A theory of private equity turnarounds

This paper explores the advantage of private equity in fixing turnaround situations. Meaningful corporate value creation may require addressing operational problems, replacing management, or changing the incentive structure. Change may be implemented under either without change of ownership or through a buyout. The paper derives scenarios under which transferring ownership to private equity prior to implementing a turnaround can emerge as an optimal solution, even when current ownership can conceivably implement the same operational changes as private equity. Also considered is the possibility of investment syndication in which the private equity buyer shares the transaction with other private equity firms. Various alternatives are considered for implementing turnarounds; in particular, ones that allow for management replacement and others that are effectively management buyouts.     

Pricing and the psychology of consumption

Most executives know how pricing influences the demand for a product, but few of them realize how it affects the consumption of a product. In fact, most companies don't even believe they can have an effect on whether customers use products they have already paid for. In this article, the authors argue that the relationship between pricing and consumption lies at the core of customer strategy. The extent to which a customer uses a product during a certain time period often determines whether he or she will buy the product again. So pricing tactics that encourage people to use the products they've paid for help companies build long-term relationships with customers. The link between pricing and consumption is clear: People are more likely to consume a product when they are aware of its cost. But for many executives, the idea that they should draw consumers' attention to the price that was paid for a product or service is counterintuitive. Companies have long sought to mask the costs of their goods and services in order to boost sales. And rightly so--if a company fails to make the initial sale, it won't have to worry about consumption. So to promote sales, health club managers encourage members to get the payment out of the way early; HMOs encourage automatic payroll deductions; and cruise lines bundle small, specific costs into a single, all-inclusive fee. The problem is, by masking how much a buyer has spent on a given product, these pricing tactics decrease the likelihood that the buyer will actually use it. This article offers some new approaches to pricing--how and when to charge for goods and services--that may boost consumption.     

优秀CEO的领导之道

亚力克斯·莫利曾这样说：“做领导就是要调动其他人从事更伟大的事业。照我做的去做比照我说的去做更令人信服。内在的热情是最有力的鼓动因素”。做一个优秀的CEO应该具备哪些特质？怎样才能成为一个优秀的CEO？在澳洲会计师公会CEO亚力克斯·莫利先生来京参加他的新书《没有不挫折的人生》（中文版）发布会之际,《国际融资》杂志记者专程采访了他,请他分享职业成功的经验以及对企业领导者的建议。     

“黄金分割”与领导力

在自然界中,有许多现象人们已经感知了,但不一定完全掌握其规律,有的已经掌握了的规律也不一定完全自觉地运用好,黄金分割定律就是这样一种让许多人痴迷,而又有许多人不甚了解的定律。黄金分割的科学价值不可低估黄金分割又称黄金律,是指事物各部分间一定的数学比例关系,即将整体一分为二,较小部分与较大部分之比等于较大部分与整体之比,其比值为0.618,这种比例关系最能适应人的感受,引起人的美感,适合地球上多数动植物的生长要求,因此被称为黄金分割。     

“三维十二度”领导力

正领导力就是把握组织使命及动员人们围绕这个使命奋斗的一种能力。——德鲁克领导力就是动员大家为了共同的愿景而努力奋斗的艺术。——库泽斯领导力是转变他人的思维方式,激发行动,并以此来成就事物的能力。——蒂奇     

Leadership and uncertainty: complexity and the lessons of history

Problems faced by military leaders will be used to evaluate techniques for dealing with the limits of knowledge. A survey of recent scientific developments will establish that knowledge is limited in principle, and historical examples for coping with limited knowledge in practice will then be analyzed. The convergence between the science of complexity and successful cases of social evolution indicates that the limits of knowledge extend the frontiers of understanding. Concluding sections will briefly explore some ethical implications potentially useful to political and social leaders.     

Leadership structure and firm performance

Two theories have been offered to explain why some firms have different people hold the chairman of the board and CEO positions (a dual leadership structure). The agency problem theory suggests that firms employ this dual leadership structure to control agency costs created by the separation of ownership and control. The normal succession theory implies the dual leadership structure emerges as a part of the normal succession process employed to replace a retiring chair/CEO. We tested these theories on a sample of firms which adopt dual leadership structures and found that both theories have merit. Firms most likely to use a dual leadership structure to control agency problems experienced a statistically significant improvement in performance after they switched to a dual leadership structure. Additionally, firms in this subsample that also replaced at least one senior manager experienced a greater improvement in performance than those firms that only changed leadership structure. These results indicated that the shift to a dual leadership structure did reduce agency costs for these firms. Firms most likely to use a dual leadership structure as a part of the normal succession process showed no improvement in performance after the leadership structure change. This suggests that these firms used the dual leadership structure merely to insure an orderly transfer of authority when a chair/CEO retires.     

Leadership and control system design

Little attention has been given to the role of leadership characteristics in the organization design literature despite significant evidence of its importance in explaining firm behavior. This study develops and tests a model to assess the effects of leadership style on three control choices that are considered integral elements of a firm's management control system; namely the delegation choice, the use of planning and control systems and the performance measurement system. Our results, based on data collected from 128 profit center managers, indicate that leadership style is a significant predictor of senior management's use of the planning and control system and their use of the performance measurement system for rewarding lower-level managers. After controlling for operating contextual factors (namely, subunit interdependencies and knowledge asymmetries) we find no effect of leadership style on delegation choices but do find that leadership style influences the use of planning and control systems as predicted.     

Creativity, Leadership and Change

The Department for Education and Employment's (DfEE) Permanent Secretary asks what needs to be done to deliver better public services. What are the priorities for modernization and how can these be achieved? He explains that the civil service has often under-valued management, skimped on management development, left project managers inadequately trained and recognized, and failed to reward effective service delivery. Improving delivery therefore requires a major cultural shift. He discusses four key issues: creativity, leadership, delivery, and community ownership.     

领导行为的多层面的企业领导力评价体系研究

以能力与行为的辩证关系为逻辑起点,以领导行为为中心,考量企业领导者在个体、团队、组织三个层面中所扮演的角色,其相应表现的领导行为为树影响、带队伍、指方向、做决策、抓控制,形成多层面的企业领导力评价指标体系,实证验证和确立了权重。     

Leadership development in the age of the algorithm

By now we expect personalized content--it's routinely served up by online retailers and news services, for example. But the typical leadership development program still takes a formulaic, one-size-fits-all approach. And it rarely happens that an excellent technique can be effectively transferred from one leader to all others. Someone trying to adopt a practice from a leader with a different style usually seems stilted and off--a Franken-leader. Breakthrough work at Hilton Hotels and other organizations shows how companies can use an algorithmic model to deliver training tips uniquely suited to each individual's style. It's a five-step process: First, a company must choose a tool with which to identify each person's leadership type. Second, it should assess its best leaders, and third, it should interview them about their techniques. Fourth, it should use its algorithmic model to feed tips drawn from those techniques to developing leaders of the same type. And fifth, it should make the system dynamically intelligent, with user reactions sharpening the content and targeting of tips. The power of this kind of system--highly customized, based on peer-to-peer sharing, and continually evolving--will soon overturn the generic model of leadership development. And such systems will inevitably break through any one organization, until somewhere in the cloud the best leadership tips from all over are gathered, sorted, and distributed according to which ones suit which people best.     

信达思:塑造财务领导力

为塑造会计人员的财务领导力,美国信达思公司建立了一个四步骤的"领导力循环"框架。本文将介绍美国信达思公司(Cintas)租赁分部的财务部所采用的战略,帮助财务人员发展领导能力。信达思公司为近80万家企业提供工作制服、门垫、卫生间用品、促销产品、急救与安全防护产品、防火设施,以及文件管理服务。2009财务年度,公司实现销售收入38亿美元。租赁分部的会计部大约有40个合伙人(信达思公司将所有员工称为"合伙人"),支持250多个工厂和分支机构,创造的年销售收入达30     

新常态下的全球领导力

世界银行常务副行长英卓华在2015年中国发展论坛上发表讲话，他说：需求再平衡之路是复杂的。中国需要降低债务占GDP的比重，逐渐摆脱以信贷驱动投资作为需求增长的驱动力。虽然外需能够拉动部分疲软经济，但在世界增长乏力的情况下重返经常账户盈余，既不必要也不可行。     

财务领导力修炼——2009中国CFO年度人物特别报道

对大多数人来说,财务领导力听起来很时髦,但其实它是老问题。当前复杂的经济环境使首席财务官(CFO)们意识到,财务领导力并非是赶时髦的东西,实际上,公司急需财务领导力。     

Leadership in literature

Business students nowadays are not, for the most part, poets. A growing proportion come to business school with a background in investment banking or management consulting and an undergraduate business major, rather than a degree in the arts and sciences. MBA students are already very familiar with business. A number of scholars and businesspeople have begun to question the scientific model that dominates business research and teaching. Formalized management tools work well enough if you're studying techniques for financial valuation, but less so when you're studying leadership and organizational behavior. Some argue that students could learn a lot more about these subjects if they took a course in literature. Examples from fiction can be as instructive as any business textbook. HBR senior editor Diane Coutu recently met with Joseph Badaracco, Jr., for a wide-ranging discussion of what leaders can learn from literature. For the past decade, Badaracco, the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School, has used classical literature to provide well-rounded, complex pictures of leaders in all walks of life-particularly leaders whose psychological and emotional challenges parallel those of senior executives. Fiction provides some of the most powerful and engaging case studies ever written. Unlike contemporary management literature, which is relentlessly upbeat, classical literature is unsparingly realist. Leaders often struggle and sometimes fail-and the stakes are high. When business leaders read about the conflicts of literary characters, they can better understand their own circumstances. We pay far too little attention to the inner lives of leaders. Business school courses seem to suggest that you can treat executives like lab animals and control their behavior through their environment. But behaviorism is not enough. Literature suggests that leaders should learn more about themselves if they want to succeed.     

The psychology of forecasting

This article reviews research on the elicitation of consistent, coherent and valid probability forecasts. From this a general model of the judgemental forecasting process is developed showing the interdependence of consistency, coherence and validity. The authors describe a forecasting aid which elicits consistent and coherent forecasts and argue that research should now focus on the validity of judgemental forecasting by attempting to identify the characteristics of those individuals who can produce valid judgements.     

The Elected Mayor and Local Leadership

This article examines the new leadership role of the English elected mayor. The authors suggest that the management and governance of the local authority is subject to significant change within the mayoral system, and that elected mayors represent a form of strong political management which is essentially new within English local government. The authors discuss the prospects for the future of the executive mayor, and suggest potential areas for further research, including succession planning in mayoral authorities, the nature of the first mayoral re-election campaigns outside London, and the possible growth of this form of local leadership.