Business Horizons最新文献

Loneliness is a rampant and modern epidemic that affects the majority of employed adults and shows no signs of subsiding. Loneliness not only contributes to numerous health problems—including anxiety, depression, heart failure, and suicide—but can also cause greater employee stress, cynicism, distrust, and decreased job performance, as well as higher turnover and absenteeism. Loneliness-prompted absenteeism singlehandedly costs employers billions of dollars a year in lost productivity. Consequently, understanding and managing workplace loneliness is of paramount importance for leaders. A review of the causes and outcomes associated with workplace loneliness is provided in this article, as well as three evidence-based interventions that can help reduce workplace loneliness: (1) fostering opportunities for relationship building, (2) increasing support around evolving work contexts, and (3) fortifying a people-focused organizational culture. By presenting research-based guidance, we help leaders combat on-the-job loneliness faced by employees, as well as managers; generate healthier work environments; and cultivate improved individual, team, and organizational performance.

Executives and organizations seeking to portray an image of competence and integrity should be careful what they wish for, given the state of modern media. Rather than being a passive conduit for one’s image, today’s media is much more activist and exerts substantial influence over the construction, reconstruction, and destruction of image. In studying the media’s rapid transformation of one such glowing image in the wake of a scandal, we identified three key processes by which the media transforms image. These processes are relevant to a wide range of contexts. Perhaps most intriguing is the discovery that the media can leverage an existing, recessive narrative and convert it into a dominant one. This intriguing finding suggests that the pursuit of a glowing image might inadvertently sow the seeds of future destruction. In the heat of a scandal, executives and organizations are likely to struggle with countering the media’s image-altering processes. Our findings imply a need for more careful, nuanced, and engaged image management both during a scandal and before scandal hits.

The market for behavioral biometrics—a technological evolution whereby patterns in human movement and activities can be identified, captured, and analyzed—is expected to exceed US $11 billion by 2031. We highlight the evolution from early physiological biometrics (e.g., fingerprints and iris scans used to verify the identity of individuals) to today’s behavioral biometrics. Technological advancements now turn our retail stores, offices, and warehouses into live data streams that let us closely and automatically monitor employees’ conduct at work. Although this development raises several legitimate surveillance and privacy concerns, behavioral biometrics can potentially benefit organizations and employees alike. Such mutual benefits compel managers to approach behavioral biometrics using our TRUST framework: transparency of intentions, respect for concerns, understanding the importance of choice, sharing the data benefits, and proactively timing the development. Managers who do so will gain a clear focus on organizational and employee well-being.

During the summer of 2022, carmaker BMW introduced postpurchase, subscription-based “functions on demand,” and the online response was furious. Having purchased a car with functionalities preinstalled, consumers expect to use the functionalities as and when they wish and without additional charges. BMW was changing this norm and so became the object of derision. We live in an age of “x as a service” and amid a subscription economy, and electronics and software are making their way into all kinds of products—products that are connected to the internet at all times, controlled through apps on mobile devices, and subject to the product maker’s “off” and “on” instructions. “Preinstalled functionality as a service” is now technologically possible, the economic pull of recurring revenue is enticing, and perhaps BMW should not be blamed: We are possibly at the threshold of a new way of thinking about durable products and their preinstalled bundle of functions. This article introduces the concept of preinstalled functionality as a service and characterizes how this business-model innovation changes the concepts of durable products, product lines, after-purchase add-ons, and functionality usage rights. I conclude by examining whether and how the innovation may be implemented.

Current research underscores how a college education can reflect broader social inequality via the disproportionate flow of resources to elite universities and advantaged students. In contrast, underresourced comprehensive universities disproportionately serve minority, first-generation, and working-class students. This article argues that the comprehensive university is uniquely positioned to reduce social inequality and that the comprehensive university undergraduate business school (CUUBS) should test a new approach to education. The article also advocates a substantive response to social inequality by (1) focusing on undergraduate business education within comprehensive universities rather than MBA programs in well-funded, elite business schools, (2) implementing a strategic emphasis on career-related jobs (CRJs) for underrepresented students, and (3) helping students pursue CRJs via the development of a Social Capital Academy (SCA). This article describes the benefits of an SCA for underrepresented students, its requirements and benefits for universities and business communities, and the possibilities for scaling the program to address social inequality. Future applications of the SCA to STEM-related fields are also explored.

Acquisitions are notoriously difficult to execute successfully. Poor implementation of the postacquisition integration process is a major source of acquisition value destruction. To find new solutions for this vexing problem, we leverage the emerging, triadic view of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities, which emphasizes the interconnectedness between sellers, acquirers, and the units that are transferred between them. We apply the triadic lens to acquisitions of divested business units, and we find that a unit’s experiences with its seller before and during divestiture can profoundly shape the unit’s needs and expectations, which, in turn, must be addressed by the acquirer in the integration process. We identify four key mechanisms—status, resource accessibility, trust, and self-sufficiency—that underpin the seller’s impact on the divested unit, and we develop a typology—comprising favored, neglected, shocked, and independent units—that animates the ramifications of the seller’s actions. Then, for each type, we discern strategies for its postacquisition integration execution that are tailored to its distinctive needs, which originate from its experiences with the seller. To make these insights practical and readily implementable, we provide a diagnostic checklist for identifying the four types of divested units and offer an action plan of type-specific strategies for successfully managing them in the postacquisition integration process.