The basis of trust may be changing. It used to be based on reciprocity and as such was fragile and personal. Because of technology, trust is now based on reputation among people who don't know each. It is both less personal and more robust.

The history of leadership theory started with an emphasis on traits - the notion that it is the make-up of the leader that makes all the difference. This paper brief seeks to provide a framework that allows us to integrate prior leadership theories, while focusing on what leaders actually do. It is a framework that views leadership as a capacity that both individuals and groups possess.

Debate about the utility of knowledge management continues today. This author, a recognized authority on the discipline, suggests that as long as we adopt a good model for managing knowledge, in this case, a doughnut, its practice can give a company a decided advantage.

It's smart to give the recruiter a few minutes of your time, even if you're not actively job hunting. You never know when you might be.

Success in China requires a flexible approach for a diverse market.

A study of history yields important clues about what helps economies enjoy sustained economic growth.

Most leadership literature is based on American experience. Is it possible to identify a more European approach?

In this blog post, Dick Costolo ponders the answer to the age old question "What is your exit strategy?"

Despite the rash of corporate scandals and the resulting rush to address the problem by adding more laws and regulations, seemingly little attention has been paid to how the nature (not the substance) of rules may or may not affect ethical decision-making. Drawing on work in the law, ethics, management, psychology, and other social sciences, this paper explores how several characteristics of rules may interfere with the process of reaching and implementing ethical decisions. Such a relationship would have practical implications for regulatory policy and managers of organizations, and the article concludes by suggesting how regulations and corporate ethics programs should be able to improve the ethical culture of business and enhance the ethical decision-making skills of employees.

What leads a person to start a company? "The impulseÂ…to prove oneself superior to others."

Editor's Note: a look at the life and work of economist Joseph A. Schumpeter

In this interview David Taube talks
about franchising and its pros and
cons as a business expansion model.

Using a new tool called a widget to boost your brand.

Best practices only work in a given context, says Günter Stahl, INSEAD Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour. "So what works for one company may not work for another."

That's one of the key findings of The Global Human Resource Research Alliance, a study of best practices in talent management on which Stahl was a lead researcher. It investigated the processes and practices of 37 multinational companies, selected on the basis of their international scope, long-term performance and reputation.

Open a new window! That's just what the author orders as a way to address the most important issues you'll face - those dealing with how customers interact with your business.

ManyWorlds takes a look at the work of Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee on emotional intelligence, including a look at the four dimensions (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management) and six leadership styles: Commanding (or Coercive), Authoritative (or Visionary), Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Coaching.

A powerful way to improve executive effectiveness or promote connectivity in an organization is to work through each employee's personal network. Research has shown that people in more diverse, entrepreneurial networks tend to be more successful. Providing executives and employees with a means of planning their personal network development is an effective way to promote connectivity. Such feedback can help employees identify biases in their networks and understand why they might want to invest more in some relationships and less in others.

There are many ways to assess the composition of your network and its impact on performance, learning and innovation. For example, sociologists commonly look at the effect of certain similarities between people-such as age, race, education, and gender-on clustering in networks. But these demographics do not always illustrate the subtle means by which one's contacts affect learning. In many coaching sessions with managers at all levels in organizations, we have found at least six dimensions of personal networks to be consistently important.

Why apparently good decisions prove to be bad ones is often blamed on internal and external factors - unexpected economic hiccups or flawed market research, for example. Only rarely are bad decisions seen as the result of bad decision making, the process that governs the way managers make decisions. But as this author explains, examining and improving how decisions are made can often make the difference between a good and a bad decision.

Geniuses are great. But bright, motivated teams are better. Unfortunately, many companies are pouring more money into generating ideas, but falling short on team-building, networking and collaboration. In a Wall Street Journal Online article, Accenture's Robert Thomas and three noted academics dissect the problem and posit a solution.

Every great product or service started out as just a sparkle in someone's eye. Whether you want to invent the next must-have technology or simply convince your boss to add another coffee machine, the key to turning your idea into reality is to make sure the right people take it seriously.

"Negotiators who are quick to label the other party 'irrational' do so at great potential cost to themselves," say HBS professors Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman. Their new book, Negotiation Genius, combines expertise in psychology with practical examples to show how anyone can improve dealmaking skills. In this excerpt, Malhotra and Bazerman describe what to do when the other party's behavior does not make sense.

Today, most consumer goods companies are trying to upgrade their sales forces to serve increasingly sophisticated customers and fight the war for visibility, shelf space, and promotions. But product pushers can't become insight generators overnight. The authors discuss eight fatal flaws of sales forces and how companies can make detailed, thoughtful, nuts-and-bolts adjustments to remedy them.

Dave McClure blogs about how venture capitalists and associated lawyers have failed to embrace the technological advances that have helped nearly every other aspect of the business world.

M&A executives at the most successful US companies understand not only how acquisitions create value but also how to enlist the support of the organization.

A new theory suggests that creativity comes in two distinct types - quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet. [Hat Tip to Bruce Lynn]

"Shadowed by peril as we are, you would think we'd get pretty good at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do us in from the ones that are statistical long shots. But you would be wrong." Despite its misleading title, this article explores the human (not just American) tendency to get calculations of risk wrong.