I recently deactivated my Facebook account. Although it had been a handy tool for reconnecting with old friends, keeping up with some colleagues, and socializing with family & other loved ones, in the past few months, I began to experience a downside to the social networking site. This eventually led to the deactivation of my account. Although social networking can… Read more →
At the Academy of Management meeting earlier this month, I had the pleasure of assisting Dr. Ulrike Schultze in a session that she coordinated. The panelists at the session were respected journal editors. What was different about this session from other sessions at the annual meeting was that it was held simultaneously in Second Life and the hotel in Chicago. … Read more →
The June 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review contained a brief note by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman titled “10 Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders“. The authors, who analyzed 360-degree feedback, identified the following 10 most common shortcomings of ineffective leaders. The worst leaders: Lacked energy and enthusiasm; Accepted their own mediocre performance; Lacked clear vision and direction; Had poor… Read more →
Surinder is my advisor and mentor in the doctoral program at Binghamton University. We have written several conference papers and collaborated on other projects together with Betsy and Professor Rui Huang at the university. Very often the two of us, or all of us, have worked together while geographically far apart. We have used tools like Google docs, Google… Read more →
According to Harvard’s Richard Hackman, a leading expert on teams, there is a widespread belief that teams make us more productive and creative and that they are the best way to get a job done. In a May 2009 Harvard Business Review interview, Professor Hackman cautions us that problems with coordination, motivation, and competition often cause a team to perform… Read more →
The April 2009 issue of the Communications of the ACM, a highly respected journal, published an article by Jay F. Nunanamker, Bruce A. Reining, and Robert O. Briggs on ‘Principles for Effective Virtual Teamwork.’ The authors derived these principles from their decade long experience of working with hundreds of virtual teams. I present these principles and also provide links to… Read more →
Last week’s Time had an article on how President Obama is using the science of change to transform the country. Specifically, President Obama and his economic team are relying on findings in behavioral economics to make people break old habits and adopt behaviors that are better for them and society. Unlike traditional economics which assumes that human rationality, self-interest, and… Read more →
It’s both good and bad that I can’t take my work home. These days my biggest limitation is technology. The work I do depends heavily on several expensive software packages. My employer has a policy disallowing the organization from paying for software for home computers, and these applications are too expensive for me to buy on my own dime. … Read more →
In response to my last post (Clearing the Air About Corporate Blogging), Andrew Meyer of ‘Inquiries Into Alignment‘ commented about the problem of getting contributors. He points out that the number of active bloggers within a firm is typically low. In fact, in one of the research papers that I included in my post, the authors found that in a… Read more →
Recently, warfare expert P. W. Singer appeared on several shows (NPR’s Fresh Air, The Daily Show) to talk about his new book Wired for War. While not necessarily the central focus of the book, one point he made caught my attention for its relation to virtual teams. Singer talked about a drone pilot who engages in war, but from afar… Read more →