Brain for Business

In a new book – Learning to See: Inside the world's leading art and design schools, published by MIT Press – our guest today, Professor Keith Sawyer explores the way that people see and learn to see, offering an engaging and profound account of how professional artists and designers create and how they teach others to do it. In the interview we explore the key insights from Keith's research and their significance for anyone working in any role or organisation.About our guest…Keith Sawyer is Morgan Distinguished Professor of Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina. Keith has dedicated his career to the study of creativity and learning. His research helps us answer questions such as: Which teams are more creative? What team processes result in greater creativity? Which groups are more likely to contribute to more effective learning of the participants? Which organizations and classrooms are most likely to foster effective group interactions?Learning to See: Inside the world's leading art and design schools by Keith Sawyer is available to purchase here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262551649/learning-to-see/You can find out more about Keith's work via his Substack and Podcat:The Science of Creativity Podcast is available here: https://sawyerpodcast.com/The Science of Creativity Substack can be accessed here: https://keithsawyer.substack.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Creative work in itself is stressful and riddled with anxiety-provoking uncertainties. It takes resilience to persist through these challenges. It takes willingness to endure and overcome obstacles, from the internal voices of doubt and self-criticism to scarce material resources to difficulties in getting support for ideas. How are creative people able to do what others cannot? How do they transform the challenges and difficulties that original ideas are riddled with into actions and achievements?It is just these questions that our guest today, Dr Zorana Ivcevic Pringle explores in her new book, The Creativity Choice, published by Hachette.About our guest…Zorana Ivcevic Pringle is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence where she currently serves as the Director of the Creativity and Emotions Lab. Zorana studies the role of emotion and emotional intelligence in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills.Find out more about Zorana's work and order her book, The Creativity Choice, here: https://www.zorana-ivcevic-pringle.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If all the noise in the popular media and online is anything to go by, differences between various generations including Gen Z, Gen X, Boomers and so on are not just real but are something that leaders and organisations need to take seriously in order to ensure their effectiveness into the future. But is that really the case? Is there really a scientific basis to support arguments and assertions about generational differences and their impact on organisations?To explore these questions, I am delighted to welcome to Brain for Business Professor David Costanza.David Costanza is a professor at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.About our guest...Professor Costanza's research focuses on generational differences; adaptive leadership; high potential; organizational culture, decline, and death; as well as statistics and research methods. He has published in Journal of Business and Psychology; Journal of Vocational Behavior; Personnel Psychology; and Work, Aging and Retirement. He has authored for Slate and has been interviewed by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, TIME magazine, VOX, and Yahoo! Finance. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Academy of Management and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Business and Psychology and Work, Aging and Retirement.The 2023 article from the journal Acta Psychologica – Are generations a useful concept? – can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691823002354The Slate article referred to – Can We Please Stop Talking About Generations as if They Are a Thing? – to is available here: https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/the-evidence-behind-generations-is-lacking.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is one thing to develop an innovation and put it out into the world, but that will only get you so far. Just as important is the adoption of innovations by customers, users or stakeholders. Yet what drives the adoption of innovation and how can organisations support the greater adoption of their offerings?To discuss this it is a pleasure to speak today with Dr Radu Dimitriu, Associate Professor in Marketing at Trinity College Dublin. About our guest...Dr Radu Dimitriu is an Associate Professor in Marketing at Trinity College Dublin. Radu has a PhD from BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, and prior to joining TCD worked with Cranfield University in the UK (2010-2018). His research is focused on branding, consumer behaviour and psychology, social media marketing, CSR and prosocial behaviour, consumer responses to sensory-enabling technologies, and consumers' adoption of AI-enabled technologies such as autonomous products and chatbots. On the Trinity MBA, Radu is also coordinating the programme's capstone Strategic Company Projects, as well as lecturing on Marketing Strategy. Radu has been consulting for blue chip companies and regularly engages with the industry; recent engagements include that of Judge at the Ireland User Experience Awards and of Speaker at the Customer Experience Professional Association Day. A citizen of the world, he speaks several languages including English, Spanish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese and his mother tongue, Romanian. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In any organization sometimes things will go wrong or just not work out. While in many cases this might be due to mistakes or errors, at other times it is due to professional misconduct – often leading to significant consequences for both the organization and the individuals concerned. To explore the issue of professional misconduct in greater depth, I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by the co-author of a recent paper on the subject, Will Harvey. Will Harvey is a Professor of Leadership at Melbourne Business School in Australia and is currently the Director of the Social Purpose Centre, as well as being an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation. Will researches on reputation, talent management and leadership within organisations. He has recently published the book, Reputations at Stake, with Oxford University Press and his work has appeared in journals such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Management Learning, Work, Employment & Society, and the British Journal of Management. The article discussed in the interview - Why Individuals Commit Professional Misconduct and What Leaders Can Do to Prevent It – is published in California Management Review and is available to download here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00081256241305815 Full Reference: Harvey, W. S., Arora, N., Currie, G., & Spyridonidis, D. (2024). Why Individuals Commit Professional Misconduct and What Leaders Can Do to Prevent It. California Management Review, 00081256241305815. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In recent years, whether we like it or not, AI or artificial intelligence, has become omnipresent, pervading online systems of all types. In a recent paper our guests today argue that a “human rights frameworks can be regarded as the common denominator between law and ethics and have a crucial role to play in the ethics-based legal governance of AI.” Yet what might this mean in practice and how might we ensure that the opportunities offered by AI are taken full advantage of and not inadvertently stifled?To discuss this I am delighted to be joined by Professor Linda Hogan, Professor of Ecumenics at the School of Religion at Trinity College Dublin and Dr Marta Lasek-Markey of the Adapt Research Centre, hosted by Trinity College Dublin.About our guests...Professor Linda Hogan is an ethicist with extensive experience in research and teaching in pluralist and multi-religious contexts. Her primary research interests lie in the fields of inter-cultural and inter-religious ethics, social and political ethics, human rights and gender.Dr Marta Lasek-Markey is a Postdoctoral Researcher at ADAPT, the world-leading SFI Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, brings leading academics, researchers and industry partners together to deliver excellent science, engage the public, develop novel solutions for business across all sectors and enhance Ireland's international reputation.The paper discussed in the interview is open access and is available here:Towards a Human Rights-Based Approach to Ethical AI Governance in Europe by Linda Hogan and Marta Lasek-Markey - https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/9/6/181 You can find out more about the the Adapt Centre at Trinity College and the FORSEE project here:https://www.adaptcentre.ie/ https://www.adaptcentre.ie/news-and-events/forsee-project-kicks-off-in-dublin/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We tend to think of our memories as impressions of the past that remain fully intact, preserved somewhere inside our brains. In fact, we construct and reconstruct our memories every time we attempt to recall them. A new book, Memory Lane, co-authored by our guest today, Professor Gillian Murphy, introduces readers to the cutting-edge science of human memory, revealing how our recollections of the past are constantly adapting and changing, and why a faulty memory isn't always a bad thing.About our guestGillian Murphy is an Associate Professor senior lecturer in the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork in Ireland and leads the Everyday Cognition Lab. Gillian's research interests primarily relate to understanding attention and memory in everyday scenarios. She has conducted research examining distraction and attention failure in simulated driving environments and eyewitness memory for crimes. Much of her recent research relates to misinformation - assessing who is most susceptible to misinformation, how and when do false memories form in response to misinformation, and developing interventions to reduce harm. You can find out more about Gillian's research here on The Everyday Cognition Lab homepage: https://www.everydaycognitionlab.com/Details on Memory Lane by Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy are available here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691257099/memory-lane Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These days everyone seems to be searching for their passion, safe in the knowledge that ‘Find something you love to do, and you'll never have to work a day in your life'. Yet how realistic is this? And how realistic is it for people to strive to find their ultimate life calling – if there even is such a thing?To explore the question of callings in greater depth I am delighted to be joined by Professor Kirsten Robertson of Fraser Valley University in Canada.About our guest…Dr. Kirsten Robertson is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources in the School of Business at Fraser Valley University.Kirsten's research explores the lived experiences of individuals at work, with a particular focus on work meaningfulness, the interface between work and non-work, and workplace relationships with both people and animals. She has published her research in leading management journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Organizational Behavior.The paper discussed in the interview - Living life ‘to the core': Enacting a calling through configurations of multiple jobs – is open access and is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00187267241251956Kirsten's Google Scholar page can be accessed here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Piek-GcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=aoKirsten's profile page at the University of Fraser Valley is available here: https://www.ufv.ca/business/faculty-and-staff/robertson-kirsten.htm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The question of diversity is one that we have discussed previously on the Brain for Business podcast. While the benefits of diversity are often taken for granted and assumed in the popular press and discourse, research examining the actual benefits of diversity in terms of team effectiveness and performance have – up until now – been sadly lacking. In a paper to be published shortly in the Journal of Business of Psychology, our guest today, Dr Lukas Wallrich and colleagues seek to address this gap in the literature.About our guest...Dr Lukas Wallrich is a Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck Business School , University of London, where he teaches on organisational psychology master programmes and primarily researches how workforce diversity can be harnessed to improve organisational performance. Other research interests include the effect of intergroup contact on pro-social behaviour, the development of stereotypes and implicit associations and the influence of traditional and new media on public attitudes.Prior to moving into academia, Lukas worked as a consultant with McKinsey and Co.Lukas's personal website is as follows: https://www.lukaswallrich.coffee/A pre-print copy of the article discussed is available here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nscd4The interactive web app with the data from the article can be accessed here: https://lukaswallrich.shinyapps.io/diversity_meta/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over four decades ago the American author and futurist, John Naisbitt, captured the public imagination with his book Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. Since that time, the concept has been widely adopted by researchers, consultants, private enterprises and governments to explore long-term futures across a diverse range of regions, industries and socioeconomic domains. Yet what are megatrends? And how can we better understand their significance and impact?To explore this I am delighted to be joined on Brain for Business by Dr Claire Naughtin.Dr Claire Naughtin is a Principal Research Consultant at Data61 – part of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation or CSIRO, an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. Claire leads Data61's Digital Futures team and specialises in future-focused, strategic projects and has worked across a diverse range of policy and industry domains, including the future of trade, employment, healthcare and emerging technology and industry development opportunities. Among her most recent work, Claire co-led the delivery of CSIRO's Our Future World report – a once-in-a-decade report that identified seven emerging megatrends that will shape the next 20 years for Australia. Claire is passionate about bridging the gap between research and the real world and equipping leaders with a data-informed narrative of the future to help guide long-term decision-making. As part of this, Claire delivers strategic foresight training and workshops to help organisations build resilience to uncertain futures and publishes her research in scientific and industry journals. You can find out more about Claire and her work on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-naughtin/The “Our Future World” report can be accessed online: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/data/Our-Future-WorldFurther information about Data61 and the CSIRO is available here: https://www.csiro.au/en/about/people/business-units/data61 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent paper in the journal Leadership Quarterly explores the very nature of leadership styles and how they play out, ultimately asserting that: "the common finding that positive leadership styles lead to positive outcomes […] might be an artifact of conflation rather than a reflection of reality” (p. 1). Yet what are positive leadership styles and why have generations of leadership researchers so badly misinterpreted their impact?Joining me on the Brain for Business podcast to discuss the findings of the paper is one of its co-authors, Professor Thomas Fischer of the University of Geneva. About Thomas FischerThomas Fischer is an Associate Professor at the University of Geneva and is the Yearly Review Editor of The Leadership Quarterly, the premier journal fully dedicated to leadership research. Thomas Fischer's work focuses on managing people in organizations, and in particular on two topics. First, the conceptualization and measurement of leadership styles. Second, how people talk about their own leadership and whether their practice lives up to what they preach. Details of the articles discussed in the podcast are as follows: Fischer, T., Dietz, J., & Antonakis, J. (2024). A fatal flaw: Positive leadership style research creates causal illusions. The Leadership Quarterly, 101771. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984323000978Fischer, T. (2023). Measuring behaviors counterfactually. The Leadership Quarterly, 34(6), 101750. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984323000760Fischer, T., & Sitkin, S. B. (2023). Leadership styles: A comprehensive assessment and way forward. Academy of Management Annals, 17(1), 331-372. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/annals.2020.0340Alvesson, M., & Blom, M. (2022). The hegemonic ambiguity of big concepts in organization studies. Human Relations, 75(1), 58-86. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726720986847 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent article in the journal Organization Science argues that“Although prior research attributes news media coverage of firms to the alignment of firm behavior with societal expectations of appropriateness, the appropriateness of firm behavior is judged through an ideological lens. Therefore, the influence of a firm's behavior on its news media coverage is likely to be contingent on news organizations' ideology.” The veracity of this statement has seemingly never been more true than in recent years when the news media has become increasingly polarised along ideological grounds and there would at times appear to be a news outlet to support any view, however mainstream or obscure.To explore this further I am delighted be joined by one of the co-authors of the paper, Professor Georg Wernicke of HEC Paris.About our guest…Georg Wernicke is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris. Georg's research is on topics in, and at the intersection of, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR), broadly defined. More specifically, he is interested in the drivers of public disapproval of firms' practices, for example the compensation firms pay to their CEOs, how firms' prosocial activities affect disapproval, and, in turn, which subset of firms and CEOs reacts to being targeted. Georg also analyzes how the characteristics and values of CEOs affect firm level outcomes such as corporate misconduct or the adoption of prosocial practices, as well as how demographic minority status affects labor-market outcomes for directors after occurrences of financial fraud. Furthermore, Georg engages in projects that explore the antecedents of superior firm performance on CSR.The article referenced in the discussion is available here: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2022.17237You can find out more about Georg and his work at his personal page: https://www.georg-wernicke.com/Or on his faculty page at HEC Paris: https://www.hec.edu/en/faculty-research/faculty-directory/faculty-member/WERNICKE-Georg Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Innovation is an inherently risky business. When we push the boundaries of possibility and try to develop new products, processes or services, we are by definition moving into areas that are new and unexplored. A key consequence of this is that innovation sometimes – or even often – results in failure. But why is this? And are all innovation failures the same?To explore this further, I am delighted to be joined by Dr Elena Freisinger who, together with Professor Ian McCarthy of Simon Fraser University, has recently published on just this topic.About our guest…Elena Freisinger is an Assistant Professor of Innovation Management at Ilmenau University of Technology in Thuringia, Germany.Elena's research focuses on the behavioral aspects of Innovation Management, and she investigates the behavior of innovation decision-makers with regard to technological and environmental change and how this affects innovation management and business models of organizations. The article discussed is open access and can be downloaded from here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497224000452You can find out more about Elena and her research here:https://www.tu-ilmenau.de/en/universitaet/fakultaeten/fakultaet-wirtschaftswissenschaften-und-medien/profil/institute-und-fachgebiete/fachgebiet-innovationsmanagement/team/elena-freisingerhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=N1Qp6bcAAAAJ&hl=de Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last number of years, the internet has facilitated much greater connectivity and interaction between people – both on a personal and professional level. Intuitively we might expect that this would lead to an upsurge in innovation as people are exposed to new ideas and can easily collaborate with many more people. And, indeed, this would very much with the recombinant theory of innovation. Yet is that really the case? To explore this further I am delighted to be joined by Professor Lingfei Wu of the University of Pittsburgh. Lingfei Wu is Assistant Professor of Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His research leverages big data, complexity sciences, and AI to understand how science and technology can advance through collaborative teamwork, known as the Science of Team Science and Innovation.His research has been published in prestigious academic journals like Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and featured in renowned media outlets. Lingfei Wu also advises organizations like Novo Nordisk Fonden and John Templeton Foundation on the use of data science to evaluate teamwork in science. He has received multiple awards for his research and teaching, including the NSF Career Award, Richard King Mellon Award, and Oxford Martin School Fellowship. Lingfei's personal site is accessible here: http://lingfeiwu.github.io/The paper discussed in the interview is available here: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2206/2206.01878.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In many areas of life – both personal and professional – the need to envision potential futures and establish how to get there is crucial. Indeed, some would argue that the ability to envision potential futures is part of what defines us as human beings. And while there are well established approaches such as scenario planning and forecasting, a recent paper in journal Futures outlines a promising new approach, informed by literature and the great literary works. To discuss this, I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Rebecca Braun. Professor Rebecca Braun is the Executive Dean of College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies at the University of Galway. Prior to joining the University of Galway in 2021, Rebecca was Professor of Modern Languages & Creative Futures at Lancaster University in the UK, where she was also Co-Director of the Institute for Social Futures from 2017-2020. Rebecca held further lectureships and research fellowships at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford in the UK and at the Freie Universität Berlin. The article discussed in the interview is available here – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328724000314More information on the Literary Futures approach is available here – https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2024/03/22/using-literary-futures-to-open-up-the-imagination-methods/Rebecca Braun's University Page can be access here – https://www.universityofgalway.ie/our-research/people/languages-literatures-and-cultures/rebeccabraun/The Futures journal can be accessed online – https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/futuresThe Next Wave Futures blog can be subscribed to online – https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In recent years, Diversity along with Equity and Inclusion have emerged as key elements of organisational and people strategy. It is now essentially a “taken for granted” assumption that DEI initiatives are a good thing and that they in turn play an important role in reducing bias and inequality in the workplace. But is this really the case?To explore this further I am delighted to be joined today by Professor Karin Hellerstedt and Professor Timur Uman, both of Jönköping International Business School in Sweden, who were co-authors with Karl Wennberg of Linkoping University of a recent paper published in Academy of Management Perspectives.About our guests...Karin Hellerstedt is a Senior Associate Professor at Jönköping International Business School.Karin has conducted research on entrepreneurship in knowledge intensive industries, and on how firms and teams are formed and develop over time.She has been involved in several research projects dealing with different aspects of entrepreneurship such as academic, rural and knowledge intensive entrepreneurship. Karin Hellerstedt has written and published several research reports and published in international peer review journals.Her current research centers around ownership transitions and the succession of privately held businesses. Timur Uman is a Professor in Accounting and Control at Jönköping International Business School.Timur's research deals with corporate governance and management control in stock listed corporation, hybrid and public organizations and new ventures. His work has been published in premier journals in Business Administration such as Corporate Governance: An International Review, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of World Business and Long-Range Planning among others. Prior to joining academia Timur worked in executive positions in Latvian and German companies dealing with financial management and planning.The paper discussed in the interview is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4308670 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent paper in the Journal of Possibility Studies argues that creativity is an essential skill for effective leadership and that creative leaders can motivate their teams more effectively and can handle novel challenges by being more flexible in going outside the typical routines. Key to this is the important role played by a leaders' creative identity and the recognitions that leaders can deliberately enact their creative identities in their roles, based on two ways to understand their creativity: as a way of thinking or as a personality type.Just as importantly, however, leaders need to be adaptive in their approach – both to leadership and to the cultures they encourage in the workplace.To discuss this further I am delighted to be joined by Dr Oana Velcu-LaitinenAbout our guest…Dr Oana Velcu-Laitinen is a researcher and consultant who works in the areas of creativity, change, innovation and well-being.Her focus is challenging the habitual thinking of leaders, researchers and other knowledge workers to bring positive change and breakthroughs to their workplaces and domains of knowledge.Oana has a published a number of papers and books, including “How to develop your creative identity at work”, published in October 2022. You can find out more about Oana and her work here:· https://www.linkedin.com/in/oana-velcu-laitinen-phd-6081084/· https://www.velcu.fi/The article from the Journal of Possibility Studies discussed in the interview is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/27538699231226173 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When it comes to decision making, overconfidence is acknowledged as one of the most common managerial decision making biases. Nonetheless, much uncertainty remains about the implications of CEO overconfidence most particularly in terms of risk taking and ultimately organisational performance. To explore the impact of CEO overconfidence in more detail I am delighted to be joined by Dr Barbara Burkhard and Professor Charlotta Sirén of the Institute for Responsible Innovation at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland.Barbara Burkhard is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St.GallenBarbara's research is centered on the psychology of top managers and employees. She specializes in researching how the cognition, emotions, and other individual factors influence top managers and employees' decisions, behaviors, and, consequently, organizational outcomes.Charlotta Sirén is an Associate Professor of Management at the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St.Gallen, SwitzerlandCharlotta's research focuses on key elements of entrepreneurship including the psychological aspects of entrepreneurship, informal entrepreneurship, responsible innovation and new venture teams.You can find out more about the work of both Barbara and Charlotta on the website of the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St Gallen: https://iri.unisg.ch/The paper discussed – Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: A Meta-Analysis of CEO Overconfidence, Strategic Risk Taking, and Performance – is open access and is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01492063221110203 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does your organisation get the feedback it needs? In particular, does it get the feedback it needs to improve and to better meet customer or stakeholder needs? Or instead does it just hope for the best and pray that any improvements, changes or innovations somehow meet those needs?To explore the role of feedback and the pivotal role it can play I am delighted to be joined by Professor Henning Piezunka of INSEAD.Key insights:Feedback is vital for organisations and it is vital that they seek it outNot all feedback is equal, organisations need to be clear who is sharing it and how relevant it isPeople giving feedback notice what the organisation responds to and adjust their responses accordinglyThe clearer an organisation's positioning, the more relevant will be the ideas and feedback received – though this comes with the potential cost of missing out on more unusual ideas that might be importantOrganisations must manage the trade-off between narrowing the feedback criteria to get something that is very focused, versus looking for a broad range of responsesWhen organisations respond to feedback online they are not only responding directly to that person but also to other potential customers who will take note of how the organisation has respondedFeedback is not always objective, but rather reflects performance against expectations – and these expectations can be framed based on the feedback of others About HenningHenning Piezunka is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD and is currently a Visiting Professor at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Henning is an award-winning researcher who studies how organisations can tap into the knowledge of their members to foster greater inclusion, innovation and diversity. He has also conducted research into the crowdsourcing of ideas and the wisdom of the crowds. In another stream of research, Henning studies collaboration and competition, such as the factors that escalate competition into dangerous conflict. He has further researched succession in family firms and how people can improve their ability to interact with others by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI). Through his research, Henning has developed significant expertise across various domains, including start-ups, technology companies, family businesses and a range of sports. He has leveraged data from sports such as Formula One, soccer and chess to shed light on effective management practices. Henning's work and expert opinions have been featured in leading business media including Time Magazine, The Economist and Harvard Business Review. You can follow Henning on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henningpiezunka/The paper discussed is available here: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2022.0710(Full reference: Park, S., Piezunka, H., & Dahlander, L. (2024). Coevolutionary lock-in in external search. Academy of Management Journal, 67(1), 262-288.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When people consider a new employer they might think about a number of key factors, including location, salary, opportunities for growth and advancement, pension and others.One factor which has emerged in recent years is consideration of a potential employers stance on social issues, most particularly relating to their values. More than this, however, research by our guest today – Professor Moritz Appels – highlights that potential hires also consider a CEO's sociopolitical activism in evaluating how attractive a new, potential employer might be.About our guest…Moritz Appels is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Department of Organisation and Personnel Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Mannheim in 2022.His research illuminates how the behaviour of corporate actors shapes and is shaped by organizational and societal change, with a particular focus on the relationship between strategic leadership, social evaluations, and the broader socio-political environment. A particular focus of his work is the impact of corporate and CEO activism—e.g., speaking out on gun ownership in the U.S.—on stakeholder behaviours. He is likewise involved in understanding the environmental and dispositional antecedents of top managers' engagement in organisational and societal change.You can find out more about Moritz and his work at these links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-appels-a0b49a14a/https://www.rsm.nl/people/moritz-appels/https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qEdUSREAAAAJ&hl=de Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes the challenges facing humanity are beyond the scope or remit of just one person or indeed one organisation. Often termed “grand challenges”, these problems might be bigger, more impactful or simply require greater resources to resolve. Equally, their resolution might need more coordinated efforts and collaboration across a wider range of stakeholders to ensure that they are effectively addressed. In more recent times, and perhaps fitting with the times we live in, the term “grand innovation challenges” has also been used. To explore this further I am delighted by joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Vera Rocha of Copenhagen Business School. About our guest...Vera Rocha is Associate Professor in Economics and Management of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School. Vera's research is at the intersection of entrepreneurship, strategic human capital, and labor market inequality.Among other questions, Vera has been studying the determinants of career transitions into entrepreneurship, the causes and implications of hiring strategies as firms emerge and mature, how entrepreneurial activity can affect both individual careers and society at large, and how organizations contribute to expand or reduce labor market inequalities. In addition, Vera is Co-Editor-in-Chief at Industry & Innovation and serves in the Editorial Review Board of Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, and Small Business Economics.You can find out more about Vera's research here:https://www.cbs.dk/en/research/departments-and-centres/department-of-strategy-and-innovation/staff/vrsi https://www.linkedin.com/in/vera-rocha-24a396136/The special issue of the journal Industry and Innovation which focuses on Grand Innovation Challenges can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ciai20/31/1?nav=tocList Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The psychology of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship is a fascinating area. Let's face it – it can sometimes seem completely bizarre that someone might leave a possibly well-paid and secure job in order to follow their entrepreneurial dream. Yet this is exactly what some people do, despite all the risks and challenges involved.So what is the “psychology of entrepreneurship”? And what is it that makes entrepreneurs so unique?About our guest…Ute Stephan is Professor of Entrepreneurship at King's Business School, King's College London, a Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) and a 21st Century Entrepreneurship Fellow. She serves as Associate Editor at the Journal of Management and at Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. From 2015-2019 she was Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychology: An International Review and from 2019-2022 Consulting Editor at the Journal of International Business Studies.As an expert on the Psychology of Entrepreneurship, Ute explores how individuals and societies can thrive through entrepreneurship. Ute's research builds evidence on how contexts (culture and institutions) shape entrepreneurship and well-being, and how entrepreneurship, in turn, can help to build more inclusive societies.You can find out more about Ute's research here: https://sites.google.com/site/stephanute/home Some relevant articles co-authored by Ute on the psychology of entrepreneurship are as follows:Gorgievski, M. J., & Stephan, U. (2016). Advancing the psychology of entrepreneurship: A review of the psychological literature and an introduction. Applied Psychology, 65(3), 437-468.- https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/28176/1/Advancing_the_psychology_of_entrepreneurship.pdf Gorgievski, M. J., Stephan, U., Laguna, M., & Moriano, J. A. (2018). Predicting entrepreneurial career intentions: Values and the theory of planned behavior. Journal of career assessment, 26(3), 457-475.- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1069072717714541 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While we have previously explored the question of narcissism and the dark triad of personality traits on the Brain for Business podcast, the question of how narcissistic leaders impact on overall organisational performance is something we are yet to consider in great detail. Yet this is exactly what our guests today, Professor Thanos Verousis of Vlerick Business School and Professor Pietro Perotti of the University of Bath, examine in a recent paper co-authored with Shee-Yee Khoo of Bangor Business School and Richard Watermeyer of the University of Bristol. To do this they examine the narcissism of university vice chancellors in the context of the overall performance of their universities. While this might perhaps seem a little obscure to those outside academia, Vice Chancellors are ultimately the CEOs of large and complex organisations and the transferrable insights are many.Key findings include:The appointment of a highly narcissistic VC leads to an overall deterioration in research and teaching performance and concomitantly league table performanceKey potential mechanisms explaining this include excessive financial risk taking and empire-buildingThe findings are consistent with the view that narcissism is one of the most prominent traits of destructive leadershipThere are practical implications for leadership recruitment and the monitoring of leadership practices in the higher education sector The article discussed - Vice-chancellor narcissism and university performance – can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733323001853 About our guests…Thanos Verousis is a Professor in Sustainable Finance at Vlerick Business School, Associate Editor at the Journal of Futures Markets and the European Journal of Finance. In his research he is particularly interested in understanding behavioural biases and decision-making in finance, especially with respect to departures from the classical rational expectations theory. Thanos also works on Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in finance, especially in applications involving machine learning and robo-advising. You can find out more about Thanos's research here: https://sites.google.com/site/thanosverousis/Pietro Perotti is a Senior Lecturer, or Associate Professor, at the University of Bath. Pietro researches the capital market consequences of accounting information, financial reporting quality and market microstructure. Pietro's research has been published in a range of leading journals including Journal of Business Finance and Accounting. Research Policy, Journal of Accounting Literature, Journal of Empirical Finance and Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting.You can find out more about Pietro's research here: https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/pietro-perotti Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Big 5 Model of Personality is perhaps the most consistently reliable model of personality used in research around the world. Focusing on the key elements of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience and extraversion, the Big 5 model has been applied to evaluate personality traits in my contexts including not least leadership. A recent paper – co-authored by our guest today on Brain for Business – Dr Fabian Braesemann – considered the Big 5 traits most commonly found in entrepreneurs and founders, assessing amongst other things what are the personality characteristics of typical of founders and how they contribute to start-up success.About our guest…Dr Fabian Braesemann is a Departmental Research Lecturer in AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.Fabian's research focuses on the Science of Success. He uses data science methods to quantify the determinants of success in different fields:1. The Science of Success in Business2. Success and the Future of Work, and 3. Quantifying success online and offlineBefore Fabian started to work as a Departmental Research Lecturer at the OII, he worked as a Research Fellow & Data Scientist in the Future of Real Estate Initiative at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and as a Data Scientist at the OII on projects that applied data science to understand human development and labour markets The article co-authored by Fabian is available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-41980-yThe 2019 Nature article discussed in the podcast (“Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups and security” by Yin et al.) is available here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.07562.pdfYou can find out more about Fabian via his Linkedin page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabian-braesemann-210645138/_ or else via the OII website (https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/fabian-braesemann/) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In times of great turmoil and uncertainty radicalisation can emerge as a real challenge. Yet what is it that really drives radicalisation and how can we better support de-radicalisation?Given the events of recent months around the world, we felt it timely to re-issue of Brain for Business Episode 22 of Series 1 which was an interview with internationally recognised expert in radicalisation and de-radicalisation, Robert Örell.Based in Stockholm, Robert Örell is an internationally sought-after trainer, speaker, workshop facilitator and expert in the field of radicalisation, disengagement, and intervention.Robert Örell has two decades of experience in the field of disengagement and exit work and has led Exit programs in Sweden and in the USA.Since 2011, Robert has been a member of the Steering Committee of the European Commission's Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) and he currently works as an independent expert, consultant, and trainer in the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism field. His recent work focuses on setting up exit programs, online counseling in exit work, and advising on policy guidelines and recommendations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In recent years it has become commonplace for organisations of all types to loudly proclaim their values and purpose, and encourage their employees to align and identify with them. Yet what does it mean for people to identify with their employer or organisation? And why does it really matter? Surely it is enough for people to turn up for work, do their job diligently and then get on with their lives?To explore the concept of Organisational Identification further it is an absolute pleasure to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Chia-Huei Wu.About Chia-Huei...Chia-Huei Wu is a Professor in Management at King's Business School, London. Chia-Huei's research in organizational behaviour concerns the person–environment dynamics and has two research streams: Employee Proactivity (i.e., why, when, and how employees can use their proactivity to change and improve the work environment) and Work and Personality Development (i.e., whether and how work experiences shape one's personality development). Building on these two research streams, he has investigated topics in innovation and voice, leadership, work design, career development, workplace wellbeing, job change, and overqualification.Chia-Huei has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters and his work has appeared in top-tier journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Personnel Psychology, Human Resource Management, and Human Resource Management Journal, among others.Chia-Huei is the author of the book, Employee proactivity in organizations, a co-author of the book, Work and Personality Change, and the co-editor of the book, Emotion and Proactivity at Work. He has also contributed chapters to a range of other books on these topics. The article discussed in the interview is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01492063221140049More information about Chia-Huei's research is available through either of these sites:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chia-huei-wu-b7b3b21b/Google: https://sites.google.com/view/cwu-proactivepsy/c-wu Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The question of psychopathy and psychopaths in the workplace is something that we have discussed before on the Brain for Business podcast. Yet it remains a fascinating and worthwhile topic, most particularly when considered in terms of power and leadership outcomes.To explore this further I am delighted to be joined by Dr Iris Kranefeld where we discuss a recent paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.Key highlights include:Position power acts as a trait-relevant cue for psychopathy in leaders.When power is high, psychopathic meanness negatively relates to team performance.Under high power, team performance mediates the relation of meanness and effectiveness.The article discussed in the podcast is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886922004214About IrisIris is a graduate of University of Bonn from where she has a PhD in work and organisational psychology. Since July 2023, Iris has been a senior consultant with the Cologne Institute for Management Consulting / Kölner Institut für Managementberatung in Germany. A key focus of Iris' research is the “dark triad” of personality traits, most particularly psychopathy and how it plays out in the workplace.You can find out more about Iris' work at these sites:Researchgate - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Iris-Kranefeld-2LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/iris-kranefeld/?locale=en_USCologne Institute of Management Consulting - https://www.ki-management.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Scandals regularly sweep through organizational fields: they wreak havoc in markets, vaporize billions of dollars in firm value, bring down giant corporations, get CEOs fired, alter the evolution of technologies, and trigger major changes in society. In spite of their significance for organizational life, scandals have received remarkably limited attention in management research.” So says our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, Professor Julien Jourdan, who attempts to address this gap in the literature by building on the social sciences' sparse but growing stream of research on scandals to provide new insights and understandings. Julien Jourdan is an Associate Professor of Management and Human Resources at HEC Paris. Julien's research focuses on reputation, legitimacy, and other social evaluations of organizations. In so doing, he examines how a) stakeholders evaluate organizations in institutionally complex environments and b) how these evaluations shape organizational conduct, governance, strategy, and performance. Julien has previously held academic positions at Imperial College London, Università Bocconi, and PSL-Paris Dauphine, and before moving into academia was a finance executive at a major film studio.The article referred to in the podcast is available here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/7x2rb/downloadMore information on Julien and his research is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/julienjourdan/https://www.hec.edu/en/faculty-research/faculty-directory/faculty-member/jourdan-julien Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“The question of whether we have free will does not have a yes-or-no, all-or-none answer. Instead, we have degrees of freedom – an idea that is reasonably well captured… by a more commonsense understanding of the (still useful) notion of free will. That understanding entails, first, the ability to make choices – that we really can choose what to do. Our actions are not simply determined by outside forces because we're causally set apart from the rest of the universe to at least some degree. And, just as importantly, we are not driven by our own parts. Rather, we holistically – our selves – are in charge.” So says our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, Dr Kevin Mitchell, of Trinity College Dublin. Kevin takes an evolutionary approach to the question of free will and amongst other things argues that: Humans have agency and the capacity of self-control – we have the ability to adjust our focus and behaviour in real time depending on what is happening around usWhile genes do influence our behaviour, this is not a direct or deterministic relationship and there are many factors that impact on our innate natures and behavioursThese factors include learning and experience, as well as the important and largely positive role played by constraints, including the basic need for a survival as well as social rules, norms and culture About Kevin…Dr Kevin Mitchell is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. Kevin's research is aimed at understanding the genetic program specifying the wiring of the brain and its relevance to variation in human faculties, especially to psychiatric and neurological disease and to perceptual conditions like synaesthesia. As part of his research, Kevin also studies the biology of agency and free will. Kevin is an active communicator on Twitter and writes a popular blog on the intersection of genetics, development, neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. He also regularly gives public lectures and media interviews on diverse topics, with the goal of promoting public understanding of neuroscience and genetics. His 2018 book "Innate; How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are", published by Princeton University Press, develops an integrative conceptual framework in which to consider the origins of variation in human faculties, through a novel synthesis of findings from behavioural genetics, developmental neurobiology, neuroscience and psychology. Kevin's most recent book – Free agents: How evolution gave us free will – is published on 3rd October, 2023, but Princeton University Press. You can find more about Kevin's work at his website – www.kjmitchell.com – at his blog - (http://www.wiringthebrain.com – and by following him on Twitter: @WiringtheBrain.Kevin's latest book, Free agents: How evolution gave us free will, is available on Amazon (https://amzn.eu/d/7Qkafwv) as well as all good bookstores. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While accurate data is hard to come by, some sources claim that up 90% of starts up fail. There can be many reasons for this including but not limited to the product or service not meeting market needs, the business model being flawed, or early-stage funding not materialising. One potential issue not often discussed is the impact of employee commitment and the extent to which those working for startups are prepared to put in the discretionary effort sometimes needed to get the startup over those critical early-stage challenges, something which is apparently experienced to a much greater extent by female founders when compared to their male peers. To discuss this I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Olenka Kacperczyk of London Business School.Amongst other things Olenka argues that: Women face well-documented obstacles when looking to found startups Research has consistently revealed patterns of inequity in the sharing of venture capital, but reasons for the performance gap between male and female-led startups are unclear A key factor may be that people generally are significantly less motivated to work for women than they are for men To address this, it is vital that educators and others intensify efforts to promote awareness of often-unconscious discriminatory behaviours to address bias against female bosses About Olenka Olenka Kacperczyk is a Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School. She received her PhD from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and prior to joining London Business School, Olenka held a faculty position at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Olenka's research focuses on entrepreneurship and examines (a) why individuals sometimes give up their jobs and become entrepreneurs and (b) how people's movements into entrepreneurship affect social inequality, workplace segregation, and income distribution. Olenka currently serves as an Associate Editor at Administrative Science Quarterly. She has previously served as an Associate Editor at Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Management Science. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Kauffman Junior Faculty Scholarship for Entrepreneurship Research and the William F. Glueck Award at the Academy of Management. Olenka teaches topics related to entrepreneurial strategy and strategic management in established firms. The paper discussed - Do Employees Work Less for Female Leaders? A Multi-Method Study of Entrepreneurial Firms - is available online https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2022.1611 You can find out more about Olenka's research here: https://www.olenkak.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Internationally, healthy adults are consistently falling below national and international recommendations for physical activity and failing to meet guidelines for dietary intake. Interventions to address behaviour change in these fields typically target clinically at-risk individuals, yet these do not always work and obesity levels in developed countries continue to rise with significant implications for both individuals and societies. So what then are some of the barriers and facilitators to healthy eating and exercise, and how can we as societies help people to sustain positive physical activity and healthy eating behaviour change?To explore this I am delighted to be joined by Dr Sarah Snuggs of the University of Reading.Drawing on a novel online community health programme and survey, recent research undertaken by Sarah and colleagues (https://psyarxiv.com/pq4bs/) across five countries found that:-Key motivators for positive health behaviours include enjoyment of health behaviours, positive emotions before and after activities, and clear reward structures-Barriers included difficulties with habit-breaking, giving in to temptation and negative affective states, i.e. a bad mood!-Changes in physical activity and eating behaviour were mutually supportive-Those with a high BMI placed more importance on social motivators (e.g. social pressure) than those with healthy BMISarah and colleagues consequently concluded interventions to support adults who are not chronically ill but who would benefit from improved diet and/or increased physical activity should not focus exclusively on health as a motivating factor. Emphasis on enjoyable behaviours, social engagement and the role of reward will likely improve engagement and sustained behaviour change. About Sarah…Dr Sarah Snuggs is a Chartered Health Psychologist and Lecturer in the School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading. Her research interests include children and family eating behaviours and other health behaviours.You can find out more about Sarah's work and research at these sites:-https://research.reading.ac.uk/kids-food-choices/ -Twitter: @sarah_snuggs-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/familyfoodin5/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a 2019 article published in Business Horizons our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, Dr Adrian Klammer, together with colleagues Thomas Grisold and Stefan Gueldenberg argued that organisations need to introduce a “stop doing” culture. But what is a “stop doing culture”? and what does it mean for leaders and their organisations?Originally from Austria, Adrian has a doctorate in business economics from the University of Liechtenstein and is affiliated with the Liechtenstein Business School. Adrian's academic research is focused on Organizational unlearning and learning in different contexts, especially innovation; Organizational change; Organizational development. Adrian has published widely in top tier journals including Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Business Horizons, Management Learning, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Knowledge Management, International Journal of Innovation Management, European Journal of Innovation Management.The article discussed – Introducing a ‘Stop Doing' Culture: How to free your organization from rigidity – can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681319300357 You can find out more about Adrian's work via these links:LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-klammer/ Google Scholar – https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=FavrW2IAAAAJ University of Liechtenstein – https://www.uni.li/en/who-s-who/@@person_detail/1531774.67 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like many podcasts, Brain for Business is based around a conversation – a conversation between me as host and the various guests who join us. Each are experts in their fields and through the conversations that ensue we try to delve deep into their research as well as into their way of seeing and understanding the world around them, most particularly as it relates to the questions that they have chose to explore.It consequently made perfect sense for us to interview our guest today, Professor Shane O'Mara. Shane has not only played a key role in the Brain for Business initiative – both the events and the podcast – but more importantly for today's conversation his latest book, “Talking Heads: The new science of how conversation shapes our worlds”, explores the impact that conversation has on our our worlds!Shane O'Mara is Professor of Experimental Brain Research at Trinity College, Dublin - the University of Dublin. He is a Principal Investigator in, and was formerly director of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, one of Europe's leading research centres for neuroscience and is also a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator. Shane has published more than 140 peer-reviewed academic papers as well as a number of books including “Why Torture Doesn't Work”, “A Brain for Business, A Brain for Life, and “In Praise of Walking”.“Talking Heads: The new science of how conversation shapes our worlds” is published by Bodley Head and is released in Europe on 3rd August, 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I first came across the work of today's guest one Monday morning at around 4am as I browsed the website for The Guardian newspaper on my phone. Unlike some people who make a point of waking that early in order to get a head start on the week, for me this was just another Monday morning when I woke far too early with far too many thoughts about work buzzing through my head. What perhaps made it worse is that I had also struggled to get to sleep early the night before as those same thoughts kept spinning around! To discuss this phenomenon, sometimes called the Sunday Night Blues, I am delighted to be joined by Professor Ilke Inceoglu. About Ilke… Professor Ilke Inceoglu is a Professor in Organisational Behaviour & HR and Director of the Exeter Centre for Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School. Her research focuses on employee well-being and work behaviour, and has been published in leading journals such as Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Ilke is currently also Primary Investigator on the ongoing Banishing the Sunday Night Blues research programme commissioned by Channel 4 in the UK and delivered in close partnership with Investors in People. The Banishing the Sunday Night Blues project aims to investigate the experience and impact of the Sunday Night Blues and develop a toolkit with guidance for employees, line managers and HR Directors to help banish the Sunday Night Blues. You can find out more about the Banishing the Sunday Night Blues research project at these links: https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-environment-science-and-economy/sunday-night-blues-caused-by-weekend-emails-and-blurred-boundaries-study-reveals/ https://business-school-expertise.exeter.ac.uk/banishing-the-sunday-night-blues/

Sometimes in life things go wrong… mistakes, accidents, even disasters will occur. From festivals that fail due to poor advance planning, product launches that simply fail to, well, launch through to public construction projects that seem to drag on for ever and end up costing much more than originally envisaged. And typically when things do go wrong there are calls for inquiries, accountability and the apportionment of blame, sometimes leading to demands for heads to roll. To explore these questions further and to dig deeper into the question of blame games, we are joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Assistant Professor Sandra Resodihardjo of Radboud University. About Sandra… Sandra Resodihardjo is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Institute for Management Research, Radboud University. Her research focuses on questions relating to safety/security issues and public policy. Sandra has written on agenda-setting, policy reform, inquiries, local safety policies, and blame games following crises. Sandra is currently working on resilience & crisis management, blame games, and NGOs and disaster management. For more information on Sandra's work on Blame Games, take a look at the following links: Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PxO8KoYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao Read Sandra's book Crises, Inquiries and the Politics of Blame: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-17531-3 Or read Sandra's latest open access chapter Blame Games. Stories of Crises, Causes, and Culprits: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9780429355950-25/blame-games-sandra-resodihardjo

A recent project in the US sought to map collective wellbeing. Supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Mapping Collective Wellbeing Project aimed to better understand the wellbeing ecosystem in the United States and globally. In so doing, the project aimed to address a number of key questions: “How do we co-create a vision and appreciation of the roles we play in working toward collective wellbeing? What might deepen, strengthen, and broaden this work? Where are there connections in unlikely places? Where and how do we begin? To explore the question of collective wellbeing in greater detail, I am delighted to be joined by Theo Edmonds who contributed to that research. About Theo… Theo Edmonds is a skilled, energetic Culture Futurist™ and innovator with over 25 years senior-level strategic national and international leadership experience spanning the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. A seasoned communicator, Theo's unconventional background traverses and connects scholarly research with pop culture across scientific disciplines, data analytics, creativity, and cultural wellbeing in the places we work, learn, heal, and explore. As Directing co-founder of University of Colorado Denver's Imaginator Academy - a cultural analytics, strategy, and futurist innovation hub, Theo is a weaver of ideas who scouts global networks of entrepreneurs, companies, scientists, artists, creative innovators, and change-makers of all kinds in order to find hidden opportunities that others miss. An experienced builder of industry-university collaborations, Theo and collaborators have been recognized across many areas – ranging from “Trailblazer” awards in research for culture analytics innovation inside a National Science Foundation-sponsored lab to a number of national grants and vision awards in arts and creative economy. You can find out more about Theo and his work at: www.theoedmonds.com More information about the Mapping Collective Wellbeing Project is available on their website: https://mappingcollectivewellbeing.org/ Details of the Brain Capital Innovation Summit can be accessed here: https://www.broadreach-global.com/braincapital

Over the last few years of the Covid pandemic we all became used to the idea of contagion and, in particular, how viruses spread through communities. But have you ever thought about how change – most especially behavioural change – spreads through networks, societies and, indeed, organisations? To explore this further we are joined on the Brain for Business podcast by one of the world's leading thinkers in this area, Professor Damon Centola. About our guest… Damon Centola is the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Damon's research centers on social networks and behavior change. His work has received numerous scientific awards and, in addition to his positions at the University of Pennsylvania, is a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Popular accounts of Damon's work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TIME, The Atlantic, Scientific American and CNN, among other outlets. He is a series editor for Princeton University Press and the author of How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen. Damon's U Penn webpage can be accessed here: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/damon-centola-phd The Scientific American article referred to in the interview is available here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/ The underlying research in that article is available via this link: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aas8827

It is now almost 20 years since the first podcast was launched, and if the available statistics are anything to go by, podcasts are definitely having a moment, with a reputed 2.5 million podcasts listed in Apple podcasts. When we think about who listens to podcasts, data from the US indicates that podcast listeners are 68% more likely to have a postgraduate degree, and 45% of podcast listeners have a household income over $250,000. And why do people listen to podcast? Apparently 74% of people listen to podcasts in order to learn new things. To discuss podcasts in more detail, and in particular consider how leaders can leverage business podcasts to enhance organizational performance, I am delighted to be joined by Professor Jake Waddingham. Jake Waddingham is an Assistant Professor of Management at McCoy College of Business at Texas State University. Jakes research explores how organizations and entrepreneurs manage stakeholder perceptions and his research has been published in the Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies and Business Horizons amongst others. Jake can be contacted via one of the following sites: • Google scholar - https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=XFWZXWYAAAAJ • LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwaddingham/ The Business Horizon's article referenced in the discussion is:Insights on the go: Leveraging business podcasts to enhance organizational performance by Jacob A. Waddingham, Miles A. Zachary, David J. Ketchen Jr. It is available to access here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339444655_Insights_on_the_go_Leveraging_business_podcasts_to_enhance_organizational_performance The podcast statistics quoted above are from this site: https://nealschaffer.com/podcast-statistics/ The various podcasts mentioned during the discussion include: • Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman – https://mastersofscale.com/ • The Indicator from Planet Money - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money • Worklife with Adam Grant – https://adamgrant.net/podcasts/work-life/ • Business Wars with David Brown - https://wondery.com/shows/business-wars/ • Freakonomics with Stephen Dubner – https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ • Econtalk with Russ Roberts - https://www.econlib.org/econtalk/ • Axios Sports with Kendall Baker – https://www.axios.com/authors/kbaker

We all know that to a certain extent cultures differ between countries. When we travel or work with people from different backgrounds we often gain unexpected insights into different traditions and different ways of doing things. Yet what is “culture”? How can it be understood? And how can leaders strengthen their Cultural Intelligence and that of the organisations they lead? To dig a bit deeper into these questions I am delighted to be joined on the programme by Professor Eimear Nolan of Trinity Business School. Eimear Nolan is Assistant Professor of International Business and Director of the Flexible Executive MBA at Trinity Business School in Dublin. She gained her PhD in International Management from the University of Limerick, where she investigated the cultural adjustment and fit of internationally trained doctors working in Ireland. Prior to joining Trinity Business School Eimear held academic positions in the UK and the USA. Eimear is a co-country investigator (for Ireland and the UK) on the world renowned GLOBE Project 2020. Her research interests are in expatriate adjustment, cultural intelligence, recruitment and retention strategies, ethics, and the health care sector. You can find out more about Eimear's work here: - Culture Shocked Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3bD8L2mrm66hcfmxPkmqJG - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eimear-nolan/ - The Globe 2020 Project: https://www.globeproject.com/

While often seen as discrete and distinct phenomena, could it be that creativity and innovation are just variations on the same theme? Absolutely yes, says Dr Zorana Ivčević Pringle, and what is more rather than being purely logical and rational processes, both creativity and innovation are impacted by emotions in ways that many of us fail to recognise. Starting with a deceptively simple definition of creativity, this episode of Brain for Business charts a course from personal creativity and problem solving through to the role of leaders in supporting greater creativity and innovation in the teams and organisations they lead. Along the way, we discuss innovation in a hospital context and the creativity of some of history's great artists, not to mention the important role played by emotional contagion and leader self-compassion. Dr Zorana Ivčević Pringle is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Zorana studies the role of emotion and emotional intelligence in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills. Zorana has published her research in journals such as Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Personality, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Creativity Research Journal, Journal of Creative Behavior and others. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post. You can find out more about Zorana's work at these links: Personal website: https://www.zorana-ivcevic-pringle.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zorana-ivcevic-pringle/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZoranaPsych

Whether we like it or not (or recognise it or not!) in recent years we have all been subjected to various conspiracy theories. Whether it is claims that COVID-19 was developed in a lab and released on purpose, or assertions that the world is run by some kind of “Deep State” shadow government, erroneous conspiracy theories have had a significant and dangerous impact. This has been made all the worse by social media which has allowed conspiracy theories to grow and multiply almost exponentially. To explore this further I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Henrich Greve. Henrich Greve is the Rudolf and Valeria Maag Chaired Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD. Henrich's research interest is strategic change in organizations, mostly from a learning perspective, and includes examining how networks of organizations change, how organizations and communities are related, and how innovations are made and spread. Henrich has published over 80 articles in journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and Management Science. More recently, in an article published in American Sociological Review with co-authors Hayagreeva Rao, Paul Vicinanza and Echo Yan Zhou, Henrich examined Online Conspiracy Groups: Micro-Bloggers, Bots, and Coronavirus Conspiracy Talk on Twitter. Henrich's blog and general reflections are available here: https://www.organizationalmusings.com/ Some general thoughts from Henrich on how conspiracy talk helps people make sense of the world are available here: https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/how-conspiracy-talk-helps-people-make-sense-world The article from American Sociological Review discussed in the podcast can be accessed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00031224221125937?journalCode=asra

The transition from individual contributor to manager is never easy. New managers need to take responsibility not just for their own performance, but also for that of team. They need to place less emphasis on doing, and much more on the essential skills of leading, influencing and communicating. Core to this is the development of a “leadership mindset”. But what is a leadership mindset? And what steps can managers and their organisations take to better develop the right mindset and perspectives for leadership? To discuss this I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Bret Crane. Bret Crane is an Associate Professor of Leadership at the Jon. M. Huntsman School of Business and the Executive Director of the Stephen R. Covey Leadership Center at Utah State University. Bret's research focuses on leadership mindsets. As a respected authority and researcher on topics related to leadership, management, and organizational behavior, Bret has published articles across a variety of journals including Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of World Business, Business & Society, and Human Resource Development Review. Before joining the faculty at the Huntsman School of Business, he was a Visiting Professor at the George Washington School of Business in Washington DC. As a consultant, Bret works with organizations to improve their leadership, teams, organizations, and culture. His clients have included American Express, Honda, Lowe's, General Mills, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Biogen, USAA, and others. Bret's USU homepage is accessible here: https://huntsman.usu.edu/directory/crane-bret Bret's Business Horizons article - Leadership mindsets: Why new managers fail and what to do about it - is available to access here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681321000987

“Human beings live in the realm of the possible as much as they do in the here and now of daily experience. We dream, hope, anticipate and create, exploring news spaces of possibility for ourselves and for others. These possibilities are not always appealing or exciting, however. Having too many options can be disorienting, innovating in unsustainable ways harmful, and spending time in virtual realities compete with less satisfying real encounters. And yet, engaging with the possible is, ultimately, what makes us human. Understanding how, when and why this is the case has been a topic of interest for the human and social sciences since their inception. And their exploration led to a variety of answers.” So argues our guest on the Brain for Business, Professor Vlad Glaveanu of Dublin City University. Vlad Glaveanu is Full Professor of psychology in the School of Psychology, Dublin City University, and Professor at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology, University of Bergen. He is the founder and president of the Possibility Studies Network (PSN) that brings together academics, researchers and practitioners from centres, laboratories or societies dedicated to the study of human possibility, its antecedents, processes, limitations and consequences. Vlad's work focuses on creativity, imagination, culture, collaboration, wonder, possibility, and societal challenges. He has edited a number of books, including the Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture (2016) and the Oxford Creativity Reader (2018), co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Domains (2017) and the Oxford Handbook of Imagination and Culture (2017). Separately, he has authored The Possible: A Sociocultural Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020), Creativity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2021), and Wonder: The Extraordinary Power of an Ordinary Experience (Bloomsbury, 2020), and authored or co-authored more than 200 articles and book chapters in these areas. In Vlad received the Berlyne Award from the APA Division 10 for outstanding early career contributions to the field of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts. You can find out more about the Possibility Studies Network at this link: https://possibilitystudies.net/ Some of Vlad's recent writings on possibility studies are available to access here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/27538699221127580

Our guest today on Brain for Business has recently written that “We are increasingly living in a society of falsehoods. News can be fake. Brands can be fake. Influencer endorsements can be fake. And “facts” are often fake, or “alternative.”" Yet what does all it mean for leaders and organisations? What role does social media play? And how can we start to see through the fog of fakes and falsity? Dr Kirk Plangger is a Reader (Associate Professor) of Marketing at King's Business School at King's College London. He is a marketing management researcher specialising in consumer led digital marketing strategy. Most of Kirk's research explores how digital technologies mediate and change the buying process and how organisations should address these technologies. Currently, he is working on projects investigating shoppable advertising, the value of live in marketing, brand transparency, alternative reality marketing, social media influencers, falsity in marketing and advertising, and artificial intelligence in marketing. Kirk publishes regularly in leading academic journals and holds a number of editorial review board positions. His research has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, UK Engineering and Physics Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), British Academy, UK Innovate, and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). You can read Kirk's thoughts on managing in an era of falsity here: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/177840001/Plangger_and_Campbell_Accepted_version_Managing_in_an_era_of_falsity_Business_Horizons.pdf

“Today we stand at the precipice of not one but three converging and potentially catastrophic long-term trends: climate change, globalization, and growing inequality. On their own, each of these makes the occasional crisis worse: We might see a more destructive hurricane, a more widespread financial meltdown, or longer or more violent civil unrest. Together, though, these trends magnify challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, was not just a health crisis but an economic and political one as well.” Not my words, but rather those of our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, - Professor John Katsos. John E. Katsos is an associate professor of business law, business ethics, and social responsibility at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, and a research affiliate at Queen's University Belfast. As a scholar, he has published dozens of academic and media articles, as well as reports for boards and international organizations. He has done fieldwork in Iraq, Lebanon, Cyprus, Syria, Sri Lanka, and Hong Kong and is considered one of the world's leading researchers on business in crisis zones. As an educator, Katsos teaches undergraduate, graduate, and executive students in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa how to manage more ethical and sustainable organizations for a better world. The HBR article referred to can be accessed here: https://hbr.org/2021/11/a-new-crisis-playbook-for-an-uncertain-world

As of 2022, the World Health Organisation estimated that More than 1 billion people worldwide are obese – 650 million adults, 340 million adolescents and 39 million children. Given that there are approximately 8 billion people on the planet that is equivalent to 12 and a half percent of the global population. This situation is made all the worse by the seeming impossibility in many developed countries of avoiding cheap, processed which is high in calories, salt and sugar, while also being incredibly low in nutrition. At the same time, evidence linking obesity and substance use disorders continues to grow, which has led to increased interest in the role of an addictive process in problematic eating behavior. To find out more about the challenges of food addiction we were delighted to be joined by Professor Ashley Gearhardt of the University of Michigan. Ashley Gearhardt is an Associate Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Science area at the University of Michigan. While working on her doctorate in clinical psychology at Yale University, Dr. Gearhardt became interested in the possibility that certain foods may be capable of triggering an addictive process. To explore this further, she developed the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) to operationalize addictive eating behaviors, which has been linked with more frequent binge eating episodes, an increased prevalence of obesity and patterns of neural activation implicated in other addictive behaviors. It has been cited over 800 times and translated into over ten foreign languages. Her areas of research also include investigating how food advertising activates reward systems to drive eating behavior and the development of food preferences and eating patterns in infants. She has published over 100 academic publications and her research has been featured on media outlets, such as ABC News, Good Morning America, the Today Show, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. Further information on Ashley's research and the work of the Food and Addiction Science and Treatment Lab is available on their website: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/fastlab/

Letting our minds wander is more widespread than many people imagine: research has found that we can spend anywhere from 15% to 50% of our waking hours in a state of mind-wandering. Differences may depend on what we're doing and difficulties with knowing when our minds are wandering: according to some reports, about half our mind-wandering episodes might slip past unnoticed! To find out more about mind-wandering, its impact and its benefits for creative thinking, we are joined by Professor Jonathan Schooler of UC Santa Barbara About our guest... Jonathan Schooler is a Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara. His research on human cognition explores topics that intersect philosophy and psychology, such as how fluctuations in people's awareness of their experience mediate mind-wandering and how exposing individuals to philosophical positions alters their behavior. Professor Schooler is also interested in the science of science (meta-science) including understanding why effects sizes often decline over time, and how greater transparency in scientific reporting might address this issue. A former holder of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, he is a fellow of a variety of scientific organizations, on the editorial board of a number of psychology journals and the recipient of major grants from both the United States and Canadian governments as well as several private foundations. His research and comments are frequently featured in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Nature Magazine. The website for the Meta Lab at UC Santa Barbara is as follows: https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/schooler/jonathan/ The article referred to in the podcast can be accessed here: “When the Muses Strike: Creative Ideas of Physicists and Writers Routinely Occur During Mind Wandering” - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618820626

One of our most popular episodes, this interview with Professor David Cropley was first released in January, 2021. Having finally succumbed to Covid and to mark the episode's second, we are issuing a special re-release. At its core, innovation is an innately human process involving individuals, teams and organisations striving to do things better and find better solutions. Consequently, while processes and technology are vital to innovation, just as crucial is an understanding of the psychology of innovation and the way that individuals, teams and leaders can become more creative and innovative. So what then is the psychology of innovation? In this episode we are joined by Professor David Cropley of the University of South Australia to explore the role that psychology plays in creativity and innovation. Professor David Cropley is Professor of Engineering Innovation at the University of South Australia in Adelaide and is an internationally recognised expert on creativity and innovation. His teaching interests focus on systems engineering and related concepts, and his research examines a range of aspects of creativity and innovation, both in the field of engineering, and more broadly. Professor Cropley is an author and editor of 8 books including The Ethics of Creativity, Creativity and Crime and, with his father, Emeritus Professor Arthur Cropley, The Psychology of Innovation in Organizations published by Cambridge University Press.

An MBA is seen by many aspiring executives as a rite of passage and a necessary step in order to develop their network, hone their skills and fine-tune their hard won business acumen. While once upon a time the top business schools tended to serve an almost exclusively male audience, thankfully these days business schools around the world make a significant effort to enhance the diversity of their student bodies and to be as inclusive as possible. Yet as our guests today have highlighted in recent research, in an odd twist of history, those same universities catering for an essentially male student body also provided special classes for their wives. To explore this further I am delighted to be joined by Allison Elias and Rolv Petter Amdam. Allison Elias is an assistant professor at University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Her research investigates historical and contemporary issues of gender and diversity in organizations, with a focus on the influence of social movements on corporate practices. Allison's forthcoming book charts the trajectory of modern feminism at work illuminating the failures of equality-based frameworks and merit-based human resource management practices. Rolv Petter Storvik Amdam is a Professor of Business History at BI Norwegian Business School and was previously dean of BI's executive programmes. His research and publications focus on a range of areas including • Business education and career development • International development of executive education * Internationalization procesess * Globalization and industrial clusters, focusing on the maritime industry The article referred to is available here: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amle.2020.0129 You can find out more about Allison and Elias on their respective homepages: https://www.darden.virginia.edu/faculty-research/directory/allison-elias https://www.bi.edu/about-bi/employees/department-of-strategy-and-entrepeneurship2/rolv-petter-storvik-amdam/

In recent decades behavioural economics has emerged as a significant field in its own right. With a history going back almost a century and incorporating insights from Nobel prize winners such as Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler, behavioural economics seems to promise a meaningful alternative to the assumptions of rational human behaviour which underpin classical economics. Yet what really is behavioural economics? And more importantly what are the challenges which now appear likely to undermine behavioural economics seemingly inexorable progress rise to the top of the academic standings? To discuss this I am delighted to be joined by Dr Jason Collins of University of Technology Sydney. Dr Jason Collins is a Senior Lecturer in the Economics Discipline Group at University of Technology Sydney and Program Director for the Graduate Certificate and Master of Behavioural Economics. Jason joined UTS in January 2022 following a career in industry and government. Jason co-founded and led PwC Australia's behavioural economics practice, and built and led data science and consumer insights teams at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). He has also worked as a lawyer, environmental campaigner, and an economic policy adviser with the Australian Treasury Jason holds a Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia in which his research focussed on the intersection of economics and evolutionary biology. Jason blogs regularly at Jason https://www.jasoncollins.blog/ and you can find out more about his thoughts on biases and behavioural economics in this article: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/biases-the-wrong-model/

While in the Western world, gender has traditionally been viewed as binary and as following directly from biological sex, in recent years these views have started to change. Gender is now seen, at least by some, as less binary and more independent of sex. These changes are reflected in societal developments such as the growing support for transgender individuals and in new policies and practices, such as unisex bathrooms and, in some countries, the legal recognition of a third gender. To explore these questions further and to gain a better understanding of transgender issues we were joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Thekla Morgenroth. Thekla Morgenroth is Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University. Their research examines why and how people maintain social categories and hierarchies with a particular focus on the gender/sex binary and its consequences for women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Some of Thekla's current projects include research on opposition to policies and practices that challenge the gender/sex binary, the psychology of different feminist ideologies, the link between gender nonconformity and identity denial, and support for and opposition to the decriminalization of sex work. Thekla can be followed on Twitter (@TheMorgenroth) and you can find out more about Thekla's research projects here: https://tmorgenr.wixsite.com/unicornlab?ga=2.204537744.1297948127.1668455134-498954844.1666261862