Financial performance measurement

Executives know that a company's measurement systems strongly affect employee behaviors. But the traditional financial performance measures that worked...

In "The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership," Joseph Bower and Lynn Paine examine the foundations and flaws of agency theory, which views shareholders...

Lately companies have come to recognize the limitations of the view that they must create value only for shareholders. Recognizing that every stakeholder...

In this issue's Spotlight we examine how a focus on maximizing shareholder value--which leads to short-termism for management and boards--can threaten...

This is a challenging time to be a CEO. Around the world, economic growth is slow, political uncertainty undermines attempts to develop long-term plans,...

Investors have a quantitative understanding of how the market values a company. Management teams should too.

Four findings from a decade of research on virtual queues.

I didn't anticipate that I would leave the country of Iceland with a renewed awareness of the different governance challenges faced by private and public...

In "The CEO View: Defending a Good Company from Bad Investors," David Pyott, former chief of Allergan, describes how he fended off a hostile takeover...

And when those innovations succeed.

It's an idea that needs to be a part of the future of work.

A recent analysis of 35,000 manufacturing plants found that those with more-structured management practices were more likely to acquire ones with less-structured practices.

Start-ups seem to be getting bigger faster than ever--Uber is just one example of today's "unicorns," or private, venture-backed companies valued at a...

Evidence from an ongoing study of 57 companies to determine the profit impact of market strategies (PIMS) shows that one of the main indicators of business...

Every day, at almost every company, strategy is being hijacked by numbers. Because strategy is abstract, employees often mentally replace it with the...

Today's fast-paced economy demands that businesses change or die. But few companies manage corporate transformations as well as they would like. The brutal...

And investors aren't always enthusiastic about it.

Don’t undervalue the overlooked.

Resource poverty distinguishes the management of small businesses from that of big businesses. An examination of fundamental financial concepts, such...

A new measure gets past the distortions of total shareholder return and puts buybacks into perspective.