Brain for Business

In recent years it has become commonplace for organisations of all types to loudly proclaim their values and purpose, and encourage their employees to align and identify with them. Yet what does it mean for people to identify with their employer or organisation? And why does it really matter? Surely it is enough for people to turn up for work, do their job diligently and then get on with their lives?To explore the concept of Organisational Identification further it is an absolute pleasure to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Chia-Huei Wu.About Chia-Huei...Chia-Huei Wu is a Professor in Management at King's Business School, London. Chia-Huei’s research in organizational behaviour concerns the person–environment dynamics and has two research streams: Employee Proactivity (i.e., why, when, and how employees can use their proactivity to change and improve the work environment) and Work and Personality Development (i.e., whether and how work experiences shape one’s personality development). Building on these two research streams, he has investigated topics in innovation and voice, leadership, work design, career development, workplace wellbeing, job change, and overqualification.Chia-Huei has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters and his work has appeared in top-tier journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Personnel Psychology, Human Resource Management, and Human Resource Management Journal, among others.Chia-Huei is the author of the book, Employee proactivity in organizations, a co-author of the book, Work and Personality Change, and the co-editor of the book, Emotion and Proactivity at Work. He has also contributed chapters to a range of other books on these topics. The article discussed in the interview is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01492063221140049More information about Chia-Huei's research is available through either of these sites:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chia-huei-wu-b7b3b21b/Google: https://sites.google.com/view/cwu-proactivepsy/c-wu Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The question of psychopathy and psychopaths in the workplace is something that we have discussed before on the Brain for Business podcast. Yet it remains a fascinating and worthwhile topic, most particularly when considered in terms of power and leadership outcomes.To explore this further I am delighted to be joined by Dr Iris Kranefeld where we discuss a recent paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.Key highlights include:Position power acts as a trait-relevant cue for psychopathy in leaders.When power is high, psychopathic meanness negatively relates to team performance.Under high power, team performance mediates the relation of meanness and effectiveness.The article discussed in the podcast is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886922004214About IrisIris is a graduate of University of Bonn from where she has a PhD in work and organisational psychology. Since July 2023, Iris has been a senior consultant with the Cologne Institute for Management Consulting / Kölner Institut für Managementberatung in Germany. A key focus of Iris’ research is the “dark triad” of personality traits, most particularly psychopathy and how it plays out in the workplace.You can find out more about Iris’ work at these sites:Researchgate - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Iris-Kranefeld-2LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/iris-kranefeld/?locale=en_USCologne Institute of Management Consulting - https://www.ki-management.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Scandals regularly sweep through organizational fields: they wreak havoc in markets, vaporize billions of dollars in firm value, bring down giant corporations, get CEOs fired, alter the evolution of technologies, and trigger major changes in society. In spite of their significance for organizational life, scandals have received remarkably limited attention in management research.” So says our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, Professor Julien Jourdan, who attempts to address this gap in the literature by building on the social sciences’ sparse but growing stream of research on scandals to provide new insights and understandings. Julien Jourdan is an Associate Professor of Management and Human Resources at HEC Paris. Julien’s research focuses on reputation, legitimacy, and other social evaluations of organizations. In so doing, he examines how a) stakeholders evaluate organizations in institutionally complex environments and b) how these evaluations shape organizational conduct, governance, strategy, and performance. Julien has previously held academic positions at Imperial College London, Università Bocconi, and PSL-Paris Dauphine, and before moving into academia was a finance executive at a major film studio.The article referred to in the podcast is available here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/7x2rb/downloadMore information on Julien and his research is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/julienjourdan/https://www.hec.edu/en/faculty-research/faculty-directory/faculty-member/jourdan-julien Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“The question of whether we have free will does not have a yes-or-no, all-or-none answer. Instead, we have degrees of freedom – an idea that is reasonably well captured… by a more commonsense understanding of the (still useful) notion of free will. That understanding entails, first, the ability to make choices – that we really can choose what to do. Our actions are not simply determined by outside forces because we’re causally set apart from the rest of the universe to at least some degree. And, just as importantly, we are not driven by our own parts. Rather, we holistically – our selves – are in charge.” So says our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, Dr Kevin Mitchell, of Trinity College Dublin. Kevin takes an evolutionary approach to the question of free will and amongst other things argues that: Humans have agency and the capacity of self-control – we have the ability to adjust our focus and behaviour in real time depending on what is happening around usWhile genes do influence our behaviour, this is not a direct or deterministic relationship and there are many factors that impact on our innate natures and behavioursThese factors include learning and experience, as well as the important and largely positive role played by constraints, including the basic need for a survival as well as social rules, norms and culture   About Kevin…Dr Kevin Mitchell is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. Kevin’s research is aimed at understanding the genetic program specifying the wiring of the brain and its relevance to variation in human faculties, especially to psychiatric and neurological disease and to perceptual conditions like synaesthesia. As part of his research, Kevin also studies the biology of agency and free will. Kevin is an active communicator on Twitter and writes a popular blog on the intersection of genetics, development, neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. He also regularly gives public lectures and media interviews on diverse topics, with the goal of promoting public understanding of neuroscience and genetics. His 2018 book "Innate; How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are", published by Princeton University Press, develops an integrative conceptual framework in which to consider the origins of variation in human faculties, through a novel synthesis of findings from behavioural genetics, developmental neurobiology, neuroscience and psychology. Kevin’s most recent book – Free agents: How evolution gave us free will – is published on 3rd October, 2023, but Princeton University Press. You can find more about Kevin’s work at his website – www.kjmitchell.com – at his blog - (http://www.wiringthebrain.com – and by following him on Twitter: @WiringtheBrain.Kevin’s latest book, Free agents: How evolution gave us free will, is available on Amazon (https://amzn.eu/d/7Qkafwv) as well as all good bookstores. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While accurate data is hard to come by, some sources claim that up 90% of starts up fail.  There can be many reasons for this including but not limited to the product or service not meeting market needs, the business model being flawed, or early-stage funding not materialising.  One potential issue not often discussed is the impact of employee commitment and the extent to which those working for startups are prepared to put in the discretionary effort sometimes needed to get the startup over those critical early-stage challenges, something which is apparently experienced to a much greater extent by female founders when compared to their male peers. To discuss this I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Olenka Kacperczyk of London Business School.Amongst other things Olenka argues that: Women face well-documented obstacles when looking to found startups Research has consistently revealed patterns of inequity in the sharing of venture capital, but reasons for the performance gap between male and female-led startups are unclear A key factor may be that people generally are significantly less motivated to work for women than they are for men To address this, it is vital that educators and others intensify efforts to promote awareness of often-unconscious discriminatory behaviours to address bias against female bosses  About Olenka Olenka Kacperczyk is a Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School. She received her PhD from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and prior to joining London Business School, Olenka held a faculty position at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.  Olenka’s research focuses on entrepreneurship and examines (a) why individuals sometimes give up their jobs and become entrepreneurs and (b) how people’s movements into entrepreneurship affect social inequality, workplace segregation, and income distribution.   Olenka currently serves as an Associate Editor at Administrative Science Quarterly. She has previously served as an Associate Editor at Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Management Science. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Kauffman Junior Faculty Scholarship for Entrepreneurship Research and the William F. Glueck Award at the Academy of Management. Olenka teaches topics related to entrepreneurial strategy and strategic management in established firms.  The paper discussed - Do Employees Work Less for Female Leaders? A Multi-Method Study of Entrepreneurial Firms - is available online https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2022.1611   You can find out more about Olenka’s research here: https://www.olenkak.com/  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Internationally, healthy adults are consistently falling below national and international recommendations for physical activity and failing to meet guidelines for dietary intake. Interventions to address behaviour change in these fields typically target clinically at-risk individuals, yet these do not always work and obesity levels in developed countries continue to rise with significant implications for both individuals and societies. So what then are some of the barriers and facilitators to healthy eating and exercise, and how can we as societies help people to sustain positive physical activity and healthy eating behaviour change?To explore this I am delighted to be joined by Dr Sarah Snuggs of the University of Reading.Drawing on a novel online community health programme and survey, recent research undertaken by Sarah and colleagues (https://psyarxiv.com/pq4bs/) across five countries found that:-Key motivators for positive health behaviours include enjoyment of health behaviours, positive emotions before and after activities, and clear reward structures-Barriers included difficulties with habit-breaking, giving in to temptation and negative affective states, i.e. a bad mood!-Changes in physical activity and eating behaviour were mutually supportive-Those with a high BMI placed more importance on social motivators (e.g. social pressure) than those with healthy BMISarah and colleagues consequently concluded interventions to support adults who are not chronically ill but who would benefit from improved diet and/or increased physical activity should not focus exclusively on health as a motivating factor. Emphasis on enjoyable behaviours, social engagement and the role of reward will likely improve engagement and sustained behaviour change. About Sarah…Dr Sarah Snuggs is a Chartered Health Psychologist and Lecturer in the School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading. Her research interests include children and family eating behaviours and other health behaviours.You can find out more about Sarah’s work and research at these sites:-https://research.reading.ac.uk/kids-food-choices/ -Twitter: @sarah_snuggs-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/familyfoodin5/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a 2019 article published in Business Horizons our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, Dr Adrian Klammer, together with colleagues Thomas Grisold and Stefan Gueldenberg argued that organisations need to introduce a “stop doing” culture. But what is a “stop doing culture”? and what does it mean for leaders and their organisations?Originally from Austria, Adrian has a doctorate in business economics from the University of Liechtenstein and is affiliated with the Liechtenstein Business School. Adrian’s academic research is focused on Organizational unlearning and learning in different contexts, especially innovation; Organizational change; Organizational development. Adrian has published widely in top tier journals including Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Business Horizons, Management Learning, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Knowledge Management, International Journal of Innovation Management, European Journal of Innovation Management.The article discussed – Introducing a ‘Stop Doing’ Culture: How to free your organization from rigidity – can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681319300357 You can find out more about Adrian’s work via these links:LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-klammer/ Google Scholar – https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=FavrW2IAAAAJ University of Liechtenstein – https://www.uni.li/en/who-s-who/@@person_detail/1531774.67 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like many podcasts, Brain for Business is based around a conversation – a conversation between me as host and the various guests who join us. Each are experts in their fields and through the conversations that ensue we try to delve deep into their research as well as into their way of seeing and understanding the world around them, most particularly as it relates to the questions that they have chose to explore.It consequently made perfect sense for us to interview our guest today, Professor Shane O’Mara. Shane has not only played a key role in the Brain for Business initiative – both the events and the podcast – but more importantly for today’s conversation his latest book, “Talking Heads: The new science of how conversation shapes our worlds”, explores the impact that conversation has on our our worlds!Shane O’Mara is Professor of Experimental Brain Research at Trinity College, Dublin - the University of Dublin. He is a Principal Investigator in, and was formerly director of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, one of Europe’s leading research centres for neuroscience and is also a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator. Shane has published more than 140 peer-reviewed academic papers as well as a number of books including “Why Torture Doesn’t Work”, “A Brain for Business, A Brain for Life, and “In Praise of Walking”.“Talking Heads: The new science of how conversation shapes our worlds” is published by Bodley Head and is released in Europe on 3rd August, 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I first came across the work of today’s guest one Monday morning at around 4am as I browsed the website for The Guardian newspaper on my phone. Unlike some people who make a point of waking that early in order to get a head start on the week, for me this was just another Monday morning when I woke far too early with far too many thoughts about work buzzing through my head. What perhaps made it worse is that I had also struggled to get to sleep early the night before as those same thoughts kept spinning around!To discuss this phenomenon, sometimes called the Sunday Night Blues, I am delighted to be joined by Professor Ilke Inceoglu. About Ilke…Professor Ilke Inceoglu is a Professor in Organisational Behaviour & HR and Director of the Exeter Centre for Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School. Her research focuses on employee well-being and work behaviour, and has been published in leading journals such as Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.Ilke is currently also Primary Investigator on the ongoing Banishing the Sunday Night Blues research programme commissioned by Channel 4 in the UK and delivered in close partnership with Investors in People. The Banishing the Sunday Night Blues project aims to investigate the experience and impact of the Sunday Night Blues and develop a toolkit with guidance for employees, line managers and HR Directors to help banish the Sunday Night Blues.You can find out more about the Banishing the Sunday Night Blues research project at these links:https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-environment-science-and-economy/sunday-night-blues-caused-by-weekend-emails-and-blurred-boundaries-study-reveals/https://business-school-expertise.exeter.ac.uk/banishing-the-sunday-night-blues/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes in life things go wrong… mistakes, accidents, even disasters will occur. From festivals that fail due to poor advance planning, product launches that simply fail to, well, launch through to public construction projects that seem to drag on for ever and end up costing much more than originally envisaged. And typically when things do go wrong there are calls for inquiries, accountability and the apportionment of blame, sometimes leading to demands for heads to roll. To explore these questions further and to dig deeper into the question of blame games, we are joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Assistant Professor Sandra Resodihardjo of Radboud University.About Sandra…Sandra Resodihardjo is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Institute for Management Research, Radboud University. Her research focuses on questions relating to safety/security issues and public policy. Sandra has written on agenda-setting, policy reform, inquiries, local safety policies, and blame games following crises. Sandra is currently working on resilience & crisis management, blame games, and NGOs and disaster management.For more information on Sandra’s work on Blame Games, take a look at the following links:Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PxO8KoYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao Read Sandra’s book Crises, Inquiries and the Politics of Blame: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-17531-3Or read Sandra’s latest open access chapter Blame Games. Stories of Crises, Causes, and Culprits: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9780429355950-25/blame-games-sandra-resodihardjo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent project in the US sought to map collective wellbeing. Supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Mapping Collective Wellbeing Project aimed to better understand the wellbeing ecosystem in the United States and globally. In so doing, the project aimed to address a number of key questions: “How do we co-create a vision and appreciation of the roles we play in working toward collective wellbeing? What might deepen, strengthen, and broaden this work? Where are there connections in unlikely places? Where and how do we begin?To explore the question of collective wellbeing in greater detail, I am delighted to be joined by Theo Edmonds who contributed to that research.About Theo…Theo Edmonds is a skilled, energetic Culture Futurist™ and innovator with over 25 years senior-level strategic national and international leadership experience spanning the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. A seasoned communicator, Theo’s unconventional background traverses and connects scholarly research with pop culture across scientific disciplines, data analytics, creativity, and cultural wellbeing in the places we work, learn, heal, and explore. As Directing co-founder of University of Colorado Denver’s Imaginator Academy - a cultural analytics, strategy, and futurist innovation hub, Theo is a weaver of ideas who scouts global networks of entrepreneurs, companies, scientists, artists, creative innovators, and change-makers of all kinds in order to find hidden opportunities that others miss.An experienced builder of industry-university collaborations, Theo and collaborators have been recognized across many areas – ranging from “Trailblazer” awards in research for culture analytics innovation inside a National Science Foundation-sponsored lab to a number of national grants and vision awards in arts and creative economy.You can find out more about Theo and his work at: www.theoedmonds.comMore information about the Mapping Collective Wellbeing Project is available on their website: https://mappingcollectivewellbeing.org/Details of the Brain Capital Innovation Summit can be accessed here: https://www.broadreach-global.com/braincapital Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last few years of the Covid pandemic we all became used to the idea of contagion and, in particular, how viruses spread through communities. But have you ever thought about how change – most especially behavioural change – spreads through networks, societies and, indeed, organisations? To explore this further we are joined on the Brain for Business podcast by one of the world's leading thinkers in this area, Professor Damon Centola.About our guest…Damon Centola is the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Damon’s research centers on social networks and behavior change. His work has received numerous scientific awards and, in addition to his positions at the University of Pennsylvania, is a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.Popular accounts of Damon’s work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TIME, The Atlantic, Scientific American and CNN, among other outlets. He is a series editor for Princeton University Press and the author of How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen.Damon’s U Penn webpage can be accessed here: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/damon-centola-phd The Scientific American article referred to in the interview is available here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/The underlying research in that article is available via this link: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aas8827 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is now almost 20 years since the first podcast was launched, and if the available statistics are anything to go by, podcasts are definitely having a moment, with a reputed 2.5 million podcasts listed in Apple podcasts.When we think about who listens to podcasts, data from the US indicates that podcast listeners are 68% more likely to have a postgraduate degree, and 45% of podcast listeners have a household income over $250,000.And why do people listen to podcast? Apparently 74% of people listen to podcasts in order to learn new things.To discuss podcasts in more detail, and in particular consider how leaders can leverage business podcasts to enhance organizational performance, I am delighted to be joined by Professor Jake Waddingham.Jake Waddingham is an Assistant Professor of Management at McCoy College of Business at Texas State University. Jakes research explores how organizations and entrepreneurs manage stakeholder perceptions and his research has been published in the Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies and Business Horizons amongst others.Jake can be contacted via one of the following sites:•Google scholar - https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=XFWZXWYAAAAJ•LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwaddingham/ The Business Horizon’s article referenced in the discussion is:Insights on the go: Leveraging business podcasts to enhance organizational performance by Jacob A. Waddingham, Miles A. Zachary, David J. Ketchen Jr. It is available to access here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339444655_Insights_on_the_go_Leveraging_business_podcasts_to_enhance_organizational_performanceThe podcast statistics quoted above are from this site: https://nealschaffer.com/podcast-statistics/The various podcasts mentioned during the discussion include:•Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman – https://mastersofscale.com/•The Indicator from Planet Money - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money•Worklife with Adam Grant – https://adamgrant.net/podcasts/work-life/•Business Wars with David Brown - https://wondery.com/shows/business-wars/•Freakonomics with Stephen Dubner – https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ •Econtalk with Russ Roberts - https://www.econlib.org/econtalk/ •Axios Sports with Kendall Baker – https://www.axios.com/authors/kbaker Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We all know that to a certain extent cultures differ between countries. When we travel or work with people from different backgrounds we often gain unexpected insights into different traditions and different ways of doing things. Yet what is “culture”? How can it be understood? And how can leaders strengthen their Cultural Intelligence and that of the organisations they lead? To dig a bit deeper into these questions I am delighted to be joined on the programme by Professor Eimear Nolan of Trinity Business School.Eimear Nolan is Assistant Professor of International Business and Director of the Flexible Executive MBA at Trinity Business School in Dublin. She gained her PhD in International Management from the University of Limerick, where she investigated the cultural adjustment and fit of internationally trained doctors working in Ireland. Prior to joining Trinity Business School Eimear held academic positions in the UK and the USA. Eimear is a co-country investigator (for Ireland and the UK) on the world renowned GLOBE Project 2020. Her research interests are in expatriate adjustment, cultural intelligence, recruitment and retention strategies, ethics, and the health care sector. You can find out more about Eimear’s work here:-Culture Shocked Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3bD8L2mrm66hcfmxPkmqJG -LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eimear-nolan/-The Globe 2020 Project: https://www.globeproject.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While often seen as discrete and distinct phenomena, could it be that creativity and innovation are just variations on the same theme? Absolutely yes, says Dr Zorana Ivčević Pringle, and what is more rather than being purely logical and rational processes, both creativity and innovation are impacted by emotions in ways that many of us fail to recognise. Starting with a deceptively simple definition of creativity, this episode of Brain for Business charts a course from personal creativity and problem solving through to the role of leaders in supporting greater creativity and innovation in the teams and organisations they lead. Along the way, we discuss innovation in a hospital context and the creativity of some of history’s great artists, not to mention the important role played by emotional contagion and leader self-compassion. Dr Zorana Ivčević Pringle is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Zorana studies the role of emotion and emotional intelligence in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills. Zorana has published her research in journals such as Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Personality, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Creativity Research Journal, Journal of Creative Behavior and others. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post. You can find out more about Zorana's work at these links: Personal website: https://www.zorana-ivcevic-pringle.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zorana-ivcevic-pringle/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZoranaPsychUpdate 30th October, 2023 - Zorana has just launched a Substack newsletter which definitely worth subscribing to! creativitydecision.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whether we like it or not (or recognise it or not!) in recent years we have all been subjected to various conspiracy theories. Whether it is claims that COVID-19 was developed in a lab and released on purpose, or assertions that the world is run by some kind of “Deep State” shadow government, erroneous conspiracy theories have had a significant and dangerous impact. This has been made all the worse by social media which has allowed conspiracy theories to grow and multiply almost exponentially.To explore this further I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Henrich Greve. Henrich Greve is the Rudolf and Valeria Maag Chaired Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD. Henrich’s research interest is strategic change in organizations, mostly from a learning perspective, and includes examining how networks of organizations change, how organizations and communities are related, and how innovations are made and spread. Henrich has published over 80 articles in journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and Management Science.More recently, in an article published in American Sociological Review with co-authors Hayagreeva Rao, Paul Vicinanza and Echo Yan Zhou, Henrich examined Online Conspiracy Groups: Micro-Bloggers, Bots, and Coronavirus Conspiracy Talk on Twitter.Henrich’s blog and general reflections are available here: https://www.organizationalmusings.com/Some general thoughts from Henrich on how conspiracy talk helps people make sense of the world are available here: https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/how-conspiracy-talk-helps-people-make-sense-worldThe article from American Sociological Review discussed in the podcast can be accessed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00031224221125937?journalCode=asra Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The transition from individual contributor to manager is never easy. New managers need to take responsibility not just for their own performance, but also for that of team. They need to place less emphasis on doing, and much more on the essential skills of leading, influencing and communicating. Core to this is the development of a “leadership mindset”. But what is a leadership mindset? And what steps can managers and their organisations take to better develop the right mindset and perspectives for leadership?To discuss this I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Bret Crane.Bret Crane is an Associate Professor of Leadership at the Jon. M. Huntsman School of Business and the Executive Director of the Stephen R. Covey Leadership Center at Utah State University.Bret’s research focuses on leadership mindsets. As a respected authority and researcher on topics related to leadership, management, and organizational behavior, Bret has published articles across a variety of journals including Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of World Business, Business & Society, and Human Resource Development Review.Before joining the faculty at the Huntsman School of Business, he was a Visiting Professor at the George Washington School of Business in Washington DC.As a consultant, Bret works with organizations to improve their leadership, teams, organizations, and culture. His clients have included American Express, Honda, Lowe’s, General Mills, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Biogen, USAA, and others.Bret’s USU homepage is accessible here: https://huntsman.usu.edu/directory/crane-bretBret’s Business Horizons article - Leadership mindsets: Why new managers fail and what to do about it - is available to access here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681321000987 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Human beings live in the realm of the possible as much as they do in the here and now of daily experience. We dream, hope, anticipate and create, exploring news spaces of possibility for ourselves and for others. These possibilities are not always appealing or exciting, however. Having too many options can be disorienting, innovating in unsustainable ways harmful, and spending time in virtual realities compete with less satisfying real encounters. And yet, engaging with the possible is, ultimately, what makes us human. Understanding how, when and why this is the case has been a topic of interest for the human and social sciences since their inception. And their exploration led to a variety of answers.”So argues our guest on the Brain for Business, Professor Vlad Glaveanu of Dublin City University.Vlad Glaveanu is Full Professor of psychology in the School of Psychology, Dublin City University, and Professor at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology, University of Bergen. He is the founder and president of the Possibility Studies Network (PSN) that brings together academics, researchers and practitioners from centres, laboratories or societies dedicated to the study of human possibility, its antecedents, processes, limitations and consequences.Vlad’s work focuses on creativity, imagination, culture, collaboration, wonder, possibility, and societal challenges. He has edited a number of books, including the Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture (2016) and the Oxford Creativity Reader (2018), co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Domains (2017) and the Oxford Handbook of Imagination and Culture (2017). Separately, he has authored The Possible: A Sociocultural Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020), Creativity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2021), and Wonder: The Extraordinary Power of an Ordinary Experience (Bloomsbury, 2020), and authored or co-authored more than 200 articles and book chapters in these areas. In Vlad received the Berlyne Award from the APA Division 10 for outstanding early career contributions to the field of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts. You can find out more about the Possibility Studies Network at this link: https://possibilitystudies.net/Some of Vlad’s recent writings on possibility studies are available to access here:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/27538699221127580 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest today on Brain for Business has recently written that “We are increasingly living in a society of falsehoods. News can be fake. Brands can be fake. Influencer endorsements can be fake. And “facts” are often fake, or “alternative.”"Yet what does all it mean for leaders and organisations? What role does social media play? And how can we start to see through the fog of fakes and falsity?Dr Kirk Plangger is a Reader (Associate Professor) of Marketing at King's Business School at King’s College London. He is a marketing management researcher specialising in consumer led digital marketing strategy.Most of Kirk's research explores how digital technologies mediate and change the buying process and how organisations should address these technologies. Currently, he is working on projects investigating shoppable advertising, the value of live in marketing, brand transparency, alternative reality marketing, social media influencers, falsity in marketing and advertising, and artificial intelligence in marketing. Kirk publishes regularly in leading academic journals and holds a number of editorial review board positions. His research has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, UK Engineering and Physics Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), British Academy, UK Innovate, and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).You can read Kirk’s thoughts on managing in an era of falsity here: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/177840001/Plangger_and_Campbell_Accepted_version_Managing_in_an_era_of_falsity_Business_Horizons.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Today we stand at the precipice of not one but three converging and potentially catastrophic long-term trends: climate change, globalization, and growing inequality. On their own, each of these makes the occasional crisis worse: We might see a more destructive hurricane, a more widespread financial meltdown, or longer or more violent civil unrest. Together, though, these trends magnify challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, was not just a health crisis but an economic and political one as well.”Not my words, but rather those of our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, - Professor John Katsos.John E. Katsos is an associate professor of business law, business ethics, and social responsibility at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, and a research affiliate at Queen’s University Belfast. As a scholar, he has published dozens of academic and media articles, as well as reports for boards and international organizations. He has done fieldwork in Iraq, Lebanon, Cyprus, Syria, Sri Lanka, and Hong Kong and is considered one of the world’s leading researchers on business in crisis zones. As an educator, Katsos teaches undergraduate, graduate, and executive students in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa how to manage more ethical and sustainable organizations for a better world.The HBR article referred to can be accessed here: https://hbr.org/2021/11/a-new-crisis-playbook-for-an-uncertain-world Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.