Leadership & management

The social unrest of 2020 brought new attention to long-simmering issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in the U.S. and around the globe, and prompted many to seek to learn more about longstanding societal inequities — and potential paths forward. Six Darden professors deliver their thoughts and share additional thought leadership.

Eliminating discrimination from customer service has been historically difficult, even for organizations with stellar service reputations. Is there a way for companies to better identify their breakdowns and eliminate discrimination from the fast food drive through to the hotel lobby?

Diversity, equity and inclusion are imperative. How can companies — and the individuals in them — ensure the kind of inclusive hiring practices that will lead to a genuinely equitable and diverse culture? Darden Professor Toni Irving discusses problems and solutions for hiring and developing diverse talent.

Many employees now work remotely. How can managers help them cope with the unique challenges posed by a stay-at-home world? Darden Professor Roshni Raveendhran discusses blind spots to avoid, concrete strategies to help direct reports, and the important distinction between a company’s formal policies and interpersonal conduct in affecting behavior.

China manufactures nearly a quarter of the world’s high-tech goods, but most of those goods’ microchips come from the U.S. When tension rose in U.S.-China relations, one Chinese company found an M&A win-win with a European chipmaker looking to expand in China’s market. Here’s how a CEO turned around an existential threat and supply chain weak link.

A leader’s job is to manage energy: their own, their reports’ and their organization’s. Virtual work poses additional challenges around all of these, especially as issues of trust and credibility have nuances obfuscated by the absence of face-to-face meetings. Professor Joe Harder provides insights on overcoming such challenges.

In the face of a pandemic, how can we be bigger than the sum of our parts? Laura Morgan Roberts addresses how to maintain and evolve culture from afar: how to bond, stay agile, ensure physical and psychological safety, promote inclusion, offer compassion, and strategically align to determine what the new normal requires — and what needs to change.

No event in modern history has driven so much change, so fast, as the coronavirus pandemic. In a world beset by the challenges presented by COVID-19, can we look into the minds of entrepreneurs to discover how businesses and individuals might start to rebuild?

As COVID-19 continues to spread, hospitals in the hardest-hit areas operate at near capacity. Professor Elliott N. Weiss believes that understanding capacity management and other fundamental concepts in operations can help us make sense of the current crisis and invites us to examine it through the lens of operations.

The convergence of racism, economic downturns and public health crises reflect wicked problems in complex systems fraught with inequality. Enduring strains of racism play out overtly and subtly, both violently in the streets and systemically in the workplace. So what now? Laura Morgan Roberts offers three zones of action as we move forward.