These days everyone seems to be searching for their passion, safe in the knowledge that ‘Find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’. Yet how realistic is this? And how realistic is it for people to strive to find their ultimate life calling – if there even is such a thing?

To explore the question of callings in greater depth I am delighted to be joined by Professor Kirsten Robertson of Fraser Valley University in Canada.

About our guest…

Dr. Kirsten Robertson is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources in the School of Business at Fraser Valley University.

Kirsten’s research explores the lived experiences of individuals at work, with a particular focus on work meaningfulness, the interface between work and non-work, and workplace relationships with both people and animals. She has published her research in leading management journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Organizational Behavior.

• The paper discussed in the interview - Living life ‘to the core’: Enacting a calling through configurations of multiple jobs – is open access and is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00187267241251956
• Kirsten’s Google Scholar page can be accessed here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Piek-GcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
• Kirsten’s profile page at the University of Fraser Valley is available here: https://www.ufv.ca/business/faculty-and-staff/robertson-kirsten.htm

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The question of diversity is one that we have discussed previously on the Brain for Business podcast. While the benefits of diversity are often taken for granted and assumed in the popular press and discourse, research examining the actual benefits of diversity in terms of team effectiveness and performance have – up until now – been sadly lacking.

In a paper to be published shortly in the Journal of Business of Psychology, our guest today, Dr Lukas Wallrich and colleagues seek to address this gap in the literature.

About our guest...

Dr Lukas Wallrich is a Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck Business School , University of London, where he teaches on organisational psychology master programmes and primarily researches how workforce diversity can be harnessed to improve organisational performance. Other research interests include the effect of intergroup contact on pro-social behaviour, the development of stereotypes and implicit associations and the influence of traditional and new media on public attitudes.

Prior to moving into academia, Lukas worked as a consultant with McKinsey and Co.

• Lukas’s personal website is as follows: https://www.lukaswallrich.coffee/
• A pre-print copy of the article discussed is available here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nscd4
• The interactive web app with the data from the article can be accessed here: https://lukaswallrich.shinyapps.io/diversity_meta/

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Over four decades ago the American author and futurist, John Naisbitt, captured the public imagination with his book Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. Since that time, the concept has been widely adopted by researchers, consultants, private enterprises and governments to explore long-term futures across a diverse range of regions, industries and socioeconomic domains.

Yet what are megatrends?

And how can we better understand their significance and impact?

To explore this I am delighted to be joined on Brain for Business by Dr Claire Naughtin.

Dr Claire Naughtin is a Principal Research Consultant at Data61 – part of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation or CSIRO, an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research.

Claire leads Data61’s Digital Futures team and specialises in future-focused, strategic projects and has worked across a diverse range of policy and industry domains, including the future of trade, employment, healthcare and emerging technology and industry development opportunities. Among her most recent work, Claire co-led the delivery of CSIRO’s Our Future World report – a once-in-a-decade report that identified seven emerging megatrends that will shape the next 20 years for Australia.

Claire is passionate about bridging the gap between research and the real world and equipping leaders with a data-informed narrative of the future to help guide long-term decision-making. As part of this, Claire delivers strategic foresight training and workshops to help organisations build resilience to uncertain futures and publishes her research in scientific and industry journals.

• You can find out more about Claire and her work on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-naughtin/
• The “Our Future World” report can be accessed online: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/data/Our-Future-World
• Further information about Data61 and the CSIRO is available here: https://www.csiro.au/en/about/people/business-units/data61

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A recent paper in the journal Leadership Quarterly explores the very nature of leadership styles and how they play out, ultimately asserting that: "the common finding that positive leadership styles lead to positive outcomes […] might be an artifact of conflation rather than a reflection of reality” (p. 1).

Yet what are positive leadership styles and why have generations of leadership researchers so badly misinterpreted their impact?

Joining me on the Brain for Business podcast to discuss the findings of the paper is one of its co-authors, Professor Thomas Fischer of the University of Geneva.

About Thomas Fischer

Thomas Fischer is an Associate Professor at the University of Geneva and is the Yearly Review Editor of The Leadership Quarterly, the premier journal fully dedicated to leadership research. Thomas Fischer’s work focuses on managing people in organizations, and in particular on two topics. First, the conceptualization and measurement of leadership styles. Second, how people talk about their own leadership and whether their practice lives up to what they preach.

Details of the articles discussed in the podcast are as follows:

• Fischer, T., Dietz, J., & Antonakis, J. (2024). A fatal flaw: Positive leadership style research creates causal illusions. The Leadership Quarterly, 101771. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984323000978
• Fischer, T. (2023). Measuring behaviors counterfactually. The Leadership Quarterly, 34(6), 101750. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984323000760
• Fischer, T., & Sitkin, S. B. (2023). Leadership styles: A comprehensive assessment and way forward. Academy of Management Annals, 17(1), 331-372. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/annals.2020.0340
• Alvesson, M., & Blom, M. (2022). The hegemonic ambiguity of big concepts in organization studies. Human Relations, 75(1), 58-86. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726720986847

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A recent article in the journal Organization Science argues that

“Although prior research attributes news media coverage of firms to the alignment of firm behavior with societal expectations of appropriateness, the appropriateness of firm behavior is judged through an ideological lens. Therefore, the influence of a firm’s behavior on its news media coverage is likely to be contingent on news organizations’ ideology.”

The veracity of this statement has seemingly never been more true than in recent years when the news media has become increasingly polarised along ideological grounds and there would at times appear to be a news outlet to support any view, however mainstream or obscure.

To explore this further I am delighted be joined by one of the co-authors of the paper, Professor Georg Wernicke of HEC Paris.

About our guest…

Georg Wernicke is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris. Georg’s research is on topics in, and at the intersection of, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR), broadly defined. More specifically, he is interested in the drivers of public disapproval of firms’ practices, for example the compensation firms pay to their CEOs, how firms’ prosocial activities affect disapproval, and, in turn, which subset of firms and CEOs reacts to being targeted. Georg also analyzes how the characteristics and values of CEOs affect firm level outcomes such as corporate misconduct or the adoption of prosocial practices, as well as how demographic minority status affects labor-market outcomes for directors after occurrences of financial fraud. Furthermore, Georg engages in projects that explore the antecedents of superior firm performance on CSR.

• The article referenced in the discussion is available here: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2022.17237
• You can find out more about Georg and his work at his personal page: https://www.georg-wernicke.com/
• Or on his faculty page at HEC Paris: https://www.hec.edu/en/faculty-research/faculty-directory/faculty-member/WERNICKE-Georg

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Innovation is an inherently risky business. When we push the boundaries of possibility and try to develop new products, processes or services, we are by definition moving into areas that are new and unexplored. A key consequence of this is that innovation sometimes – or even often – results in failure. But why is this? And are all innovation failures the same?

To explore this further, I am delighted to be joined by Dr Elena Freisinger who, together with Professor Ian McCarthy of Simon Fraser University, has recently published on just this topic.

About our guest…

Elena Freisinger is an Assistant Professor of Innovation Management at Ilmenau University of Technology in Thuringia, Germany.

Elena’s research focuses on the behavioral aspects of Innovation Management, and she investigates the behavior of innovation decision-makers with regard to technological and environmental change and how this affects innovation management and business models of organizations.

The article discussed is open access and can be downloaded from here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497224000452

You can find out more about Elena and her research here:

• https://www.tu-ilmenau.de/en/universitaet/fakultaeten/fakultaet-wirtschaftswissenschaften-und-medien/profil/institute-und-fachgebiete/fachgebiet-innovationsmanagement/team/elena-freisinger
• https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=N1Qp6bcAAAAJ&hl=de

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Over the last number of years, the internet has facilitated much greater connectivity and interaction between people – both on a personal and professional level. Intuitively we might expect that this would lead to an upsurge in innovation as people are exposed to new ideas and can easily collaborate with many more people. And, indeed, this would very much with the recombinant theory of innovation. Yet is that really the case?

To explore this further I am delighted to be joined by Professor Lingfei Wu of the University of Pittsburgh.

Lingfei Wu is Assistant Professor of Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His research leverages big data, complexity sciences, and AI to understand how science and technology can advance through collaborative teamwork, known as the Science of Team Science and Innovation.

His research has been published in prestigious academic journals like Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and featured in renowned media outlets. Lingfei Wu also advises organizations like Novo Nordisk Fonden and John Templeton Foundation on the use of data science to evaluate teamwork in science. He has received multiple awards for his research and teaching, including the NSF Career Award, Richard King Mellon Award, and Oxford Martin School Fellowship.

Lingfei’s personal site is accessible here: http://lingfeiwu.github.io/

The paper discussed in the interview is available here: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2206/2206.01878.pdf

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In many areas of life – both personal and professional – the need to envision potential futures and establish how to get there is crucial. Indeed, some would argue that the ability to envision potential futures is part of what defines us as human beings. And while there are well established approaches such as scenario planning and forecasting, a recent paper in journal Futures outlines a promising new approach, informed by literature and the great literary works. To discuss this, I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Rebecca Braun.

Professor Rebecca Braun is the Executive Dean of College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies at the University of Galway.

Prior to joining the University of Galway in 2021, Rebecca was Professor of Modern Languages & Creative Futures at Lancaster University in the UK, where she was also Co-Director of the Institute for Social Futures from 2017-2020. Rebecca held further lectureships and research fellowships at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford in the UK and at the Freie Universität Berlin.

• The article discussed in the interview is available here – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328724000314
• More information on the Literary Futures approach is available here –
• https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2024/03/22/using-literary-futures-to-open-up-the-imagination-methods/
• Rebecca Braun’s University Page can be access here – https://www.universityofgalway.ie/our-research/people/languages-literatures-and-cultures/rebeccabraun/
• The Futures journal can be accessed online – https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/futures
• The Next Wave Futures blog can be subscribed to online – https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/

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