Nearing the End (one day more, one more day, one day more)

It’s almost over. Eight weeks, eight professors, a number of other guest faculty, 160 peers from 45 countries, current and former corporate CEOs, and over 100 corporate case studies. We have covered a lot of ground. For example, we just concluded our ethics and corporate accountability track (one of eight learning areas) in which we discussed independent cases studies that covered each of the following issues:

• whether to take personal advantage of a “corporate opportunity”
• responding to a fire that destroys your manufacturing operations
• handling a strike over labor contracts at a newly acquired plant
• managing environmental, community, government, and human rights issues
• how to reward top management for closing a proposed merger
• responding to a low-ball hostile takeover bid
• dealing with a potentially serious health risk in a major product line
• responding to a serious global health crisis
• formulating an investment strategy that advances sustainable development
• preventing organizational drift and creating an effective governance system
• deciding on executive pay and responding to activist investors
• dealing with illegality and fostering organizational compliance
• whether to accept a “politically connected” candidate into an internship program (List courtesy Professor Lynne Paine.)

Also today we completed our track on managing innovation and change that I have found personally rewarding. To influence the outcome of a business, a manager has four tools that can be modified: the people and their skills, the process under which they operate, the formal organizational structure, and the informal organization which is influenced by culture, cliques, and coalitions. We spent a lot of time on this last point, focused on the impact of corporate culture, how to assess it, and even how to facilitate change in it.