We are living in a world of change. Change can take place inside or outside an organization. Change can be sudden and unexpected…
By Nils Plambeck
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. (Heraclitus) This special online issue of Knowledge@HEC invites you to reflect upon change, and how individuals, firms, institutions, and the broader society deal with it.
By Giada Di Stefano
Within the last 30 years, Shanghai has been through a dramatic evolution similar to the one that Paris has experienced for more than a century. This phenomenon has had a considerable impact on both life experience and the business environment. For 5 months, I conducted one-of-a-kind field research on how people in Shanghai experience what can be called “super-acceleration”. This experience, closely tied to a feeling of short-termism, can be defined as the fast expiry of trustable bearings.
This latest Knowledge@HEC Journal is the result of a collaboration with HEC Paris Executive Education team in Qatar on how to embrace change with a pluridisciplinary approach. "As a member of the Qatar Foundation, we have the great pleasure of supporting its mission to nurture the future leaders of Qatar, and contributing to human development nationally, regionally, and internationally", Nils Plambeck, Professor of Strategy and Business Policy, Dean and CEO of Executive Education at HEC Paris in Qatar.
Should teams be hierarchical, with clear task delegation, or should they be flexible and self-organizing? So far, literature and practice offer as many examples as counter-examples in favor of each model. By distinguishing between the types of tasks and the coordination each require, a new study of software development teams is able to recommend the best configuration for successful teamwork – a finding potentially applicable to any domain.
By Sri Kudaravalli
The ambition to change the world is at the heart of the most innovative entrepreneurial endeavors – be they those of Ford, yesterday, or, today, of Google. Nevertheless, an established company that nurtures such an ambition must also reinvent itself. Today, social business is the new frontier, in that it combines an ambition for development and the conquest of new markets. So, can environmental and social innovations become the levers of a transformation of big companies, not only improving their performance but also contributing to the invention of a new, more sustainable and more inclusive economy? The example of Danone provides a concrete framework to study the initiatives taken by multinational companies from first-world countries to address the low-income populations from emerging countries.
By Daniel Brown
Hiring new talent seems good for business: you get fresh ideas, specialist skills and your pick of the talent pool (perhaps even poached from competitors). John Mawdsley argues, however, that the win-lose model of employee mobility is too simplistic. His research reveals a complex situation where the actual impact of hiring depends on myriad internal and external influences. One of his key takeaways is that companies should look more at themselves and less at CVs when they decide to recruit.
By John Mawdsley
