Andrew Campbell

The panel symposium turns spotlight on the corporate headquarters (CHQ), which is the contemporary corporation’s central organizational unit. Knowledge about the CHQ is critical to understand the “functioning” and governance of modern organizations. The starting point of the symposium is a comprehensive review of the existing knowledge about the co...

A survey of 761 of the largest corporations in North America and Europe showed that the number of corporate functions had increased at about a third from 2007 to 2010. Leaders at three out of four companies believed that their functions' influence had grown. At the same time, complaints about the performance of those functions were increasing. The...

The corporate office consists of the CEO and the corporate functions. It is the main vehicle for delivering corporate added value. Yet corporate functions often underperform and corporate offices often fail to add value. We argue that this is because CEOs focus most of their attention on portfolio strategy and business issues and give too little at...

At too many large companies, corporate functions like HR and IT don’t get enough strategic direction from the CEO. Four basic steps can help. Few CEOs give enough direction to the heads of their corporate-level functions. That’s the conclusion of a survey we conducted of more than 50 function heads at some of Europe’s leading companies. We are refe...

The CEO’s dilemma—were the gains of centralization worth the pain it could cause?—is a perennial one. Business leaders dating back at least to Alfred Sloan, who laid out GM’s influential philosophy of decentralization in a series of memos during the 1920s, have recognized that badly judged centralization can stifle initiative, constrain the ability...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of strategy execution when strategy is changing. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents studies of two companies – Unilever and Carillion – which appear to have found a solution to the generic problem – to understand the process of strategy execution when strategy is changing....

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the role of misleading experiences, and how decision‐makers' experience can sometimes lead them to think they are right when they are really wrong. Design/methodology/approach Literature was reviewed in neuroscience, cognitive psychology and decision theory on how people make decisions and what decisio...

Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell studied decisions made around the world and researched those that were flawed at their inception. Their caveats for making decisions will help you to avoid some common errors.

Decision making lies at the heart of our personal and professional lives. Yet the daunting reality is that enormously important decisions made by intelligent, responsible people with the best information and intentions are nevertheless hopelessly flawed at times. In part, that's due to the way our brains work. Modern neuroscience teaches us that tw...

Purpose Managers need research‐based guidance on how to find sources of new growth when their core business is maturing. Design/methodology/approach Authors shadowed managers responsible for finding and entering new businesses, interviewing them every three or four months for an average of two years. They surveyed over 100 corporate venturing unit...

Corporative initiatives are an essential tool for improving an organisation's performance. They are they main vehicle through which the corporate centre creates additional value in its portfolio of businesses. However many initiatives are less than satisfactory and become “stuck”, diverting energies and straining relationships. This paper gives a f...

In today's competitive markets, every company has an action plan. Yet for most managers, the processes used to create these plans don't work. The root of the problem, suggests Campbell, may be that too many companies benchmark their processes and by doing so, prevent managers from focusing on what is unique to their situation. Good planning process...

Almost all units set up to create new opportunities for a company fail to develop any significant new businesses, but that is not to say that the techniques are useless -they can be harnessed for other purposes, write Andrew Campbell and Julian Birkinshaw. With growth back on the agenda after a period of austerity and cost cutting, it is worth refl...