+Impact Studio: Translating Research into Practice

Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks

William Russell Kelly Professor of Management, Faculty Director of the +Impact Studio

Why this course

• In his studio curriculum, Professor Sanchez-Burks purposely breaks down many traditional and long-standing silos within business education by utilizing cross-disciplinary teams and weaving together frameworks and research from anthropology, social psychology, sociology and industrial design in order to develop holistic solutions

• As the interconnected-ness and complexity of our global society becomes more evident, this experiential design course gives students the practical experience to think broadly and systemically while effectively breaking down organizational boundaries

Course Trailer

Course Highlights

To address "wicked problems" such as the UN SDGs, teams explore leverage points between university-generated intellectual capital and opportunities to build a sustainable solution to an unmet need at scale.

Learning outcomes:

• Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Apply a systems approach to identifying stakeholders and how they are connected within a network

  • Conduct ethnographic qualitative research

  • Surface implicit emotional and behavioral needs among stakeholders

  • Generate composite personas

  • Conduct bricolage-ideation sessions

  • Engage in iterative prototyping

  • Build a Business/Mission Model Canvas

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Biography

Dr. Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks is a Behavioral Scientist and Professor of Management and Organizations at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He currently serves as the Faculty Director of the Ross +Impact Studio. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology with training in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan. Previously, he has had visiting appointments at universities in Singapore, France, Russia, and Turkey. His research broadly focuses on social-emotional dynamics that shape the collaborative design of innovations and strategic change. Jeffrey was born in San Francisco, raised in Los Angeles, and lives in Ann Arbor.

Corporate Diplomacy: Aligning Stakeholder Analytics & Strategy

Witold Henisz

Deloitte & Touche Professor of Management in Honor of Russell E. Palmer, former Managing Partner; Director, Wharton Political Risk Lab; Founder, Wharton ESG Analytics Lab

Why this course

• This rigorous course from Professor Henisz prepares students to take "stakeholder capitalism" into action by way of Corporate Diplomacy - assessing external stakeholders’ opinions of the acceptability of a company’s operation and convincing internal stakeholders to adapt their behaviors, systems and outputs

• This course offers students the latest analytical tools for stakeholder and issue mapping and financial valuation, as well as behavioral skills for stakeholder engagement including trust building and communications

• In a world where business increasingly acknowledges the importance of stakeholder relations in achieving organizational goals and sustainable long-term value, this curriculum explores how leaders can align corporate and investment strategy with stakeholder demands on issues ranging from climate change to human rights

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Course Highlights

This course provides students the latest tools to use new unstructured data on stakeholder concerns to align corporate and investment strategy with stakeholder demands. It also offers more behavioral skills critical for external stakeholder engagement including trust building and communications as well as internal stakeholder engagement. In short, it prepares students to engage in Corporate Diplomacy (i.e., to influence or assess external stakeholders’ opinions of the acceptability of a company’s operations at a moment in time and to convince internal stakeholders to adapt their behaviors, systems and outputs’ when necessary).

Professor Witold Henisz on the Dollars and Change Podcast by the Wharton Social Impact Initiative:

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Biography

Witold J. Henisz is the Deloitte & Touche Professor of Management at The Wharton School, The University of Pennsylvania. He is also Director of the Wharton Political Risk Lab and the founder of the Wharton ESG Analytics Lab. His research, which examines the impact of political hazards on international investment strategy including efforts by multinational corporations to engage in corporate diplomacy to win the hearts and minds of external stakeholders, has been published in top-ranked journals in international business, management, international studies and sociology, Witold is also the author of the book “Corporate Diplomacy: Building Reputations and Relationships with External Stakeholders”. He has won multiple teaching awards and teaches extensively on the topic of Corporate Diplomacy in executive education programs. He is currently a principal in the political risk management consultancy PRIMA LLC whose clients span multinational firms, intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations.

Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability

Marjolein Lips-Wiersma

Professor of Ethics and Sustainability Leadership

Peter McGhee

Senior Lecturer; Deputy Head of Department of Management

Amber Nicholson

Lecturer

Peter Skilling

Senior Lecturer

Why this course

• This cutting-edge course advances inclusive business perspectives and practices by incorporating Indigenous knowledge into the management curriculum

• New Zealand-based, the curriculum weaves Māori traditions and cultural worldview alongside western business frameworks to challenge assumptions around corporate responsibility, ethical decision-making, corporate transparency and environmentally sustainable business practices

• The course gives students the skills to explore their own values and culture, learn from and appreciate the culture of others, and purposely integrate what they discover into how they manage and build business organizations

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Course Highlights

Learning Objectives:

• Use appropriate tools to analyse and evaluate business situations where environmental, social and economic concerns arise

• Debate and defend rationales for responsible business practice

• Determine the drivers, and identify business opportunities, for socially and environmentally sustainable practice.

• Through studying business practice examples, derive and defend business strategies and management practices to advance responsible business practice.

Q+A between Amber Nicholson (Ngāruahine) and Peter Skilling on indigenous perspectives and business:

Latest Coverage

Biography

Marjolein Lips-Wiersma is Professor of Ethics and Sustainability Leadership at AUT Business School, where her research focuses on how sustainability practices enhance meaning and well-being in the workplace. She also researches the roles and responsibilities of sustainability officers, the processes people use to assess the value of their work, and what (new) organisational approaches are required to speed up the sustainability agenda. Marjolein has a strong interest in engaging and empowering young people in sustainability issues. World renowned for her expertise, Marjolein is co-director of Map of Meaning International, a trust that aims to help organisations create and maintain meaningful work. She is also a member of the University Sustainability Taskforce and heads the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) international initiative.

Peter McGhee (Te Aupōuri) is a Senior Lecturer in and Deputy Head of the Department of Management at AUT Business School. Prior to joining AUT in 2000, Peter worked for nearly a decade as a risk analyst and operations manager for two different multinationals in the financial services industry. His expertise and research interests lie in business ethics, workplace spirituality, sustainability, and critical management studies; his recent work focuses on ethical leadership, human quality treatment at work, and educating for sustainability. Peter is widely published in a range of esteemed business, ethics and sustainability journals. He is a board member of The Leprosy Mission New Zealand (TLMNZ), a global development agency working with people affected by leprosy.

Amber Nicholson (Ngāruahine) is a Lecturer in the Department of Management at AUT Business School. Informed by a decade of Māori-led research experience, Amber teaches ethics and sustainability, and leadership. Amber is a PhD candidate whose thesis, Whenua tūpuna, whenua hauora: Ancestral and relational landscapes, explores ways to enhance wellbeing through recognising and honouring the ancestral landscapes in which businesses operate. She argues that an Indigenous Māori worldview involves spiritual and genealogical ties to the Earth and thus deepens the notion of what is referred to in modern business practice as sustainability. She is a member of the international Indigenous collective K.I.N.

Peter Skilling is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at AUT Business School, where he has been teaching in the area of business ethics, corporate responsibility and sustainability for over 10 years. He is interested in the ways society responds to pressing social problems, such as in-work poverty and climate change, and much of his work focuses on the interactions between business, governments and society. He was significant in developing the suite of courses that comprise the Sustainable Enterprise minor. Peter has a broader interest in the ways in which people and groups of people (workers, for example, or local communities) can participate in the decisions that affect their lives. From 2013-2016, Peter led a research project exploring New Zealanders’ attitudes towards economic inequality, and he continues to produce work on this topic.

Ethics: Value-based leadership for cosmopolitans

Gianpiero Petriglieri

Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour

Why this course

• This core leadership course "invites students to uncover the values implicit in the theories and tools they are in the process of acquiring—and consider the impact of those theories and tools on lives and societies”

• Professor Petriglieri taps the liberal arts and social sciences and invites students to critically evaluate the highly functional or idolized vision of leadership among the “globally mobile”

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Course Highlights

Learning outcomes:

• At the end of the course, students will be able to:

  • Acquire conceptual knowledge about leadership as a functional and cultural enterprise

  • Reflect upon the sources and influence of the values that suffuse everyday life

  • Practice recognizing, and working with, value multiplicity and the tension it provokes

  • Suspend the relentless focus on functional performance that often impedes acknowledging, engaging with, and learning from, cultural performances—our own and others’

  • Examine what values shape our experiences and trajectories at INSEAD and beyond

Article on the Premise of the Course

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Biography

Gianpiero Petriglieri is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD. His award-winning research and teaching focus on what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader. He is particularly interested in the development of leadership in the age of “nomadic professionalism,” in which people have deep personal bonds to work but loose affiliations to institutions. Gianpiero’ research has appeared in leading academic journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Organization Theory and Organization Studies. He also writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review and is listed among the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. At INSEAD, he directs the Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship executive programme for emerging leaders, and chairs the Initiative for Learning Innovation and Teaching Excellence. He also directs customized leadership development workshops for multinationals in a variety of industries.

Personal Website

Future of Work

Siddhartha Saxena

Assistant Professor

Why this course

• Professor Saxena's course integrates theory and practice while weaving together an ambitious list of topics such as big data, AI, automation, climate migration, and biomimicry, through the lens of the health and well-being of low-wage workers in a globalized economy

• The course excels in pairing the technical (introducing people analytics, network theory and social network analysis) and the deeply human; acknowledging at the outset the very human need for every individual to “find meaning and purpose in work and material compensation for it that allows him or her to become a full, independent and valued actor in society”

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Course Highlights

Learning Outcomes are to understand:

• The changing factors which future millennial workforce will face

• The threat that automation and data presents to people and managers

• How societies will be affected by this technology and data-driven organisations

Example Exercise:

Dr. Saxena seeks to share ways we can design pedagogy to make it easily understandable yet full of learning. In one of the sessions, he teaches Network Analysis. Instead of plainly explaining the theory of nodes, edges, intensity, reciprocity, etc., the class was conducted outside the classroom with each student acting as a node and understanding their edges. They enjoyed identify stars, gatekeepers and other elements in the network. Through a simple exercise (pictured below), the understanding becomes so easy, and it stays with the student for a long time since it becomes an experience.

Dr. Saxena teaching his “Network Analysis” exercise

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Biography

Siddhartha Saxena has a passion for, and experience in the Organizational Behavior and Human Resources domain and field-based learning. He is the Program Chair of the BBA Program at Ahmedabad University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate core courses and electives in OB & HR. Professor Saxena is interested in studying Counter Workplace Behavior, People Analytics and succession planning in family businesses. He has completed his PhD on ‘Study of gender role congruity in family businesses’ in 2019. His teaching philosophy rests on encouragement of providing concrete information which stands true with reference to current scenarios of business. Particularly, emphasis is on the promotion of analyzing situations based on frameworks provided by the theory, and accordingly developing own out of the box solutions. He believes learning is done by exploring and not by limiting or restricting one’s options.

Organizing in Times of Crisis: The Case of Covid19

Leonhard Dobusch

Professor; Faculty of Business & Management at University of Innsbruck

Elke Schüßler

Professor; Head of the Institute of Organization Science at Johannes Kepler University Linz Business School

Photograph by Robert Maybach

Why this course

• This course demonstrates what rapid, remote collaboration can truly look like. Co-created by faculty from different universities, the course is fully digital and open source, and designed to be adapted and taught across multiple universities

• Professors Dobusch and Schüßler examine the current Covid19 crisis through the lens of a variety of theoretical concepts, reinforcing the student’s grasp of the concepts themselves while demonstrating their practical relevance in times of great disruption and uncertainty

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Course Highlights

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the current Covid19 crisis through the lens of organization theory

• Understand the role of different organizational forms such as bureaucracies, high-reliability organizations or inter-organizational networks in coordinating responses to crisis

• Understand alternative and open forms of organizing and their advantages and difficulties

• Understand the role of leadership in crisis situations and reflect on different types of sensemaking with regard to open communication and transparency on the one side and uncertainty and an unknown future on the other side

• Understand the challenges of organizations to communicate in times of crisis, and the role of social media for and in crisis communication

• Reflect on how organizations can be designed to respond to unexpected events and be responsive and resilient

• Understand how crisis can be a trigger for entrepreneurship, innovation and change

• Understand the ways in which grand challenges relate to inequalities, including gender inequality

• Critically engage with both theoretical concepts and practical contemporary phenomena

• Reflect on what organization theory and practising managers can contribute to addressing grand societal challenges

All the materials for this course are openly licensed and available open access at timesofcrisis.org, with the lecture videos being hosted at the corresponding YouTube channel. This allows anyone to study, re-use, adapt and share the content freely according to his or her needs.

Latest Coverage

Biography

Leonhard Dobusch is Professor of Business Administration with focus on Organization at the University of Innsbruck. His main research interests include the management of digital communities, private regulation via standards and openness as an organizing principle. He is co-founder of the Momentum conference series and the think tank Momentum Institute, member of the ZDF television council for the area “Internet”, blogs at osconjunction.net and is a regular contributor at netzpolitik.org.

Elke Schüßler is Professor of Business Administration with a focus on Organization Theory at the Johannes Kepler University Linz. Her main research interests revolve around societal challenges such as climate change and decent work in the context of global production networks, institutional change and creativity. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Momentum Institute and Vice President of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS). She has also co-founded the Society for the Advancement for Socio-Economics‘ “Digital Economy” network.

To view the complete list of involved faculty, visit https://timesofcrisis.org/contact/ 

Resource Allocation in Organizations

Elizabeth Castillo

Assistant Professor, Leadership and Integrative Studies

Why this course

• Employing an asynchronous, online format, this course takes a holistic approach to the notion of capital, questioning the assumption that financial capital is the primary engine of value creation

• Professor Castillo’s students examine fundamental assumptions of capitalism while learning humanistic management practices and ways to evaluate intangible assets like trust, justice, and knowledge

• The curriculum equips students to question what it means to lead a “pro-social” organization and encourages decision-making that leans on a fuller understanding of risk, return and tradeoffs
  

Course Trailer

Course Highlights

Through readings, case studies, and assignment, students learn about:

• The process of value creation

• The relationship between resources and an organization’s business model

• How resource allocation decisions entail values choices (what a company believes is worth investing in)

• The effects these choices have on society and shaping the world we live in

• How various forms of capital can be measured and reported

• What leaders can do to intentionally develop multiple forms of capital to create both financial returns and long-term sustainability for the organization

Professor Castillo’s Key Takeaways:

Latest Coverage

Biography

How can we create a sustainable economy that works for everyone? Dr. Castillo develops solutions to this problem using social accounting, integrative thinking, and multiple capitals (e.g., social, cultural, spiritual). Her interdisciplinary research studies prosocial resource exchange using bioinspired principles such as mutualism, energetics, and relational biology. Her research is inspired by two decades of management experience at the San Diego Natural History Museum and Balboa Park Cultural Partnership. Castillo earned her B.A. in philosophy and history (summa cum laude), M.A. in Nonprofit Leadership, and PhD in Leadership Studies (2016), all from the University of San Diego. Her scholarship appears in publications like The Leadership Quarterly and Nonprofit Quarterly. She is an avid hiker and nature photographer. Her mission is to repair the world through scholarship that promotes thriving organizations, fulfilled people, connected communities, and a world we can be proud to pass on to our children.

Seminar in Business and Society

Oscar Jerome Stewart

Assistant Professor of Management

Why this course

• This management course uniquely seeks to dismantle oppressive and exploitative structures and institutions by introducing concepts such as “liberatory consciousness”, and by equipping students to have difficult conversations and make decisions that build equitable and socially just organizations.

• In this course, Professor Stewart rejects historical norms of business education to help students redefine business "success" while examining the outsized role that business plays in how equal, just and sustainable our economy can be.

Course Highlights

Learning outcomes are focused on student development of a liberatory consciousness, awakening within our students a greater sense of their place in our world and an ability to make values-based decisions. Students will:

• Articulate the purpose of business within the context of its ability to deliver inclusive prosperity

• Demonstrate an ability to think critically, develop morally, and articulate reasoned, informed (i.e. backed up by data) positions on complex and ethical business and legal issues

• Learn how to debate issues in ways that maintain civility and bring greater clarity and understanding to the various perspectives on an issue

• Present arguments in a professional and convincing way to hone their written communication skills

• Present case material in a professional and critical manner to hone their oral communication skills

• Develop individual, organizational, & systemic strategies toward a more cooperative, responsible business

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Biography

Oscar Jerome Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Lam Family College of Business and a member of the Sustainable Business group. Jerome teaches the seminar undergraduate course on Business and Society, the MBA Business Ethics course, and Diversity in Organizations. Jerome’s research focuses on interrogating power at the intersection of organizational theory, strategy, and business ethics. This work includes such projects as an account of corporate strategic irresponsibility as well as an exploration of the determinants and outcomes of corporate misconduct in the pharmaceutical industry. Additionally, this research agenda includes critical scholarship on organizational diversity and discrimination. Oscar earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina Charlotte’s Interdisciplinary Organizational Science Program.

The 360º Corporation

Sarah Kaplan

Distinguished Professor; Professor of Strategic Management; Director, Institute for Gender and the Economy

Why this course

• The 360º Corporation uniquely dives deep into a single corporation, using ethnographic field trips, self-reflections, in-class debates, guest speakers and carefully curated multimedia resources to immerse students in the trade-offs, and opportunities, created by companies’ business models

• Students exercise holistically examining business practice and broadening the lens beyond the walls of the firm. In this intensive course, Professor Kaplan’s creative approach connects MBA core concepts in a way that equips students with the skills needed to more fully assess, challenge and impact the organizations that they will be a part of throughout their career

Course Trailer

Course Highlights

Learning outcomes:

• Integrate across multiple functional perspectives to understand complex business problems

• Understand both private and public value creation and capture in the context of one corporation

• Place yourself in the shoes of the senior executive in addressing management challenges for the corporation

• Get practice at seeing the world through multiple lenses and in coping with the paradoxes and tensions implicit in many management issues

• Learn to read like a manager, integrating information from multiple different sources and coming up with your own perspective

At the end of the course, students take the perspective of the leaders of the corporation and seek to understand how they can make important strategic choices for their company in the face of the many challenges and obligations we uncover in the course.

Latest Coverage

Biography

Sarah Kaplan is Distinguished Professor, Director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE), and Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. She is a co-author of the bestselling business book, Creative Destruction. Her latest book—The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation—is based on her award-winning course at the Rotman School. In it, she shows companies how to avoid simple “greenwashing” or “pinkwashing” in addressing corporate social responsibility. She lays out a roadmap for organizational leaders who have hit the limits of the supposed win-win of shared value to explore how companies can cope with real trade-offs, innovating around them or even thriving within them. Formerly a professor at the Wharton School (where she remains a Senior Fellow), and an innovation specialist for nearly a decade at McKinsey & Company, she holds a PhD from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.