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A 2020 article by the polling firm, Gallup, argued that: “The micromanager has become a bit of a boogeyman in the business world. Nobody wants to work for one. Few managers want to be one. Everyone has a horror story about one.”  To explore the topic of micromanagement and its implications I am delighted to be joined by Dr Catherine Deen. About our guest… Catherine Deen is a Senior Lecturer in HR and Organisation Behaviour at the School of Business, University of New South Wales Canberra. As an organisational behaviour researcher, Catherine has a growing reputation for excellent research in the areas of work-related intimate partner aggression, leadership, and the vocational experiences of vulnerable workers. Prior to entering academia, Catherine amassed more than 20 years of industry experience in educational administration, teaching, and research. Since formally entering academia in 2018, Catherine’s research has been published in a range of top management journals. To find out more information about Catherine and her research take a look at the following links: www.catherinedeen.comhttps://lead.fiu.edu/news/2024/my-way-or-the-highway.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Collective stupidity is fairly common in organisations. Firms full of very smart individuals who act in reckless ways that destroy them. Governments and nations that engage in acts of self-harm, descending into economic decline or civil war. Armies that repeat failed tactics. It’s easy to see collective stupidity as something others slip into because of their own idiocy or moral failings. But this perspective misses much. We are all party to such follies.” So wrote our guest today, Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan, in a recent paper on the focus of our conversation: Collective Stupidity and its implications for individuals, organisations and society. About our guest Sir Geoff Mulgan CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL). Prior to that he was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation, between 2011 and the end of 2019. From 1997 to 2004 Geoff had roles in the UK government including director of the Government’s Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister’s office. From 2004 to 2011 he was the first Chief Executive of The Young Foundation. He was the first director of the think-tank Demos; and has been a reporter on BBC TV and radio The article discussed in the interview is open access and is available here: Mulgan, G. (2025). A Theory of Collective Stupidity in Organisations–and Possible Remedies. Organization Studies, 46(9), 1331-1335.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/01708406251349313 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A forthcoming article by our guests today – appropriately titled “Rethinking Stardom" - argues that: Star performers are increasingly capturing the attention of both researchers and practitioners alike. However, studies on these uber-performers often employ disparate definitions, theoretical foundations and assumptions, and methods and analyses, which creates significant tension and confusion in the comparison of findings and the formation of a clear understanding of what star performance truly entails and its impact on individuals, teams, and organizations. To better explore the concept of star performers in organisations I am delighted to be joined by the two authors of this paper: Professor Ernest O’Boyle, Dale Coleman Chair of Management and Professor at Indiana University - Kelley School of Business, and Martin Gotz, Senior Teaching and Research Assistant in the Department of Psychology at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The article discussed in the interview is available here: O'Boyle, E. H., & Götz, M. (2025). Rethinking stardom: A relativistic approach to studying the absolute best performers. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 13.Rethinking Stardom: A Relativistic Approach to Studying the Absolute Best Performers | Annual Reviews Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

According to Forbes magazine, in 2020 alone global spend on corporate training programmes, often focused on leadership development, exceeded $350 billion. Yet how effective, if at all, are these programmes? And are they perhaps just a massive waste of time and money? To dig deep into the question of why leadership development might be failing us I am delighted to be joined on the podcast by Professor Moran Anisman-Razin. About our guest… Dr. Moran Anisman-Razin, is an Associate Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology in the Department of Work and Employment Studies at the Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick. She is also a Visiting Research Scholar at the Behavioral Science and Policy Center, Social Science Research Institute at Duke University, USA and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Innovative Leadership, Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins university.   Through her work, Moran explores questions of leadership in organizations and is particularly interested in examining leaders' perspectives and identities as shaping behavior, leader development, and exploring ways to make leadership development programs more evidence-based and rigorous. The MIT Sloan Management Review article discussed in the interview - Leadership Development Is Failing Us. Here’s How to Fix It - is available here: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/leadership-development-is-failing-us-heres-how-to-fix-it/ A key article also referenced in the interview - Uncomfortable but Developmental: How Mindfulness Moderates the Impact of Negative Emotions on Learning - https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amle.2023.0434 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a forthcoming article now available, our guest today, Professor Stephen Courtright, along with co-authors tackle the question of the “beauty bias and leader emergence”.  Or to put that into plain English: how important is physical attractiveness to leadership? While pop psychology might tell us one thing, what does the evidence actually tell us and why should we care? About our guest… Stephen Courtright is Professor of Management & Flip and Susan Flippen Endowed Chair and Founding Director of the Flippen Leadership Institute at Texas A&M University. Stephen’s research focuses on organizational leadership, teamwork, and work-family dynamics, and has been published in a range of academic journals and has earned many international awards and been featured by outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Forbes, Fox News, and Harvard Business Review. The article discussed is available here: Courtright, S. H., Thurgood, G. R., Liao, H., Morgan, T. J., & Wang, J. (2025). The Beauty Bias and Leader Emergence: A Theoretical Integration, Extension, and Meta-Analysis. Journal of management, 01492063251330199.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01492063251330199 You can follow Stephen’s work and that of the Flippen Leadership Institute on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-courtright-54776325/https://www.linkedin.com/company/flippen-leadership-institute/posts/?feedView=all Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Research has consistently found that maintaining a healthy balance between work and other areas of life often requires people to establish and maintain boundaries those various areas. Yet as humans we might also be curious or indeed nosy about the people we are working with or who might be working for us – if only just to find out a little bit more about them. But what actually is nosiness and when might that be perceived to have gone too far? To explore the question of nosiness I am delighted to be joined by Professor Richard Currie. About our guest… Dr. Richard Currie is an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Workplace Psychology in the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University. Dr. Currie’s research interests center around work-related social stressors and the implications that employees’ responses to these stressors have on critical organizational knowledge management outcomes such as knowledge sharing and counterproductive knowledge hiding behaviors. You can find out more about Richard’s work at these links: Google Scholar – https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Qqxawt8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=aoBoston University – https://www.bu.edu/hospitality/profile/richard-a-currie/LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/racurrie/ Some of the articles discussed in the interview include the following: Currie, R. A., Achyldurdyyeva, J., Guchait, P., & Lee, J. (2024). For my eyes only: The effect of supervisor nosiness on knowledge sharing behavior among restaurant workers. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 120, 103770.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278431924000823?via%3DihubCurrie, R. A., & Ehrhart, M. G. (2025). Mind Your Own Business: Developing and Validating the Workplace Nosiness Scale. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1-24.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-025-10018-7 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adversity is inherent within most – if not all – occupational contexts in which the performance of individuals and teams is crucial for organisational effectiveness. With its central focus on what enables people to resist, bounce back, or recover from adverse events that threaten their functioning, viability, or development, it is unsurprising that the concept of resilience has attracted a significant focus over the past 40 years. However, the majority of this past work has focused on resilience among individuals despite the fact that in in most contexts, whether work, sport or education, people typically complete tasks within teams that work interdependently for a specified timeframe to achieve a common and valued outcome or objective. In order to better understand the nature of team resilience, a recent paper co-authored by our guest today – Professor Daniel Gucciardi - seeks to address this gap in the literature. About our guest… Daniel Gucciardi is a Professor in the Curtin School of Allied Health at Curtin University in Western Australia. Daniel’s research portfolio sits at the interface of the psychological and behavioural sciences, and utilises basic and applied research paradigms to advance knowledge and practice on the complexities of human performance and health. Daniel’s work and interests focus on human performance and health primarily within the context of stress, where he examines concepts like resilience, team dynamics, self-regulation, and behaviour change. You can find out more about Daniel’s work via his Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ovDUT-EAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Humor is a phenomenon experienced by most, if not all, human beings. Throughout human history humor has played a role in communication and interactions between people, yet how often do we actually take the time to consider what is humor, and more to the point, what is humorous? To discuss this, I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Matt Nadel. About our guest... Matt Nadel is a doctoral candidate and adjunct professor at St. John's University in New York studying communication in organizations.  Prior to joining St John’s University, Matt worked as a CPA and auditor at a Big 4, and ran a phenomenally successful baseball blog. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Creativity is – for a very good reason – often seen as something positive and even joyful. Yet like many things in life there is also a flipside to creativity – a dark side, if you will. To explore the concept of dark creativity I am delighted to be joined today by Dr Hansika Kapoor. About our guest… Hansika Kapoor is a Research Author at the Department of Psychology, Monk Prayogshala, a not-for-profit research organisation in Mumbai. Hansika’s work has been published in leading journals including Creativity Research Journal, Thinking Skills and Creativity, and Personality and Individual Differences and she regularly contributes to popular media publications, including Psychology Today, Mint, and The Wire. You can find out more about Hansika’s research, including on the topics of creativity and dark creativity, on her website: https://www.hansikakapoor.in/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As regular listeners will know, the Brain for Business podcast focuses primarily on research by academics and others into the brain, behavioural and organisational sciences. Key to what we do is an underlying assumption that the people we interview and the research that we discuss with them is supported by a strong degree of academic legitimacy. In other words, the research is at the very least robust and evidence-based. Yet in recent years, questions of academic legitimacy have bubbled to the surface with ever greater frequency and is the focus of a recent pre-print paper currently under review at a leading journal by our guest today, Dr Raffaele Ciriello. About our guest... Dr Raffaele Ciriello is a tenured Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney. Raffaele’s research explores the intersection of digital innovation, decentralized governance, and ethics, blending rigorous interdisciplinary work with qualitative and dialectical inquiry to address complex sociotechnical dilemmas. The pre-print article referred to in the interview - Safeguarding Academic Legitimacy: Editorial Conflicts of Interest as a Principal-Agent Problem in Elite Business Journals - is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5315585 Webpages for Raffaele and his collaborator, Vitali Mindel, are available here: https://www.sydney.edu.au/business/about/our-people/academic-staff/raffaele-ciriello.htmlhttps://bit.vt.edu/faculty/directory/mindel.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent open access article in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization reported on results from research comparing the effect of (the same) opinions expressed by visibly senior, female versus male experts. Common wisdom might hold that women suffer from an “authority gap” compared to their male peers, but is that really the case? To explore the findings of this research I am delighted to be joined by one of the authors of the study, Professor Hans Henrik Sievertsen. About our guest… Hans Henrik Sievertsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Bristol, and is also a senior researcher at the Danish Center for Social Science Research and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn. Hans is an applied microeconomist, working mainly on topics related to education, health, and gender. The articles discussed in the interview are as follows: "Do female experts face an authority gap? Evidence from economics" with Sarah Smith, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation (2025). Available to read here: https://www.hhsievertsen.net/content/papers/Sievertsen_Smith_2025.pdf"The gender gap in expert voice: evidence from economics" with Sarah Smith, Public Understanding of Science (2024). Available to read here: https://www.hhsievertsen.net/content/papers/Sievertsen_Smith_2024.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite the old saying that “curiosity killed the cat”… the importance of curiosity for information seeking and gathering in organisations is well established. Yet little is known about the role that CEO curiosity plays in strategic choices and decision-making. To explore this further and to discuss the findings of a recent paper in the journal Strategic Organization, I am delighted to be joined today by Professor Dr. Patricia Klarner. About our guest... Professor Dr. Patricia Klarner is Director of the Institute for Organization Design at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna). Prior to her current position, she worked on the faculties of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and the University of Munich (LMU). Professor Klarner’s research focuses on corporate strategy and adaptation, corporate governance, strategic organization design, and strategic leadership. She particularly examines how organizations can remain agile and successful in times of increasingly volatile and unpredictable business environments. Her research provides insights into how organizations can balance change and stability in their organization design and how key strategic actors – top management teams and boards of directors – influence strategic adaptation and growth decisions over time.   The article discussed in the interview is open access and is available here: CEO Curiosity and Strategic Change: The Differential Role of Curiosity Types and TMT Characteristics https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14761270251325238 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A 2023 opinion piece in the journal Nature Psychology challenged the prevailing perspective on success and achievement, essentially arguing that we have it all wrong! So, where does the truth about success and achievement really lie??? To discuss this I am delighted to be joined by one of the co-authors of that article, Professor Brooke Macnamara. About our guest... Brooke Macnamara is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University. In her research, Brooke is interested in how various factors predict skilled performance variance – both performance changes within an individual and performance differences across individuals. The Nature Psychology opinion piece discussed in the interview can be accessed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44159-023-00255-zYou can find out more about Brooke's work at the Skill, Learning and Performance Lab at Purdue University here: https://hhs.purdue.edu/skill-learning-and-performance-lab/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Balancing exploration and exploitation is a fundamental strategic challenge for organizations operating in dynamic environments. Managers must decide how often and when to search for new technologies and products, weighing the costs of exploration against the risk of missing trends that could render their business models obsolete To dig deep into this topic I am delighted to be speaking today to Professor Axel Zeijen. About our guest… Axel Zeijen is a Lecturer at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. With a background in industrial engineering and innovation sciences, Axel is broadly interested in technological change and its organizational implications. In particular, he attempts to understand where and how technological forces and firm strategy interact, and how this process plays out. His research projects cover industries where new technologies change the capabilities of firms, create new opportunities for change, and affect how competition plays out. The articles discussed in the podcast area as follows (both open access): Zeijen, A., Romagnoli, M., & Marengo, L. (2025). Signposts for problemistic search: Reference points and adaptation in rugged landscapes. Strategy Science. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.1287/stsc.2023.0072Denrell, J., Zeijen, A., Romagnoli, M., & Marengo, L. (2025). Absolute, average‐based, and rank‐based aspirations. Strategic Management Journal. https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smj.3715 Websites for Axel and each of his co-authors are as follows: Axel Zeijen - https://timgroup.ethz.ch/people/senior-researchers/dr-axel-zeijen.htmlJerker Denrell - https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/jerker-denrell/Manuel Romagnoli - https://www.wiwi.uni-jena.de/en/11462/dr-manuel-romagnoliLuigi Marengo - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OKWSBtQAAAAJ&hl=en Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent article in the Journal of Business Venturing sought to address the question of: Why and how does founder age perception influence funding outcomes? To discuss the importance of this question and the key findings of the paper I am delighted to be joined by Dr Michael Matthews, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. About our guest... Michael Matthews, Ph.D., studies leadership and the intersection between work and life. Michael received his B.S. (Brigham Young University) and M.S. (The University of Oklahoma) in information systems. Later, he received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (University of Oklahoma) with a particular focus on organizational behavior. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His writing has been featured in outlets such as the Journal of Management, Leadership Quarterly, and Harvard Business Review. Prior to entering academia, Michael worked as a computer programmer for several technology companies. In particular, Michael has coded for organizations such as ExxonMobil and Proofpoint. More information: Just a number? Using artificial intelligence to explore perceived founder age in entrepreneurial fundraising (from Journal of Business Venturing): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883902623000757Research Powered by AI Shows Age Discrimination in Entrepreneurial Fundraising (from California Management Review): https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2024/03/research-powered-by-ai-shows-age-discrimination-in-entrepreneurial-fundraising/ Two other papers mentioned in our conversation:   Eren, O., & Mocan, N. (2018). Emotional judges and unlucky juveniles. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(3), 171-205.Nault, K. A., Pitesa, M., & Thau, S. (2020). The attractiveness advantage at work: A cross-disciplinary integrative review. Academy of Management Annals, 14(2), 1103-1139. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.