In the past decade, the presence of women on the boards of public companies has been increasing virtually everywhere in the world — except in the United States.
Internationally, the 16.6 percent of female directors serving on U.S. Fortune 500 boards falls somewhere in the middle; Japan sits at slightly over 1 percent and Norway at 40 percent. But that U.S. number is only 3 percent higher than it was 10 years ago.
The numbers are surprising, considering:
If you want to be a successful company, you have to sell a great product or service. That’s business 101.
But there’s a growing piece of the business equation that not enough companies are talking about: how you give back to the world around you.
It doesn’t matter if you call it “social good” or “corporate social responsibility.” What does matter to a growing section of your customers? Knowing what you and your company stand for and how you are helping the larger world.
Recently there’s been a trend to stereotype millennials as ungracious, narcissistic, social media–obsessed, lazy, self-entitled “trophy children” who are handed everything in life.
As a Bentley University senior and proud millennial, I find these insults degrading and unwarranted. Comparing the values of one generation against another is flawed and rife with inaccuracies.
Let this be a guide to respond to anyone who dismisses our generation.
It’s often said that students attend business school because they want good jobs when they graduate. Naturally enough, they tend to focus on class work that will help them reach that goal. However, classroom learning can take them only so far. As business school faculty, it’s up to us to make the necessary link between classroom theory and how it is applied in the workplace. When this link is made, students learn more and retain better. Seeing their studies “in action” makes it stick.
During my time at Bentley, I took a variety of business courses. We all know that to be a successful business person in today’s world, you need a variety of skills and exposure to many different ways of thinking.
In one class, Professor Tim Anderson introduced the talking stick.
He explained to us that it was an ancient tradition. Whoever held the talking stick was the person talking. They could hold on to it as long as they wanted, say whatever they wanted and everyone else had to allow them to speak and not interrupt.
Imagine this scenario.
You’ve just started your first job out of college and you get this inter-office mail from your new boss: “Has our client answered the questions we had for our report?”
Panic sets in. You’re working on a number of reports. Which one? And how should you respond? You hardly know the new boss — would an in-person update be too informal? Is inter-office mail too slow?
Most published research in the IS field is quantitative, analyzing measurable, verifiable quantitative data and evidence. How can the alternative — qualitative research — be promoted for IS?
Research on millennials, conducted by Bentley University and others, consistently indicates that more mentoring, hands-on opportunities for learning, and a comprehensive grasp of technology are all initiatives that can benefit millennial career preparation while in college.
When all three come together, as they have recently at Bentley, it presents an unusual opportunity for students to gain insights into how to enhance their career success.
This has been an eventful summer for all of us who care about the world. In June, we marked the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In July, we recorded the hottest-ever month in the United States. In August and September, we listened to the two presidential candidates as they squared off on climate change in their respective convention speeches. And later in September, we learned that the drastic melting of the Arctic sea ice had set a new record, with ice covering just 24 percent of the surface of the Arctic Ocean.