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Generative AI can act like a cybernetic teammate in early-stage product innovation work. In a preregistered field experiment at Procter & Gamble, individuals using AI matched the performance of two-person human teams without AI, AI helped reduce functional silos between commercial and R&D professionals, and AI use was associated with more positive emotional responses during the task.
Open summaryCore firms in ecosystems matter because modularity and standards do not solve every coordination problem. Schmidt and Foss argue that core firms reduce ecosystem-level transaction costs through governance capabilities and problem-focused capabilities that address interoperability, customization, and availability problems.
Open summaryReference points do more than trigger search; they shape the search space itself. Zeijen, Romagnoli, and Marengo show that aspiration levels and survival points transform rugged performance landscapes into subjective terraced landscapes, affecting which alternatives organizations can reach and when reference points help or trap adaptive search.
Open summaryWhen decision-makers face tradeoffs, quantifying one attribute can shift choices toward the option that performs better on that numeric dimension. Across 21 preregistered experiments, Chang and colleagues show that people often give more weight to quantified information because numbers feel easier to compare.
Open summaryOpen source software creates economic value far beyond its direct market price of zero. Hoffmann, Nagle, and Zhou estimate that recreating widely used OSS once would cost about $4.15 billion, but recreating the OSS used by each firm individually would cost about $8.8 trillion.
Open summaryTechnology acquisitions are followed by more technology out-licensing because out-licensing helps firms reconfigure enlarged R&D portfolios without fully abandoning technologies. However, this relationship weakens when acquired technologies are highly uncertain or when acquirers have enough financial slack to keep more R&D options in-house.
Open summaryInclusive talent management is often perceived as fairer on average, but fairness perceptions depend strongly on self-interest and allocation principles. Dries and Kaše show that employees who see themselves, or are made to see themselves, as talented judge exclusive talent management as fairer than employees without talent status. Preferences for merit-based allocation also matter, but mainly when organizations clearly justify their chosen talent philosophy.
Open summaryTalent management practices were positively associated with employee job-related outcomes in a large Indian manufacturing sample. Dalal and Akdere show that talent acquisition, development, engagement, and retention form an integrated talent management system linked to intent to stay, job engagement, affective commitment, job satisfaction, and employee competency.
Open summaryExisting general strengths inventories do not fully capture the work-related strengths employees identify in themselves and colleagues. Moore, van Mierlo, and Bakker develop and validate the Behavioural Index of Occupational Strengths, a 22-category work-specific strengths index designed to support strengths-based HR development, feedback, appraisal, and career development.
Open summaryInnovation portfolio management often fails because firms overemphasize project selection from an assumed list of candidate projects. Si, Kavadias, and Loch argue that firms should first design a portfolio around strategic innovation goals, then use evaluation and management tools to test, adjust, and govern that portfolio over time.
Open summaryR&D project funding decisions are not independent of sequence. In this study, a project evaluated immediately after a funded project received a lower share of requested funding, and this sequence effect became stronger later in panel meetings, when evaluators were more likely to be mentally fatigued.
Open summaryInventors in large firms can do more than generate ideas. In the Xerox PARC cases, inventors helped commercialize breakthrough inventions by searching across the organization for units with more favorable evaluation criteria and, when uncertainty existed, shaping the criteria used to evaluate their inventions.
Open summaryTalent management becomes more responsible when organizations combine inclusivity, corporate responsibility, equity, and equal employment opportunity. Anlesinya and Amponsah-Tawiah argue that responsible talent management should not only focus on elite high performers, but should also identify, develop, and retain the diverse talents of all employees while still allowing differentiated investment where strategically justified.
Open summaryTalent management does not simply produce positive reactions among selected talents and negative reactions among non-talents. De Boeck, Meyers, and Dries show that talent management practices are generally linked to positive affective, cognitive, and behavioral reactions, but talent status creates more mixed effects, including stress, insecurity, psychological contract imbalance, and identity struggles among talents.
Open summaryInnovation requires different incentives than routine productivity. Manso argues that organizations should tolerate early failure, reward long-term success, provide job security, and give regular feedback if they want employees and managers to explore new approaches rather than only exploit known methods.
Open summaryTalent management in China and India cannot be understood as a universal HR recipe. Cooke, Saini, and Wang show that managers in both countries tend to define talent in elitist, performance-oriented, and firm-centered terms, while talent management practices are shaped by ownership form, sector, education systems, labour-market pressures, cultural values, and institutional context.
Open summaryTalent management practices are shaped by deeper assumptions about what talent is. Meyers and van Woerkom distinguish four talent philosophies based on whether talent is seen as exclusive or inclusive, and stable or developable. Each philosophy leads to different HR practices, opportunities, risks, and research questions.
Open summaryElitist talent management can be ethically defensible only if organizations identify talent fairly, avoid dehumanizing excluded employees, justify unequal development investment, protect employee well-being, and show that the programme benefits more than the selected few.
Open summaryThe meaning of talent in the workplace is conceptually fragmented. Gallardo-Gallardo, Dries, and González-Cruz organize the literature into object approaches, where talent means characteristics of people, and subject approaches, where talent means people themselves. This distinction helps clarify debates about natural ability, mastery, commitment, fit, inclusive talent management, and exclusive talent pools.
Open summaryTalent management research has been strongly shaped by North American assumptions, but the European context differs through institutional regulation, stakeholder traditions, labour mobility, demographic pressures, multilingual diversity, and the internationalization patterns of European multinationals. Collings, Scullion, and Vaiman argue that talent management theory needs stronger European and comparative perspectives.
Open summaryOrganizations should not assume that everyone means the same thing by talent. Tansley shows that the term has shifted historically, differs across languages, and varies strongly across organizations. A clear organizational definition of talent is necessary before talent can be identified, developed, grouped, or managed.
Open summaryStrategic talent management should begin with identifying pivotal positions, not simply labelling individual employees as talent. Collings and Mellahi define strategic talent management as the systematic identification of key roles, development of a talent pool to fill those roles, and use of a differentiated HR architecture to support motivation, commitment, extra-role behaviour, and firm performance.
Open summaryHigh potential should not be treated as a vague label or confused with current performance. Silzer and Church argue that organizations need to ask “potential for what?” and assess potential through a clearer structure of foundational dimensions, growth dimensions, and career dimensions.
Open summaryTransformational CEOs can promote corporate entrepreneurship partly by shaping the top management team. In this study of 152 small-to-medium-sized firms, transformational CEO leadership was positively associated with TMT behavioral integration, decentralization of responsibilities, risk propensity, and long-term compensation. Decentralization, risk propensity, and long-term compensation were then positively associated with corporate entrepreneurship.
Open summaryAmbidexterity can be built not only through separate structures but also through an organizational context that enables employees to balance alignment and adaptability in their daily work. Birkinshaw and Gibson argue that high performance depends on combining performance management with social support so employees can deliver current goals while adapting to new opportunities.
Open summaryEstablished firms should not treat innovation as one generic activity. Moore argues that different innovation types create the strongest returns at different stages of a market's life cycle, and that mature firms must fight organizational inertia by shifting innovation focus while extracting resources from legacy processes and organizations.
Open summaryFirms benefit when explorative and exploitative innovation strategies are balanced rather than treated as substitutes. In this study of manufacturing firms, the interaction between exploration and exploitation is positively related to sales growth, while imbalance between the two is negatively related to sales growth.
Open summaryEstablished companies often fail at disruptive change not because they lack talented people or resources, but because their existing processes and values are built for the current business. Christensen and Overdorf argue that managers should diagnose whether a new challenge fits the organization’s resources, processes, and values, then choose the right structure: existing organization, lightweight team, heavyweight team, spinout, or acquisition.
Open summaryChambers, Foulon, Handfield-Jones, Hankin, and Michaels argue that executive talent had become a scarce strategic resource and that companies needed to compete for it deliberately. Their core prescription is to make talent management a top leadership priority, create a compelling employee value proposition, recruit continuously, develop people aggressively, retain high performers, and move poor performers out of key roles.
Open summaryHerzberg argues that managers often confuse movement with motivation. External pushes such as pay increases, benefits, supervision, and working conditions may reduce dissatisfaction, but lasting motivation comes from redesigning work so employees experience achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth, advancement, and meaningful work itself.
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