Brain for Business

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-worldThe article from American Sociological Review discussed in the podcast can be accessed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00031224221125937?journalCode=asra Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-bretBret’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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 BarbaraAbout 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 anniversary, 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 industryThe article referred to is available here: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amle.2020.0129You can find out more about Allison and Rolv on their respective homepages:https://www.darden.virginia.edu/faculty-research/directory/allison-eliashttps://www.bi.edu/about-bi/employees/department-of-strategy-and-entrepeneurship2/rolv-petter-storvik-amdam/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 TreasuryJason 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/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.