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At the beginning of this month, Václav Havel stepped down as President of the Czech Republic. The departure of this committed politician and intellectual has prompted numerous comments on the morals of the public official and his role in matters of state. In IESE Insight we have selected two studies that offer some thoughts on this subject: the first, by Professor Antonio Argandoña, reviews, through the figure of Václav Havel, the main ethical dilemmas confronting managers; while in the second, Professor José Antonio Álvarez and Research Assistant Ernesto M.Pascual share their insights into the management competencies of European politicians.
Also in this issue of IESE Insight: sustainable business, how family firms can prepare for the handover from one generation to the next, and the role of multinationals in knowledge transfer.
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Business Ethics |
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Beyond the Call of Duty |
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| Antonio Argandoña |
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Business executives often find themselves faced with ethically difficult problems that may have very serious consequences for them, their companies and other stakeholders. In such situations, can one expect a manager to be "heroic" in her approach to ethics in business? Can one expect a manager to be ethical come what may? And how does such heroic behaviour relate to leadership? Can it be unethical to be "very ethical"? In light of the immediate consequences, the answer would probably be yes: because of the financial losses, the destruction of organisational capital, the job losses, etc. And yet, Professor Antonio Argandoña of IESE argues, there are other consequences that must also be taken into account. 
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Leadership, Strategy and Change |
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What Kind of Managers Are Our Politicians? |
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| Ernesto M. Pascual , José Luis Alvarez |
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| José Maria Áznar, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac or Vladimir Putin, each of today's politicians displays a set of management and leadership competencies that is worth analyzing in the interests of those who vote them into power - and ultimately for the sake of democracy. In their technical note "The Management Competencies of European Politicians", Professor José Luis Álvarez (on leave) and Research Assistant Ernesto M. Pascual of IESE make an initial assessment of the qualities of presidents and prime ministers, citing examples from recent European and North American political history.
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Corporate Social Responsibility |
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Sustainable Business Means... |
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| Joan Enric Ricart, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez |
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| The concept of sustainable business challenges us to fundamentally revise our understanding of companies, their mission, their role in society and their relationship with the natural world. What are the distinguishing features of the sustainable business? This is the question that IESE Lecturer Miguel Angel Rodríguez and Professor Joan Enric Ricart set out to answer in their technical note "Towards the Sustainable Business".
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Corporate Governance |
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Taking Over the Family Business |
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| Miguel Ángel Gallo |
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| It is generally recognized that family firms are different from all other types of companies due to the moral responsibility of those in charge to safeguard the common welfare of the family, and to the tight relationships between those working in the firm. So how should the next generation be prepared for a career in the family business? What are the necessary ingredients to ensure that the successors are properly trained to take over the running of the company? In this technical note, Professor Miguel Angel Gallo of IESE answers these questions.
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship |
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Doubts about the Role of Multinationals in Cross-Border Knowledge Transfer |
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| Reinhilde Veugelers, Bruno Cassiman |
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| Innovation, a major driver of economic growth, thrives on new knowledge. Policy makers are therefore naturally keen to stimulate the channels through which knowledge flows between countries. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is one such channel, and the subsidiaries of foreign multinationals may be one of the mechanisms through which technological know-how spills across borders. In this paper Professors Reinhilde Veugelers of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Bruno Cassiman of IESE draw on direct firm-level evidence from Belgian manufacturing firms to obtain some interesting insights.
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Leadership, Strategy and Change |
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Sign Here: Designing Contracts for Strategic Alliances |
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| África Ariño, Jeffrey J. Reuer |
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| Alliances are a key element of corporate strategy. Yet, their success often hinges on the content of the alliance contract. Not only do these documents set forth the two parties' mutual rights, obligations and expectations, they also determine how disputes will be resolved and partnerships terminated. This paper considers the benefits of developing more complex alliance contracts by offering a fine-grained investigation into the decisions underlying alliance design.
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