish
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” wrote economist Herbert Stein. In some ways, that describes the borrowing-saving imbalance in the global economy. While it may not stop soon, it is unlikely to increase and may wane. There are several scenarios through which the imbalance might be corrected, and the unwinding of that imbalance may well lead to a new path for global consumer spending.

Money and Borders
Cross-border investments in a changing global marketplace
Robert Kimmitt, Mark Garay and Dwight Allen
Governments appear to have become bigger players in economic affairs, and we may be entering an era in which nationalist ambitions will make globalization more difficult to manage. What is clear is the need for companies and funds pursuing cross-border investments to adapt their investment strategies and operations to function effectively at the intersection of government, business and finance.

Talking About Whose Generation?
Why Western generational models can’t account for a global workforce
David Hole, Le Zhong and Jeff Schwartz
Differences between generations can affect the way organizations recruit and build teams, deal with change, motivate and manage people, and boost productivity and service effectiveness. Yet global companies often oversimplify their talent strategies, basing decisions on an incomplete picture of their global workforces by assuming the same generations exist across the countries where they operate.

Post Merger Integration: Hard Data, Hard Truths
Johannes Gerds and Freddy Strottmann with Pakshalika Jayaprakash
Much common wisdom surrounding post merger integration is anecdotal, at best. An empirical examination of one of the world’s largest PMI databases suggests a set of risk factors that help define risk profiles, with each profile having a unique statistical likelihood of success and failure even before any integration measures have been implemented. These profiles can point to crucial areas on which to focus.

Lock it Up or Set it Free?
A risk intelligent approach to data and intellectual property
Ted DeZabala
Businesses collect mountains of data and spend vast sums storing and protecting them. Yet excess data carry a steep price tag for storage, maintenance, and protection, and incalculable potential costs in terms of liability. Similarly, most companies guard their intellectual property at great expense. Yet many efforts to safeguard intellection property are ineffectual or even counterproductive – depressing the value of that which they hope to protect.

Survival of the Fattest
Michael Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed and James Guszcza
Over the last 40 years, a gradual shift in the shape of winning and losing has been playing out. The best performing firms have seen their profitability surge. The worst performing are doing worse than ever. In the middle, however, performance is in decline even as the asset base controlled by ever more mediocre firms relegates ever greater quantities of assets to stagnation.

If We Can Put a Man on the Moon
An excerpt from a new book on getting big things done in government
William D. Eggers and John O’Leary
Government is taking a larger role in commerce and new roles in automobile manufacturing, finance and, potentially, health care. Media coverage focuses on partisan disagreements that impede government action. There are approaches, however, that can enable the two camps to constructively work through differences, and these strategies can also be helpful when competing visions are at play in the private sector.

On Public-Private Partnerships
A Conversation with Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley
William D. Eggers
In April, 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton established the Global Partnership Initiative and subsequently appointed Elizabeth Bagley as the first Special Representative for Global Partnerships. The goal: to enhance the ability of the State Department to work with foundations, corporations and non-governmental organizations on issues of common importance to the public and private sectors.

Judgment Sustained 
Shelley Barrows, Vikram Mahidhar and Ajit Kambil 

A Web Exclusive Article

Befuddling human biases can cloud our judgment and turn good intentions into bad decisions. Organizations have everything to lose — even from seemingly subtle lapses. While judgment is far from formulaic, a judgment framework can help us recognize the biases that cloud our thinking, evaluate our options and our actions with more acumen, and become better decision makers.