Archive: Center News
Untested Assumptions May Have a Big Effect
GSB Research, June 2005
Offering incentive pay makes organizations perform better. Driving down product and wage costs is essential for success in low-margin businesses. Holding people accountable results in fewer screw-ups. All fundamental truths of business, right? Wrong, says Jeffrey Pfeffer. These are merely assumptions about what makes organizations competitive.
When the CEO Leaves, Do Others Follow?
GSB Research, February, 2004
In a business environment where heads of companies are increasingly held accountable for performance and boards are willing to use their muscle to push them out, CEOs are being handed pink slips more frequently than ever before. So what does that mean for the rest of the company's top executives? Can they perform as successfully with a different CEO? Does it mean the rest of top management will also turn over?
Don Quixote's Lessons for Leadership
Stanford Business, May 2003
Drawing on classical literature and contemporary film, Jim March creates a movie produced in Europe and America based on the idealism in Cervantes' novel.
CEO Hubris Distorts Investment Decisions
Stanford Business, February 2003
In the past decade, economists have begun to flirt with the possibility that we do not live in a perfect world in which people make decisions consistently, rationally, and systematically. Slowly but surely, they are beginning to acknowledge that most of us do all sorts of illogical and idiosyncratic things—and that by studying such irrational behavior we can actually learn a tremendous amount about how markets really function.
Additional Information on Leadership at Stanford University
The Stanford Student Affairs division has established a central resource for students interested in pursuing leadership opportunities, either through practical experience or academic study. This centralized, one-stop reference is designed to direct students to resources that may help them in achieving a degree of mastery in three key components of leadership–theory, practice and reflection. You may want to take a look at the website to see if it can help you to identify the types of leadership experience you're seeking.
