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Across all sectors, we are witnessing a tremendous resurgence in American business. Bold new thinking, a willingness to embrace change, and a renewed emphasis on quality and customer service are the common factors underlying this resurgence. We at Sears have taken the first few steps on what we know will prove to be a very long journey

The case opens with Martha Stewart's 2005 release from prison following her conviction for obstructing an insider-trading investigation of her 2001 sale of personal stock. The scandal dealt a crippling blow to the powerful Martha Stewart brand and drove results at her namesake company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO), deep into the red. But as owner of more than 90 percent of MSO's voting shares, Stewart continued to control the company throughout the scandal.

The company faced significant external challenges, including changing consumer preferences and mounting competition in all of its markets. Ad rates were under pressure as advertisers began fragmenting spending across multiple platforms, including the Internet and social media, where MSO was weak. New competitors were luring readers from MSO's flagship publication, Martha Stewart Living. And in its second biggest business, merchandising, retailing juggernauts such as Walmart and Target were crushing MSO's most important sales channel, Kmart. Internal challenges loomed even larger, with numerous failures of governance while the company attempted a turnaround.

This case can be used to teach either corporate governance or turnarounds.

Students will learn:

• How control of shareholder voting rights by a founding executive can undermine corporate governance

• The importance of independent directors and board committees

• How company bylaws affect corporate governance

• How to recognize and respond to early signs of stagnation

• How to avoid management actions that can make a crisis worse

• How weaknesses in executive leadership can push a company into crisis and foster a culture that actively prevents strategic revitalization

How control of shareholder voting rights by a founding executive can undermine corporate governance

The importance of independent directors and board committees

How company bylaws affect corporate governance

How to recognize and respond to early signs of stagnation

How to avoid management actions that can make a crisis worse

How weaknesses in executive leadership can push a company into crisis and foster a culture that actively prevents strategic revitalization

Sudden crises, known as environmental jolts, can cripple unprepared organizations. In recent years, financial jolts have led many organizations, particularly government organizations, to respond by furloughing employees. Furloughs can engender various responses in employees that can lead to negative work outcomes for both the employees and the organization. Previous research shows that the implementation of strategic human resource management (SHRM) practices, such as commitment-based systems, can mitigate the negative effects of environmental jolts. Utilizing the knowledge-based view and affective events theory, we propose a multilevel model where SHRM practices moderate employee affective responses to furloughs, which, in turn, drive subsequent employee behavioral outcomes.

Based on a review of multiple literatures, a comprehensive content domain of essential intercultural competencies for effective global leaders is presented. This domain is then used to guide the development of the Global Competencies Inventory (GCI), a 160-item self-report measure that assesses the degree to which individuals possess the intercultural competencies that are associated with global leader effectiveness. Using sample sizes ranging from several hundred to nearly 9,000 subjects, evidence from several studies is presented showing the GCI to have convergent validity, predictive validity, and freedom from demographic and ethnic subgroup biases. Implications for theory and future research are also discussed.

Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits are often viewed as negative or undesirable personality traits. However, recent research demonstrates that individuals with these traits possess qualities that may be personally beneficial within the business contexts. In this chapter, we conceptualize a balanced perspective of these traits throughout the entrepreneurial process (opportunity recognition, opportunity evaluation, and opportunity exploitation) and discuss human resources management strategies that can be employed to enhance the benefits, or minimize the challenges, associated with Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits. Specifically, we propose that Machiavellian qualities are most beneficial in the evaluation stage of entrepreneurship, and Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic qualities are beneficial in the exploitation stage of entrepreneurship.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

This chapter examines corporate governance–related financial reporting issues in the context of globalization. Over the past few decades, the process of globalization has substantially altered the fields of corporate governance and accounting. More specifically, Anglo-American models of corporate governance and financial reporting have received increasing momentum in emerging economies, including China. However, a review of relevant studies suggests that there is limited research examining the implementation of Anglo-American concepts in various countries regardless of their growing acceptance. This monograph extends the existing literature by comprehensively investigating the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards in China, the largest transitional economy that has different institutional context from Anglo-American countries. In addition, the review has a number of implications for developing the theoretical framework, and determining the research methodology for the monograph.

Scholarship on reputation in and of organizations has been going on for decades, and it always has separated along level of analysis issues, whereby the separate literatures on individual, group/team/unit, and organization reputation fail to acknowledge each other. This sends the implicit message that reputation is a fundamentally different phenomenon at the three different levels of analysis. We tested the validity of this implicit assumption by conducting a multilevel review of the reputation literature, and drawing conclusions about the “level-specific” or “level-generic” nature of the reputation construct. The review results permitted the conclusion that reputation phenomena are essentially the same at all levels of analysis. Based on this, we frame a future agenda for theory and research on reputation.