Delve

Subscribe to our newsletter at delve.mcgill.ca! Statistics Canada cites financial challenges as the leading cause of homelessness in Canada. Other factors, like health issues and domestic abuse, can also affect a person’s housing situation. But more than that, for Professor Jayne Malenfant and Hannah Brais, homelessness is a symptom of a flawed social and political system. Malenfant is an assistan...

Subscribe to our newsletter at delve.mcgill.ca! In Canada, one in five people doesn’t have a family doctor they see regularly. Emergency wait times can be as high as 22 hours . An ageing population threatens to strain an already burdened healthcare system. And while these numbers cover the situation in Canada, countries around the world face similar challenges. How did we get here? And what can be...

Creativity is a joyous rage Once upon a time, creativity was your superpower. Your ambition to succeed was unmatched and your creative drive was your guiding light. But now, after years of navigating deadlines, expectations, and maybe even a few hard-won successes, you find yourself wondering: Where did that creative spark go? When creativity feels distant—lost to routine, burnout, or the sheer we...

Sometimes it’s difficult to do the right thing. What if managers made it easier? Rob Glew is an assistant professor of Operations Management at McGill University. In this podcast interview, pulling on his own research and other cornerstone studies, he shares how small management choices can impact people’s motivations to do good. Eric Dicaire interviews Rob Glew in this podcast episode. They begin...

This week on the McGill Delve podcast, our editor-in-chief is in the hot seat. Saku Mantere is a professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Desautels Faculty of Management. Over the course of his career, he’s identified six ways to understand creativity. These frameworks can help you unlock the creativity that’s within you and your organization. We begin this episode with an overview of Professo...

Are unions for everyone? Tony Masi is a Professor of Industrial Relations and Organizational Behaviour at McGill University. In this podcast interview, he shows us unions attach themselves to social movements that benefit both their members and society as a whole, which has led to some of the biggest social changes of the 20th century. But this kind of work isn’t easy. If they want to win, union l...

In this episode of the McGill Delve podcast, Professor Lisa Cohen talks about the fascinating and crucial process of job designing in startups. She explains how job creation impacts startups, the numerous challenges managers and founders face when hiring, and how startups differ from larger, more established firms. Read Professor Cohen's paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5212434_Rout...

In this special edition of the McGill Delve podcast, editor-in-chief Saku Mantere sits down with Antoni Cimolino, artistic director of the Stratford Festival. Together they unpack leadership lessons from one of the most influential artists of all time: William Shakespeare. Shakespeare was not only a fantastic playwright, but he was also an entrepreneur. And his life and work have much to say about...

In this episode of the McGill Delve podcast, Professor Rim Hariss talks price strategies. Supply and demand, manufacturing costs, and other operational factors are important determinants of a product’s price. But beyond that, retailers can manipulate prices to tell a story about their brand. Professor Hariss explains how price skimming affects relationships with consumers, how price anchoring infl...

Personal finance may seem complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. In this episode of the McGill Delve podcast, Professor Benjamin Croitoru walks us through how to control our finances, avoid common investing mistakes, and feel more comfortable speaking to financial advisors.  Professor Croitoru is an associate professor of finance at McGill University and the academic director of McGill Perso...

Anicet Fangwa is an Assistant Professor in Strategy and Organization at the Desautels Faculty of Management. In this episode of the Delve Podcast, he highlights three simple management tactics that can reduce infant mortality rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo: performance-based incentives, auditing, and feedback. With these management tools, institutional donors can maximize the impact of...

Paola Perez-Aleman, Associate Professor of Strategy and Organization at McGill University, joins Dr. Sabine Dhir to discuss Brazil’s approach to building healthcare innovation capacity. Brazil has been building innovation capacity and cultivating knowledge networks in its fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), a public health issue that affects millions in Brazil and around the world. S...

Demetrios Vakratsas is a Professor of Marketing at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. In a recent study, he found that physicians use scientific evidence to learn about new specialty drugs, rather than consulting traditional marketing materials. They don’t need brochures. They don’t look at ads. Instead, specialists participate in word-of-mouth marketing to learn about drugs...

Activist hedge funds exert their influence in several ways, but recently they’ve been trying something new: acquiring board seats on their portfolio companies. Once there, fund representatives can advise and monitor company leadership to maximize the company’s value. Ipek Yavuz, Assistant Professor of Finance at the Desautels Faculty of Management, studied the impact of activist board members who...

Taha Havakhor, Professor of Information Systems at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, studied how retail investors used data from a financial APIs to inform their investment decisions. What he found was striking. When using stock pricing data pulled from an API, consumer investors were prone to making riskier investment choices. He tells us why in the latest episode of the McGill...

In a recent study, Professor Mehmet Gumus learned that consumers are reluctant to pay more for sustainable clothing. This creates a conundrum for fast fashion companies. Sustainable manufacturing is expensive, so firms want to know their investment will be worth it. But, if they’re going to succeed, major stakeholders will have to join forces to make an impact. Gumus believes companies, consumers,...

In 2014, a commercial spacecraft crashed during a test flight, killing one pilot and severely injuring the other. The ensuing public backlash not only threatened the future of the company, but also the industry as a whole. What followed was a remarkable show of unity among industry leaders, driven by a shared passion for exploration and the need to legitimize a nascent commercial space industry. T...

Every peer group has its own set of norms, rules, and values, which heavily influences individuals’ behaviours – sometimes more so than the law itself. Within organizations, these social dynamics can enable unethical and illegal behaviour, which in turn can have severe consequences on people and communities. Here’s a look at the concept of social dynamics, how it sometimes enables misconduct in or...

Increasingly, EDI is a priority for organizations. But while the intention is there, inclusive hiring has not yet become the great equalizer many hoped it would be. Professors Jeraul Mackey, Brian Rubineau, and Roman Galperin are experts in equitable hiring from the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. Through their research, they identified three areas where EDI may run into barr...

Where does great organizational strategy come from? Many executives create plans in the boardroom, setting targets and allocating resources. But, according to renowned management scholar Henry Mintzberg, this may not be the best approach. Henry Mintzberg is a Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Desautels School of Management of McGill University and the author of several comprehensive bo...

Jeraul Mackey is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University and an expert on equitable hiring practices. In this episode of the Delve podcast, he shares why organizations often fall short of their equitable hiring goals and what recruiters can do about it. Hint: it starts with identifying and minimizing potential biases. He joins...

Conventional wisdom tells us to suppress our emotions when making strategic organizational choices. But Quy Huy, Professor of Strategy at INSEAD, thinks that’s a mistake. Tapping into emotions – our own and other people’s – are a fundamental part of competent leadership and bringing people towards a common goal. In this episode of the Delve podcast, Professor Huy sits down with host Saku Mantere t...

From Velcro to the iPod, companies have leveraged creativity to innovate and re-shape entire industries. But what we think of as “creative” only earns accolades up to a certain point. At least, that’s what Mitali Banerjee discovered when she used an algorithm to measure creativity in modern paintings. She’s an assistant professor in strategy and organization at the Desautels Faculty of Management....

Bribery. Corruption. Ethical misconduct. These terms have strong connotations, inspiring images of high-level conspiracy and backroom deals. But bribery can occur at any level of an institution, from front-line workers to powerful executives. And no matter where it occurs, it can erode trust in public institutions, which can have negative downstream effects on the health of a society and populatio...

Why do some organizations continue to flourish despite the harm they cause to their workers, consumers, and surrounding communities? Is there a single person or group within an organization who should be blamed for misconduct, or is misconduct a foundational structure within some institutions? On this episode of the Delve podcast, Sarah Gordon, Desautels Professor of Organizational Behaviour, and...