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Leadership stands out as an enduringly popular, yet often controversial aspect of management. A recent growth in media reports of high‐profile CEO scandals has only served to add more coals to the fire. Leaders like Jack Welch and Bill Gates have been heralded as corporate icons. But today, as we reflect on the troublesome 1990s, business guru Jim Collins believes that there are few real heroes left standing.

This chapter asks: How do COVID-19 conspiracy theories about Bill Gates work? In order to provide an answer, it analyses social media artefacts that make conspiratorial claims about Bill Gates such as the ones that he manufactured the virus, makes money from COVID-19 vaccines, plans to dominate the world and erect a dictatorship, and implants surveillance microchips into humans via COVID-19 vaccinations. The focus is on artefacts that have massively spread and have reached high visibility on social media and the Internet. A critical discourse analysis was conducted of this material.

The findings show that and how COVID-19 conspiracy theories construct the existence of a secret elite that dominates the world, use ideological strategies such as the personalisation of domination, the friend/enemy scheme, rational irrationality and logical determinism. COVID-19 conspiracy theories are a necrophilic ideology, an ideology of death that advances death and increases the number of deaths. This pandemic ideology tries to convince humans that vaccines are harmful and that COVID-19 is a hoax, whereby human misery is advanced. COVID-19 conspiracy theories are to a large degree a right-wing ideology.

Seven million Weetabix biscuits are produced every day. The company is private and all‐British and the product is number two in the cereals charts.

Biennial budgeting and appropriations cycles have been a popular idea among many members of Congress for the past twenty years. Despite widespread bipartisan support for biennial budgeting in the 1980s, the first House vote on the subject, in 2000, resulted in a narrow defeat for biennial budgeting. This article analyzes the merits of biennial budgeting and the reasons for its defeat, arguing that during the 1990s biennial budgeting lost its sense of urgency because of the erasure of the federal deficit and became a more partisan issue than it previously had been.

The pressure on corporate executives to increase their stock prices and shareholder value in the short‐term has caused them to lose sight of how lasting shareholder value is created in the first place. The enterprise must be managed to meet the needs of all stakeholders rather than making decisions based solely on short‐term shareholder value considerations. The primary management emphasis should be on meeting the needs of our customers and motivating employees to do so. Companies that put their customers first and empower their employees to serve them will inevitably provide greater growth in shareholder value than those corporations that focus primarily on boosting their stock price and only giving lip service to other constituencies. The demands of all stakeholders must be met concurrently. Leaders must juggle the competing interests of their stakeholders – customers and customer’s customers; current employees and those in acquired companies; short‐term and long‐term shareholders; media; local, national, and international communities; government and regulators.

This chapter asks: How do Internet users react to COVID-19 conspiracy theories spread on social media? It presents the findings of a content analysis and critical discourse analysis of user comments collected from social media postings that advance COVID-19 conspiracy theories. A total of 2,847 comments made to seven social media postings whose authors support COVID-19 conspiracy theories were collected, coded and analysed.

The analysis shows the contested character of the communication of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and the role of the friend/enemy scheme, verbal attacks, violent threats, satire and humour in such communication processes.

In a recent speech LORD ROSEBERY charged the people of this country with possessing, to an inordinate extent, the fatal gift of complacency, and he observed that the nation which is not progressive is retrogressive. “Rest and be thankful,” said LORD ROSEBERY, is a motto which spells decay, and those who have any experience of the methods of the manufacturers of the country will admit that this seemingly severe impeachment is by no means unfounded or uncalled‐for. Industries, of which at one time the English were masters, are now gradually falling into other hands. The workers of other lands are successfully competing with our own, and yet, in spite of this condition of our mercantile affairs, the spirit of complacency is rampant. The sons are content to continue in the footsteps of the fathers, oblivious of the fact that time and seasons do not stand still and that they may be overwhelmed by the advancing flood of competition. The trade conservatism which was in the past opposed to the introduction of the steam‐engine, the power‐loom, and other mechanical appliances, is still responsible for the extreme slowness with which English firms appreciate the necessity for such innovations in the conduct of their business as would place them in a position to hold their own in the markets of the world. In respect to the protection of pure food production Great Britain and the British manufacturers are still a long way behind. Although the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875 was one of the first Acts passed in any country to prevent the sale of adulterated food and drink, its machinery is cumbrous, and the subsequent Amendment Acts have not added materially to its efficiency; with the result that the Adulteration Acts do not compare favourably with those of many other countries. The spirit of complacency in regard to food products has affected alike the producer and the distributor, and the result is that in many instances there is no adequate inducement to produce anything but a mediocre article—such an article, in fact, as only escapes condemnation because of the faulty construction of the machinery of the law.

This masterclass examines former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty's personal memoir of her life and career as a study of authentic leadership in action, and her concept of “good power” through which she distills the major insights on leadership she gleaned along the way.

This masterclass examines the insights from a former IBM CEO's “memoir with purpose” as an example of the classic perspective on authentic leadership developed in the “True North” series of studies by Harvard's Bill George and his research associates over two decades.

Ginni Rometty's “good power” concept and principles, as developed in her “memoir with purpose,” represent a practical guide for aspiring leaders seeking to become a positive force for change, and they make a valuable addition to the literature on authentic leadership.

Her “good power” concept and experience-based principles, as developed in her “memoir with purpose” make a valuable addition to the literature on authentic leadership.

Her “good power” concept and principles, as developed in her “memoir with purpose,” represent a practical guide for aspiring leaders seeking to become a positive force for change.

Her memoir, with its conception of “good power,” strongly encourages corporate leaders to adopt a “stakeholder perspective” and become more active and outspoken, forces for positive change in the wider societies within which they operate.

Reflective memoirs as analytical as this one, from someone who has led at the highest level in the business world, are still rare in the genre.