California Management Review

Business schools occupy a peculiar place within the modern university. Unlike medicine, engineering, law, or computer science, the relationship between what business school scholars study and what business professionals actually do has become increasingly indirect. This distinction, once subtle, is now impossible to ignore. As artificial intelligence reshapes managerial work,...

Wars. Pandemics. Trade embargos. Climate shocks. Policy shifts. Each disruption type has its own playbook, yet the same firms consistently survive all of them while others do not. The explanation is structural. Firms whose suppliers produce commodities consumed across many industries simultaneously, what we call commodity breadth, are insulated against disruptions regar...

In March 2023, a lawyer named Steven Schwartz submitted a legal brief in a federal court case containing citations to several relevant precedents. The cases were entirely fabricated. They had been generated by ChatGPT, which Schwartz had used to research the brief, and which had invented plausible-sounding but nonexistent judicial opinions. Schwartz was sanctioned, publicly h...

Maria stared at the summary page of her 360 review. One result stood out: low marks on “leadership presence.” The score was going to be a problem. She was in line for a promotion, and this was the kind of flag that could stall it. But the feedback gave her nothing to work with. What does “presence” mean, exactly? Was it her tone in meetings? Her body language? The way she fra...

Real ESG progress often goes unrecognized for months, weakening executive support for long-term sustainability investment. Drawing on research linking S&P 500 ESG ratings with public sentiment from X/Twitter, this article identifies a “recognition lag”: public acknowledgment of ESG improvements often trails actual performance by one to two quarters. The article explains...