Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2022 i Rotman Management

SEEMINGLY EVERY DAY, a new set of signals emerges to challenge our existing mental models. Within the past 12 months alone, DeepMind solved a 50-year-old problem in Biology, opening up new pathways to drug discovery; AI systems proved that they can generate images and text as well as a human; Facebook and Square changed their names to Meta and Block, signaling a digital ‘land grab’ in the emerging Web 3.0; and the biggest streamers — Netflix, Disney+, Apple and Hulu — discovered a formidable competitor in social commerce networks like Shein. With a growing range of virtual interfaces continuously evolving around us, reality isn’t what it used to be. Leaders must familiarize themselves with the metaverse and be able to draw distinctions between the various digitally mediated formats that span…

WHAT, MANY READERS WILL ASK, IS THE METAVERSE? It’s a simple enough question. However, explaining it has the same elusive quality as describing the Internet to our grandparents. A quick Google search for ‘What is the metaverse?’ will take you on a journey that twists and turns, but you won’t get very far. That’s because all of the experts are trying to define something that hasn’t been fully realized yet: The paint is still wet, so we can’t see its true colours yet. This is where having three co-authors gets tricky. We each have a different perspective: CATHY, THE FUTURIST: “The metaverse is a convergence of our physical and digital selves. Through Web 3.0 technologies such as VR, AR, AI, cloud, blockchain, crypto, 5G networks and edge computing, the metaverse…

IN RECENT YEARS, investors have become increasingly dissatisfied with the ESG [environmental, social, governance] risk information they receive from businesses. Our research shows that 86 per cent of institutional investors believe companies with strong ESG performance will feel a significant and direct impact on analyst recommendations. More broadly, 90 per cent cite that since the pandemic started, they attach greater importance to ESG performance when it comes to their investment strategy and decision-making. And yet, 51 per cent believe there’s a lack of information about how companies create long-term value (LTV). Case in point: Ahead of the 2020 proxy season, State Street Global sent an open letter to boards saying it would incorporate performance measures of a company’s business operations and governance related to financial material and sector-specific ESG issues…

BANKS AND OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS have a central role to play in decarbonizing the planet. Through their role in capital formation and the creation of credit and innovative financial instruments, they can help accelerate the transition by shifting the mix of their loan portfolios and other financing activities away from heavy emitters and towards more sustainable actors across different industries — including renewable alternatives in energy, industrials and materials. Climate change and the uncertainty of an orderly transition also create significant risks for banks with exposure to carbon-intensive industries. While many of the world’s largest banks have expressed support for the Paris Agreement — even setting their own targets for reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 — our research indicates that the majority lag behind the pace of change necessary to…

Blood transfusions allow medical professionals to address a wide variety of emergencies, from trauma-induced blood loss to blood replacement during surgeries. Population aging and the increase in surgical procedures such as organ transplants are further increasing the demand for blood. The question is, What will influence human behaviour more: appealing to altruistic motives to the request or providing an economic incentive? We decided to find out. Interventions targeting altruistic motives. According to the guidelines of the World Health Organization, the objective of national blood procurement and allocation systems is “to obtain all blood supplies from voluntary non-remunerated donors.” There are several ethical and behavioural foundations at the origin of this stance. The first is a strong reliance on the power of altruism as a motivator: People might want to help…

How do you define a ‘person of influence’ in today’s world? Whether we realize it or not, we are influencing people all the time, from the time we are very young. Whenever you do or say something that effects a change in someone else’s thinking or behaviour, you are being influential. And we learn pretty early on that influence is power. If you ask people if they’d like to be more influential, most will say yes. That’s not surprising, because being influential gives us the ability to create change, direct resources and move hearts and minds. As our paths cross, entwine, diverge and reconnect, we form a greater whole, a sprawling ‘living web’ of influence. Talk a bit about the darker side of influence. The concept of influence has been…

A FEW YEARS BACK, the media was full of articles about how Big Data would solve a perrennial challenge: gaining valuable customer insights. Today, it is everywhere because of the growth of devices recording data and the connectivity between those devices through the Internet. The problem is this: Big Data systems can indeed find subtle patterns in data sets, but they can’t tell us which correlations are truly meaningful. As we know, correlation does not equal causation. However, we’re hardwired to look for patterns, and when we see lines sloping together in our data, it’s hard for us not to believe there’s a causal relationship. Tyler Vigen, the author of Spurious Correlations, highlights this issue through a series of comical-yet-technically-correct line graphs showing how monthly U.S. ice cream sales track…

How do you define ‘social learning,’ and why is it so fundamental to our success? Social learning simply means that we learn different kinds of social behaviour by observing and imitating other people. A classic example is kids. They learn from watching and listening to their parents, their peers and their teachers throughout their early years. From the beginning of time, we have watched and imitated other people. Does this habit continue once we become adults? Absolutely. Social learning takes place everywhere, and it never really stops. As we progress into adulthood, it takes place mainly in the workplace and helps us understand the ‘right way to behave’ in order to succeed. The Internet has had an interesting impact on social learning. Can you describe it for us? Like a…

THE SOCIAL CLASS PAY GAP — the difference in earnings between people from lower-class versus upper-class origins — is a persistent issue that has been widely studied. A common theme in the findings to date is that because people growing up with upper-class parents have more economic, social and cultural advantages, they are likely to attain more education and a more prestigious job, both of which produce a higher income. What is striking is that even when controlling for education, occupational prestige and other variables, class origin still relates to personal income. In other words, people who grew up in lower-class families earn less than their peers who grew up in upper-class families, even when they are similar in education and occupational prestige. This is especially puzzling because the class…

IN RETROSPECT, it was unlikely to turn out well. But in 2016, Microsoft researchers released an AI algorithm called Tay to learn how to interact on Twitter. Within hours, it learned alright, and began to spew out offensive tweets. Tay was not alone in becoming the worst of us. Stories like this abound and make many organizations reluctant to adopt AI. This is not because AI prediction performs worse than people. Instead, AI may be too good at behaving like them. This shouldn’t be a surprise. AI prediction requires data and, especially for data that involves predicting something about people, the training data comes from people. There can be merit in this, such as when training to play a game against people, but people are imperfect, and AI inherits those…

IT’S TUESDAY MORNING and the project report you requested from your subordinate David is late. You needed it yesterday and you still don’t have it. As the leader, it’s your job to be in control, to set expectations and ensure everything runs smoothly. You call David into your office and explain that you will be setting up bi-weekly meetings to ensure that his projects stay on target. You are doing what you must as a leader: re-establishing control over the situation. Question: Did you ask David why he didn’t submit the report on time? And even if you did, what did you do to help him meet his deadline? Many of us treat leadership like a thermostat: We carefully monitor everything our subordinates do, and whenever there is a deviation…

According to the latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate, the world still isn’t doing enough to combat human-induced climate change. We shouldn’t be surprised. This is part of a pattern. A top-down approach that asks people to make sacrifices is unlikely to gain traction and build the political support that leaders need to achieve climate goals. Until combating climate change aligns with the progress that people are trying to make in their daily lives — from feeding their families and staying warm to travelling for work and fun — the efforts to change how we consume energy will be futile. This reality calls for a bottom-up approach led by entrepreneurs and the pursuit of opportunity, not government action based on coercion and threats. The evidence shows that…

WITH ADVANCES IN DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, new organizational forms are emerging that enable business to be conducted in new ways. When people think about digital platforms that enable business, they tend to think of ‘exchange platforms’ such as Uber or Airbnb, which are comprised of independent, external actors who buy and sell products or services on the site. But social media platforms are also hotbeds of entrepreneurial activity, with an increasing number of people earning their living from both creating and using them. Popular users who become influencers on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok now represent a $10 billion industry. Social media platforms can be defined as ‘interactive, scalable web and mobile technologies that allow individuals and groups to create, share, discuss and modify user-generated content.’ That content refers to…

AS LEADERS TAKE STEPS to re-energize their people and organizations for the post-pandemic world, the most forward-looking see a larger opportunity: The chance to build on pandemic-related accomplishments to re-examine (or even reimagine) the organization’s identity, how it works and how it grows. Well before the pandemic, senior executives routinely worried their organizations were too slow, too siloed, too bureaucratic. What many feared — and the pandemic confirmed — is that their companies were organized for a world that is quickly disappearing — an era of standardization and predictability that is being overwritten by four big trends: a combination of heightened connectivity, lower transaction costs, unprecedented automation and shifting demographics. In this article, we will synthesize lessons from new research on the practices of 30 top companies to highlight how…

How do you define management analytics? Management analytics involves developing a precise understanding of the factors influencing managerial decisions, and designing analytical solutions to support those decisions. Put simply, it extracts insights from real-world data. A typical analytics project starts with acquiring a deep understanding of the managerial problem at hand, then identifying the data sources that are most relevant to it, creating data sets and designing and implementing analytical solutions. In today’s world, every move people make online generates some form of data. The smart use of this data can help organizations generate competitive advantage, improve their customer experience, identify risks and optimize their operations. One of the main uses for analytics is around balancing supply and demand. For instance, figuring out what the demand will be for your…

AS CANADA CONTINUES TO GRAPPLE with pandemic fatigue, political divisions and associated public frustration, the risks of climate change are lurking in the wings. United Nations research shows that the world is unprepared for the effects of climate change. This challenge brings two dimensions: Finding a consensus on ways to reduce carbon; and planning for the effects of the extreme weather changes already unleashed. To help Canada cope with the effects of climate change, Ottawa policymakers recently released the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan. Available online, the report shows the federal government recognizes that work is needed to adapt and build resilience to our changing climate. The question is: Does anyone trust them to do it? In a recent article for Policy Options, Proof Strategies CEO Bruce MacLellan and I looked…

You have been called a trailblazer in the emerging field of ‘precision medicine’. How do you define that term? Precision medicine is becoming more commonplace and better defined. It’s a scientific approach to creating a personalized health action plan to treat — and more importantly, prevent — disease. We collect all the data about a person’s genetics, biomarkers and lifestyle so we are better able predict and design the best strategy for achieving their health and wellness goals. For example, with cancer treatment in the traditional system, a tumor is discovered, studied and the appropriate chemotherapy is assigned. Then various markers are checked over time to see how the patient is progressing. It’s all very precise and science-based. I’m asking, Why don’t we apply this same precise, science-based approach to…

Nobel Laureate Robert Schiller has referred to investing as ‘a social activity.’ Why is that, and do you agree with him? Yes, although ‘active investing’ is more prone to social influence than ‘passive investing.’ Passive investing is typified by a buy-and-hold portfolio strategy for long-term investment horizons, with minimal trading. It doesn’t require much interaction and you don’t need to follow up with anyone; you just passively receive updates over time, but you can otherwise forget about it. On the other hand, active investing involves frequent trading, with the goal of beating average index returns. When an investor is buying individual stocks of a company, they often look for tips on social media, or they might ask their friends what looks good. In one survey, individual investors were asked what…

Before the pandemic, research showed that the majority of employees were disengaged from their work. Why was that? The fact is, our working habits had barely changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Most organizations operated in the status quo ‘nine to five, five days a week’ mode, and there was very little flexibility. One reason so many people felt disengaged and dispirited is because that mode of work didn’t correspond at all with how they wanted to live their lives from day to day. Our collective experience of the pandemic has created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reimagine what we want from our working lives. We’ve had a chance to question many fundamental assumptions, adopt new habits and form new narratives around ‘how work gets done.’ For someone who…

Our world has undergone life-altering changes in the last few years, exposing a dire need to transform workplace cultures. In the U.S., more than 19 million workers have quit their jobs since April 2021, disrupting businesses everywhere, and forcing employers to reconcile with the fact that their cultures are outdated. But what exactly is amiss? My recent research provides a clear answer. Community is essential in all areas of life, because what we derive from it is a sense of belonging. Belonging symbolizes acceptance, protection and acts as an identifying marker. It’s a fundamental human feeling and relates to our primitive desire to be seen, understood and connected to others in impactful ways. Belonging is not determined by geographic location, physical proximity or sameness—although those have typically been methods we’ve…

THE CARE ECONOMY — the economic sectors that involve paid and unpaid care, including childcare, elder care and long-term care — is one of the fastest expanding economic sectors globally. A 2015 study of 45 countries by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that there were 206 million people in care jobs such as early childhood education and long-term care, and they estimated that this figure would rise to 248 million by 2030. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought an increased focus on how the lack of support for care sectors and the increasing trend of financializing access to care have placed equality and health on fragile grounds. In Canada, COVID has highlighted the poor conditions in long-term care homes and the dearth of affordable and high-quality early childhood education options…

Partha Mohanram: What led you to start thinking about redesigning the world? Sam Pitroda: About five years ago, I decided to write a book about my life lessons and the vast changes the world has seen since I was a child. I was born in 1942 in British India, and around that time, the U.S. led a group in designing the world and giving it direction after World War II. This led to the birth of familiar institutions like the United Nations, World Bank, IMF, World Trade Organization and World Health Organization. Later, NATO was formed and new kinds of national measurements like GDP and GNP were adopted. Since then, several tipping points have profoundly changed the world: decolonization, the rise of China, the fall of the Soviet Union, the…

AS EACH DAY PASSES, more and more of our choices and behaviours are occurring online. We work, shop and communicate with the help of platforms like Amazon, Twitter and Zoom. Even daily behaviours such as sleeping, eating and exercising are performed with our constant companions by our sides — smartphones, wearables and smart-home devices. Most of these devices are powered by algorithms and recommendation systems that are designed to automate and augment our choices. And as a result, the digital world is rapidly transforming human behaviour as we know it. Technologies that simplify consumer choice — for example, providing the ability to quickly search for products and recommendations — have bumped the concept of ‘choice architecture’ to the top of the agenda for many organizations. Choice architecture can be defined…

As we move forward and the pandemic recedes, leaders must ask a fundamental question: What state are our business operations in? We wanted to better understand the connection between business operations maturity and performance. So in 2020, we surveyed more than 1,100 C-suite and VP-level executives across 11 countries and 13 industries. Using survey responses and external data, we identified four levels of operations maturity: stable, efficient, predictive and future-ready. Each of the four levels is underpinned by technologies that drive efficiency, insights and increasing capabilities. Surprisingly, we found that only seven per cent of respondents fall into the ‘future-ready’ category. How can others catch up? Overall, there are three things you must know to become future-ready. 1. KNOW THE ULTIMATE GOAL Organizations tend to approach operations improvements too incrementally.…

MANY PREDICTIONS about the future of work have not exactly played out as forecast. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that continued economic growth over the course of the coming century would reduce the work week to 15 hours. Nikola Tesla echoed this sentiment in 1935, when he predicted that robots would replace most human labour in the next hundred years. In 1964, the RAND Corporation predicted that we would be breeding intelligent apes to perform manual labour by 2020. And in 1959, the U.S. postmaster general predicted that today’s mail would be sent by rockets (e-mail turned out to be a more cost-effective option.) The pandemic has undoubtedly triggered lasting changes when it comes to work. Many of us were part of a forced experiment in remote working that…

IMAGINE THIS SCENE: A team is pitching an innovation project to leaders of your company using a slide deck with five-year revenue projections, an execution road map and assumptions that are being presented as facts. After the presentation, the leaders take things from bad to worse. The finance director states that she cannot approve any investment in this new idea because it does not meet the company’s financial ‘hurdle rate.’ The rest of the leaders agree and tell the team to go back and work on their spreadsheets — and only come back when their numbers meet the required hurdle rate. At first glance, this seems like a logical conversation, but it is in fact absurd. The team was presenting a spreadsheet describing the five-year performance of a product that…

Why is it so important to expedite the Circular Economy? Most of us are aware by now that there is an urgent need to protect the world’s ecosystems and reduce the carbon emissions that come from the creation, distribution and disposal of waste. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, over 10 billion tonnes of waste are produced each year worldwide. This has always been a by-product of our daily lives and every sector of the economy, and it pollutes our land and waterways, depletes natural resources and contaminates the air we breathe. Closed Loop Partners is a New York City-based investment company that is dedicated to building out the Circular Economy. We invest in every stage of the Circular Economy: design and manufacturing, consumption, processing and collecting. We also…

LET’S BE HONEST. The world is in flux. Massive changes are afoot, and not all of them are pleasant. Change and uncertainty are normal parts of work and life, too. Our lives no longer follow a strictly linear path (if they ever did). Career transitions. Caregiving. Side hustles. Layoffs. Self-care. Gigging. Sound familiar? Where there once was one path, now there are many. Some things about our collective future and our personal future are uncertain (Will the tornado season be bad? Will Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow? Will my broken ankle heal in time for the race?), and others are ambiguous. Unlike things that are uncertain, ambiguous things are unformed and emergent — they could yet be created or interpreted in any number of ways. These are things that humans…