MIT Sloan Management Review

A BANK. FORECLOSED on a loan and took control of a small piece of real estate. The .property was later found to be contaminated with hazardous wastes and, after a long-drawn-out court case, the bank was held liable for half a million dollars.

The manager of a large manufacturing conglomerate’s subsidiary was notified by the head [...]

Business negotiations law is increasingly infused with ethical considerations. The author outlines the basic elements of legal fraud, illustrating the evolving concepts with numerous cases in which negotiators have been penalized for what some consider merely unethical behavior.

If you ask most Americans what they know about the Endangered Species Act (ESA), they will likely respond, “the spotted owl.” This Pacific Northwest controversy epitomizes the conflict between jobs and the environment that the ESA has come to symbolize. To protect the spotted owl, large tracts of federal lands were withheld from logging, the [...]

After studying IT management practices in various companies, the authors identify three assets important for using IT as a competitive tool. The human asset is an IT staff that consistently addresses business opportunities; the technology asset is sharable technical platforms and databases; the relationship asset implies the risk and responsibility sharing between the IT and business staffs. The authors discuss the interdependencies among the three assets, using many examples from their study, and offer ways to formulate an action plan based on a company’s position relative to its competition.

Corporations concerned about the efficiency of traditional methods of marketing communications have adopted a range of alternative media to target audiences. One such medium is commercial sponsorship, which has grown significantly in recent years. By sponsoring an event or providing a budget for an event’s broadcast, a sponsor can generate audience awareness while simultaneously creating [...]

Marketing was easier when the economy was expanding and consumer disposable income was growing. For three decades after World War II, marketing strategies generally were built around the development of growth markets. Satisfying customers was important, but never as important as it has become in the nineties, with the competitive pressures of largely static markets. [...]

In the United States, most of the last half century has been devoted to worrying about the Soviet Union. Democracy and capitalism faced off against dictatorship and communism. Suddenly, the threat disappeared. The Berlin Wall came down; East Germany and West Germany were united; democracy and capitalism arrived in the formerly communist countries of middle [...]

What happens if an applicant for a job in your firm has a disability — is blind or infected with HIV or epileptic? Will you know how to treat that applicant without discrimination? The Americans with Disabilities Act ensures that candidates are assessed for jobs on the basis of their skills and abilities, not their disabilities. Accordingly, the authors provide advice for reevaluating employment practices and procedures.

Although a relatively recent development, database marketing (DBM) programs are already forcing important choices by companies, consumers, and legislators. These choices are changing society’s view of what constitutes good marketing practice in the United States and other countries where the conjunction of new technologies and selling requirements accelerate the use, and potential abuse, of information [...]

Many companies spend significant time and effort developing a mission statement — complete with vision, values, goals, and strategies. Ask managers whether their firm’s mission statement lives in the company day-to-day or whether it lies neglected in someone’s desk drawer. In too many instances, the truthful answer is: “The vision is more rhetoric than real.”
This [...]