By Emily Plews
This year the early Sunday morning Gathering of POS scholars at the 2012 Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting felt like a homecoming event. This was the tenth POS Gathering, my third, but the first one I attended as a scholar from a university other than University of Michigan. This perspective helped me understand more deeply and anew the value of 90 minutes with the POS community every year. It is a short event, with big results. The gathering’s organizers, Gretchen Spreitzer and David Mayer, built an ephemeral home filled with food for nourishment, seats for grateful faces from all over the world, and most importantly food for thought. Continue reading →
By Janet Max
Oana Branzei is an associate professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. She is Visiting Scholar at the Center for POS for the 2012-13 academic year.
The Center’s new visiting scholar, Oana Branzei, is passionate about the overarching theme of the positive function of business in society, and is drawn to learning about what people in extreme situations think that business can do for them. “They see business as almost a salvation. Often, they learn to imagine the future through the business itself,” she notes. “It’s really hard for someone who has been marginalized or traumatized to imagine a better life. Hope is an essential part of lifting them up.” Oana focuses on the dynamics of hope: dreams of better lives, and actions needed to achieve them. Her field work in areas such as Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Peru, and Bangladesh documents the incidence and resilience of enterprise under extreme scarcity, adversity, and conflict. Oana also researches the emergence and evolution of pro-poor business models in North America, Asia, and Latin America. Continue reading →
By Oana Branzei
Poverty. Conflict. Draught. Death. Hunger. Domestic Violence.
Not giving up.
Understanding how one summons and sustains hope in the face of scarcity and adversity stretches the straightjacket of organizational theories to make room for understanding life at its extremes—and reconnects us to the people living full and inspiring lives despite overcoming significant hurdles, every day. Continue reading →
By Janet Max
Our Fall 2012 slate of speakers will feature three presentations on the theme of Positive Business. The speakers are Anjan Thakor of Washington University in St. Louis on September 24th, Rick Bagozzi of the University of Michigan on October 8th, and George Siedel of the University of Michigan on November 12th. More information, including title and abstract of each talk within two weeks before each session and video two weeks after, will be posted on the Positive Links Speaker Series page.
By Kathy Kram
About five years ago, I began using relational learning as a centerpiece for the infrastructure of “The Leadership Challenge,” an MBA elective I teach at the Boston University School of Management. In a significant change last fall, we introduced Action Learning Teams and Action Learning Projects, in which students would be expected to practice specific leadership behaviors and attitudes that they identified through the 360 assessment that they completed at the outset of the course. My collaborator in this was Jeffrey Yip, who is an advanced doctoral student in Organizational Behavior, and formerly worked at CCL (Center for Creative Leadership). He was instrumental in the design and implementation first time around. Continue reading →
