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Purpose The author argues that the model for the management of the U.S. economy and businesses – one that assumes that they can be run like machines –is producing outcomes that neither were anticipated nor are desired. Design/methodology/approach The model of a perfectible machine needs to be supplanted by a model of a complex adaptive system in order to turnaround the performance of the economy and its companies. Findings In businesses, unrestrained pursuit of efficiency has had an unexpected and unintended effect. Practical implications One important way to design for complexity is to adopt multiple internally contradictory proxies for success. Originality/value Offers a critical insight for corporate leaders: The U.S. economy is not a perfectible machine: it is a complex adaptive system. Companies are not perfectible machines: they are complex adaptive systems. To produce better outcomes, leaders need to design for each element – complexity, adaptability and systemic nature.

Purpose The authors translate their the concept of integrative thinking into a repeatable methodology, supported by a set of tools for thinking through difficult or “wicked“ problems, a process that offers a better chance of rejecting false choices and of finding a way through to an innovative alternative. Design/methodology/approach The authors divide their process into four phases. A case example illustrates each phase. Findings The four phases that make up the integrative thinking 10;process: articulating opposing ways to solve a vexing problem; analyzing those opposing models to truly understand them; attempting to resolve the antithetical approaches of the opposing models by creating new models that contain elements of the original alternatives but are superior to either one and testing the potential new solutions. Research limitations/implications Additional examples and detailed guidance is provided in the authors new book “Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking,” (Harvard Business School Press, 2017). Practical implications Several corporate examples of “wicked” problems to which integrative thinking might be applied are: After a merger, the combined sales organization is riven by dissension between proponents of two opposite approaches – one using direct sales and the other channel partners. The CEO of a retail bank struggling to manage the conflicting goals of increasing efficiency and improving customer service. Originality/value Applied thoughtfully, this new and tested methodology gives leaders at all levels a fighting chance at solving challenging problems and creating breakthrough choices.

PurposeThe paper aims to explain how Procter & Gamble's new strategy review meeting structure and new inquiry culture established a new norm for communication between leaders and their teams throughout the organization.Design/methodology/approachThe authors, one a former P&G CEO and the other a long‐time consultant to the firm, describe how the firm instituted a robust process for creating, reviewing and communicating about strategy.FindingsThe P&G process was designed to open a dialog between top management and the leaders of each business to discuss five strategic choices. What is your winning aspiration? Where will you play? How will you win? What capabilities must be in place? What management systems are required?Practical implicationsAt P&G the Objectives, Goals, Strategy, Measures (OGSM) statement for a brand, category, or company was the framework for articulating a clear and explicit expression of where to play and how to win, choices that connected with the aspirations of the business and the measures of success indicated.Originality/valueThe paper explains the learning and communication techniques P&G used to foster an authentic, effective company‐wide dialog about strategy.

SSRN papers, 8 p.; From the early decades of the twentieth century, a dominant characteristic of the modern "capitalist" corporation, especially in the United States, was the separation of asset ownership in the form of publicly traded shares from allocative control over the corporation’s resources by salaried managers. By the 1950s some depicted managerial-controlled large enterprise as the "soulful" corporation in which the allocation of resources resulted in enhanced social welfare. In the 1960s, however, some conservative academics looked to market forces, dubbed the "market for corporate control", to ensure that managers as employees would give primacy to shareholders in the allocation of corporate resources. This market for corporate control could enable hostile takeovers in which shareholders who accumulated large public equity stakes in a company could discipline managers to allocate resources in ways that "the market" deemed to be efficient. The notion that market allocation could control managerial organization was then developed theoretically based on the conceptualisation that the corporation (and indeed any firm) could be conceptualised as a "nexus of contracts" or a "collection of assets". Rather than view the corporation as a social organization with its unique history and competitive capabilities in which public shareholders had come to play a peripheral role, neoclassical economists conceptualised the corporation as a set of voluntary contracts among owners of resources and as a portfolio of assets with different market-determined rates of returns. This conceptualisation of the corporation to fit with the dominant neoclassical theory of the market economy had implications. We provide this Summary of certain fundamentals of economics in an effort to help prevent analytical errors which can have severe and damaging effects on corporations.

Pearce and Huang have written an article that chronicles the low and declining incidence of actionable research in two of the top managerial journals. In this paper, I quantify the cost of producti...

PurposeThe paper aims to argue that stock‐based compensation for top leaders is a very recent phenomenon that is associated with lower shareholder returns, bubbles and crashes and huge corporate scandals and that it is time to bring an end to it and find a better, more authentic approach that will enable corporations, stakeholders and the financial community to thrive.Design/methodology/approachThe paper details how many executives engage in a dangerous and little‐discussed practice that comes very close to the line of illegality, one that betrays the spirit of securities laws and accounting regulation: earnings management. It concludes that far too many corporate leaders are now using their talents and corporate resources to smooth earnings, and bump up the stock price, rather than to build their companies.FindingsThe paper proposes that corporations find a way to restore the focus of the executive on the real market and on an authentic life by eliminating the use of stock‐based compensation as an incentive.Practical implicationsThe author's remedy: top executives should be prevented from selling any stock – for any reason – while serving as a corporate leader, and indeed for several years after leaving their post.Originality/valueThe author calls for an end to stock‐based compensation because it is associated with lower shareholder returns, bubbles and crashes and huge corporate scandals.

In this paper, we look at the development of the set of core corporate social responsibility (CSR) theories in response to Friedman's ascendancy. We assess the impact of the current economic collapse on theories built on this dialectical framework. Finally, we suggest where we might find new theoretical underpinnings for the next generation of CSR that can meet the challenges not only of the current financial crisis, but the looming ecological and geopolitical crises.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain how, in the future, the most successful business innovation efforts will balance analytical mastery and intuitive originality in a dynamic interplay that the author calls “design thinking.””Design/methodology/approachAs a useful way to think about how to do this the paper takes the reader step‐by‐step through the “knowledge funnel” concept.FindingsDesign thinking empowers the design of business, the directed movement of a business through the knowledge funnel – from mystery to heuristic to algorithm – and then the utilization of the resulting efficiency to tackle the next mystery and the next and the next.Practical implicationsThe apaper suggests that the velocity of movement through the knowledge funnel, powered by design thinking, is the most powerful formula for competitive advantage in the twenty‐first century.Originality/valueThe paper has a radical thesis: to advance knowledge, we must turn away from our standard definitions of proof – and from the false certainty of the past – and instead stare into the mystery of what could be.

Purpose – As design becomes more important for business, designers and business people need to work together more. However, they tend to find the relationship difficult, challenging and less productive than either side would wish. The purpose of this paper is to help both designers and business people work more productively with one another. Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies the underlying schism between validity, which is favored by designers, and reliability, which is favored by business people, as the source of the relationship conflict. It then uses the key attributes of validity and reliability to form recommendations for each side to deal better with their counterparts. Findings – There are five practical and actionable things that designers can do to work better with business people and five equivalent things that business people can do to work better with designers. Originality/value – Currently, neither business people nor designers have a productive or coherent theory as to why their counterparts behave in ways that appear to them to be unproductive. To fill the theory gap, they tend to think badly of their counterparts. This paper provides both sides a productive theory of the other and a prescription for utilizing the theory to promote more productive collaboration.

Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, is interviewed on the subject of “design thinking”—approaching managerial problems as designers approach design problem...

This chapter aims to advance economic development theory through the concept of jurisdictional advantage; demonstrating how places might strategically position themselves to gain economic advantage; then considering how this place-specific advantage might be constructed. We choose the term “jurisdiction” to define the set of actors that have a common interest in a spatially bound community. Jurisdictions are entities with a legitimate political ability to influence social and economic outcomes within their boundaries. Borrowing from the literature on corporate strategy, the uniqueness of local capabilities becomes a source of advantage for jurisdictions. We consider how to measure and construct jurisdictional advantage.

In 2011, the New York Stock Exchange opened a new outpost in Mahwah, New Jersey, a bucolic township of 25,000 inhabitants about an hour’s drive north of Wall Street. One reason for creating the facility was pretty standard. Trading technology infrastructure takes up a lot of space, so moving it from expensive Manhattan to low-cost Mahwah saves money for the exchange. But another reason for the move was more novel. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) built the facility big enough to lease out space to third parties that derived new revenue in addition to the cost savings. But who on earth wants to lease space in an NYSE facility in rural New Jersey? Turns out, finding takers was not a problem. In fact, trading firms were very eager for the opportunity. These firms understood that having their server in close proximity to the NYSE’s servers created a speed advantage; it meant that trades from their co-located servers would reach the NYSE’s servers a few milliseconds faster than trades from servers not in the facility.

Purpose– This paper aims to marry Michael Porter’s industrial cluster theory of traded and local clusters to Richard Florida’s occupational approach of creative and routine workers to gain a better understanding of the process of economic development.Design/methodology/approach– Combining these two approaches, four major industrial-occupational categories are identified. The shares of US employment in each – creative-in-traded, creative-in-local, routine-in-traded and routine-in-local – are calculated, and a correlation analysis is used to examine the relationship of each to regional economic development indicators.Findings– Economic growth and development is positively related to employment in the creative-in-traded category. While metros with a higher share of creative-in-traded employment enjoy higher wages and incomes overall, these benefits are not experienced by all worker categories. The share of creative-in-traded employment is also positively and significantly associated with higher inequality. After accounting for higher median housing costs, routine workers in both traded and local industries are found to be relatively worse off in metros with high shares of creative-in-traded employment, on average.Social implications– This work points to the imperative for the US Government and industry to upgrade routine jobs, which make up the majority of all employment, by increasing the creative content of this work.Originality/value– The research is among the first to systematically marry the industry and occupational approaches to clusters and economic development.

The regulation of putrescine transport in difluoromethylornithine-treated B16 melanoma cells by extracellular Ca2+ has been investigated. It was found that physiological concentrations of Ca2+ were essential for optimum uptake of putrescine and spermidine. Mg2+, albeit at higher concentrations, also could potentiate polyamine transport. The maximum rate of putrescine uptake increased from 1698 +/-: 67 pmol/min/mg DNA in the absence of Ca2+ to 3100 +/- 98 pmol/min/mg DNA in the presence of 0.5 mM Ca2+. There was no change in K-m. While Ca2+ enhanced transport of both putrescine and spermidine it did not affect the uptake of deoxyglucose, thymidine or leucine. Putrescine did not alter Ca2+ fluxes suggesting that the two cations do not share a common transport system. The effects of Ca2+ on putrescine uptake appeared to be mediated extracellularly firstly because Ca2+ did not potentiate putrescine uptake in the presence of A23187 and secondly, because the effects of Ca2+ were completely inhibited by the lanthanide Tb3+, which binds to calcium-dependent proteins and does not readily cross biological membranes. Ca2+ did not affect putrescine transport in the absence of extracellular Na+. Moreover, the rate of putrescine uptake in the absence of Ca2+ was similar to that in the absence of extracellular Na+. The results from this study indicate that polyamine transport is stimulated by extracellular Ca2+ and suggest that Ca2+ is required for activity of the Na+-dependent transporter only. This transporter appears to possess a regulatory binding site for divalent cations. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.

Although the physiological role of the immunophilins cyclophilin-40 and FKBP52 is unknown, their identification as components of the unactivated estrogen receptor has raised the possibility that they might influence receptor activity in response to the binding of immunosuppressants cyclosporin A and FK506, respectively. We have used Northern analysis to determine the influence of cyclosporin A on the expression of the estrogen-inducible cathepsin D gene in human MCF7 breast cancer cells. We report that 1-3 microM cyclosporin A can potentiate cathepsin D mRNA expression by up to 2-fold in cells treated with 10(-12) to 10(-10) M estradiol. A decreased potentiation effect was noted at higher hormone concentrations. Cyclosporin A alone was unable to induce cathepsin D expression and the increased gene activation observed with combined estradiol/cyclosporin A treatment was negated by the antiestrogen ICI 164,384. Our results suggest that the increased potency of estradiol in the presence of cyclosporin A is associated with an enhanced transcriptional activity of the estrogen receptor and support a role for receptor-associated cyclophilin-40 in the activation process.

In this paper, we explore the emergence of an alliance between Australia and Canada, an alliance that helped to derail climate change negotiations at two international meetings in 2013. We hypothesise that carbon-based industries create policy ties to national governments in order to forestall regulation, using negotiators to create a global policy corral (Barley, 2010). We use three events in 2009 that increased risks to carbon-based industries as a natural experiment: the change in the US presidency, the onset of the Great Recession and the sudden rise in Chinese investment in photovoltaics. Using panel data, we create a model for the impact of social, political and environmental factors and for the changing influence of industries. We find that the correlation between national carbon assets and climate policy increases in these two countries after 2009, suggesting that corporate interests were able to incorporate these governments into new international policy corrals.

Contents Part 1 Chapter 1 What are competitiveness and prosperity? Chapter 2 How much are we working for prosperity? Chapter 3 How much value are we creating when we are working? Part 2 Chapter 4 How does where we live and work matter? Chapter 5 How do we compete? Chapter 6 How do we invest? Part 3 Chapter 7 Tax smarter for prosperity. Chapter 8 Gear public policy toward innovation. Chapter 9 Bulk up, not hollow out. Chapter 10 Strengthen our management talent. Chapter 11 Become a true trading nation. Chapter 12 Make greater inroads

Many managers feel doomed to trade off the futile rigor of ordinary strategic planning for the hit-or-miss creativity of the alternatives. In fact, the two can be reconciled to produce novel but realistic strategies. The key is to recognize that conventional strategic planning, for all its analysis, is not actually scientific-it lacks the careful generation and testing of hypotheses that are at the heart of the scientific method. The authors outline a strategy-making process that combines rigor and creativity. A team begins by formulating options, or possibilities, and asks what must be true for each to succeed. Once it has listed all the conditions, it assesses their likelihood and thereby identifies the barriers to each choice. The team then tests the key barrier conditions to see which hold true. From here, choosing a strategy is simple: The group need only review the test results and choose the possibility with the fewest serious barriers. This is the path PG took in the late 1990s, when it was looking to become a major global player in skin care. After testing the barrier conditions for several possibilities, it opted for a bold strategy that might never have surfaced in the traditional process: reinventing Olay as a prestigelike product also sold to mass consumers. The new Olay succeeded beyond expectations-showing what can happen when teams shift from asking "What is the right answer" and focus instead on figuring out "What are the right questions?".

A few years ago the software development company Intuit realized that it needed a new approach to galvanizing customers. The company's Net Promoter Score was faltering, and customer recommendations of new products were especially disappointing. Intuit decided to hold a two-day, off-site meeting for the company's top 300 managers with a focus on the role of design in innovation. One of the days was dedicated to a program called Design for Delight. The centerpiece of the day was a PowerPoint presentation by Intuit founder Scott Cook, who realized midway through that he was no Steve Jobs: The managers listened dutifully, but there was little energy in the room. By contrast, a subsequent exercise in which the participants worked through a design challenge by creating prototypes, getting feedback, iterating, and refining, had them mesmerized. The eventual result was the creation of a team of nine design-thinking coaches--"innovation catalysts"--from across Intuit who were made available to help any work group create prototypes, run experiments, and learn from customers. The process includes a "painstorm" (to determine the customer's greatest pain point), a "soljam" (to generate and then winnow possible solutions), and a "code-jam" (to write code "good enough" to take to customers within two weeks). Design for Delight has enabled employees throughout Intuit to move from satisfying customers to delighting them.

The realization of a strategy depends on countless employees. So it's no surprise that when a strategy fails, the reason cited is usually poor execution. But this view of strategy and execution relies on a false metaphor in which senior management is a choosing brain while those in the rest of the company are choiceless arms and legs that merely carry out the brain's bidding. The approach does damage to the corporation because it alienates the people working for it. A better metaphor for strategy is a white-water river, in which choices cascade from its source in the mountains (the corporation) to its mouth (the rest of the organization). Executives at the top make the broader choices involving long-term investments while empowering employees toward the bottom to make more concrete, day-to-day decisions that directly influence customer service and satisfaction. For the cascade to flow properly, a choice maker upstream can set the context for those downstream by doing four things: explaining what the choice is and why it's been made, clearly identifying the next downstream choice, offering help with making choices as needed, and committing to revisit and adjust the choice based on feedback. When downstream choices are valued and feedback is encouraged, employees send information upward, improving the knowledge base of decision makers higher up and helping everyone in the organization make better choices.

Previous studies in which investigators have induced the rate of polyamine uptake in vitro have used either inhibitors of polyamine biosynthesis or growth factors that induce cell proliferation. Recently, however, we have described the induction of putrescine uptake in cultured adult mouse hepatocytes and have shown that uptake is independent of both intracellular polyamine levels and proliferation. Although proliferation was not apparent in those studies, data suggested that, after isolation, the cells entered G of the cell cycle. In this study, we have examined whether the induction of putrescine uptake is a function of entry into the cell cycle and whether uptake activity is essential for optimal progression into the S phase. Using ribonuclease reductase subunit M1 as a marker of entry into the cell cycle, we have shown that hepatocytes enter G during the first 4 hr of culture. Both putrescine uptake and ornithine decarboxylase activity increased as the cells entered G. Treatment of the cells with retinoic acid (10 to 33 μmol/L) prevented them from entering G and also inhibited the induction of the putrescine transporter by up to 90%. In contrast, initiation of G to S phase transition markedly down‐regulated the activity of the transporter. Thus induction of the putrescine transporter in isolated hepatocytes appears to be a G‐specific event. Culturing the hepatocytes in the presence of 1,1′‐bis[3‐(1′‐methyl‐[4,4′‐bipyridinium]‐1‐yl)‐propyl]‐4,4′‐bipyridinium, a potent competitive inhibitor of putrescine uptake, resulted in a 47% decrease in intracellular putrescine. Measurement of the distribution of tracer H polyamines showed a loss of intracellular polyamines and an accumulation of extracellular polyamines when cells were treated with 1,1′‐bis[3‐(1′‐methyl‐[4,4′‐bipyridinium]‐1‐yl)‐propyl]‐4,4′‐bipyridinium, indicating that the re‐uptake of effluxed polyamines contributes to intracellular polyamine homeostasis in cultured hepatocytes. DNA synthesis was significantly inhibited in 1,1′‐bis[3‐(1′‐methyl‐[4,4′‐bipyridinium]‐1‐yl)‐propyl]‐4,4′‐bipyridinium–treated cells, and this effect was completely reversed by the addition of 200 μmol/L extracellular putrescine. We concluded that putrescine uptake is important for maintaining high intracellular putrescine levels required for optimal G to S phase transition in isolated mouse hepatocytes. (HEPATOLOGY 1991;14:1243–1250.)

The uptake of intracellular putrescine and spermidine was examined in B16 melanoma cells. It was found that difluoromethylornithine preferentially induced putrescine transport (28-fold) compared to that for spermidine (3.5-fold). Putrescine uptake was partially Na+ dependent, whereas spermidine uptake was not. Inhibition studies with the two polyamines showed that putrescine was a poor competitive inhibitor of spermidine uptake, exhibiting a Ki of 69-75 microM, whereas the estimated Km for putrescine uptake was only 5.36 microM. By contrast, spermidine inhibition of putrescine transport produced a non-linear Eadie-Scatchard plot suggesting that putrescine was taken up by a spermidine-sensitive and a spermidine-insensitive process. The estimated spermidine Ki for inhibition of the spermidine-sensitive process was 0.125 microM. Using a series of polypyridinium quaternary salts to inhibit transport, no correlation between inhibition of putrescine uptake and inhibition of spermidine uptake was seen. Finally, the photoaffinity label, 1,12-di(N5-azido-2-nitrobenzoyl)spermine selectively inactivated the putrescine transporter(s) without affecting spermidine uptake. From these observations, it was concluded that multiple polyamine transporters are present on B16 melanoma cells and that separate, distinct transporter(s) account for the uptake of putrescine and spermidine in this cell-line following induction with difluoromethylornithine. The present of different transporters for the two polyamines indicates that expression of uptake activity for putrescine and spermidine may be under separate cellular control.

OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy of genetic testing of individuals presenting with features possibly indicative of von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease, regardless of other relevant family and clinical details. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Between September 1994 and December 1997, 16 unrelated individuals were referred to Genetic Services of Western Australia by local clinicians and by similar genetic services in other States, for VHL gene mutation analysis because of clinical manifestations suggestive of the diagnosis. METHODS The subjects were investigated by screening for mutations in the polymerase chain reaction products of the three VHL gene exons using single-stranded conformational polymorphism analysis (SSCP). If no mutations were detected the exons were sequenced, and if no variations were found DNA was examined by Southern analysis for germinal rearrangements. RESULTS Mutations in the VHL gene were detected in eight of 16 individuals (50%), including 3 individuals with no family history suggestive of VHL disease. Five mutations were detected by SSCP, two by gene sequencing and one by Southern analysis. Each mutation occurred only in a single family and three had not been previously reported. CONCLUSION Genetic screening of individuals presenting with clinical features suggestive of VHL facilitates confirmation of the diagnosis, accurate genetic counselling and surveillance of at-risk family members. The necessity for costly and time-consuming screening programs can be reduced and screening directed at those carrying the mutation. Our low stringency criteria are justified for screening for VHL mutations.

In this symposium, we bring together diverse perspectives regarding governance of business and social implications for inequality and growth and wealth of nations. The panelists include management ...

Executives who want to make their organizations better corporate citizens face many obstacles: If they undertake costly initiatives that their rivals don't embrace, they risk eroding their company's competitive position. If they invite government oversight, they may be hampered by costly regulations. And if they adopt wage scales and working conditions that prevail in the wealthiest democracies, they may drive jobs to countries with less stringent standards. Such dilemmas call for clear, hard thinking. To aid in that undertaking, Roger Martin introduces the virtue matrix--a tool to help executives analyze corporate responsibility by viewing it as a product or service. The author uses real-life examples to explore the forms and degrees of corporate virtue. He cites Aaron Feuerstein, CEO of Malden Mills, a textile company whose plant was destroyed by fire in 1995. Rather than move operations to a lower-wage region, Feuerstein continued to pay his idled workforce and rebuilt the plant. Unlike the typical CEO of a publicly held corporation, who is accountable to hundreds or thousands of shareholders, Feuerstein was free to act so generously because he had only a few family members to answer to. But as Martin points out, corporations don't operate in a universe composed solely of shareholders. They can be subject to pressure from citizens, employees, and political authorities. The virtue matrix provides a way to assess these forces and how they interact. Martin uses it to examine why the public clamor for more responsible corporate conduct never seems to abate. Another issue the author confronts is anxiety over globalization. Finally, Martin applies the virtue matrix to two crucial questions: What are the barriers to increasing the supply of corporate virtue? And what can companies do to remove those barriers?