The Best of This Week

Politics Matter When Managing Mergers

Mergers and acquisitions have picked up in the aftermath of the pandemic. As companies seek partners that can boost their competitive capabilities, it’s important that they ensure compatibility between the two organizational cultures. New research suggests that looking at political leanings among the companies’ employees can provide clues to whether the merger is likely to flourish or fail.

Job Shifts Toward Pay Equity

Changing employers has been linked to larger pay increases for executives and managers. Although survey-based studies suggest that men gain more than women, an analysis of more than 2,000 job moves found that executive women are commanding bigger increases than men when switching employers. In certain contexts, female executives can use these external moves to increase their own compensation and perhaps narrow the gender pay gap overall.

How to Achieve Sustainable Remote Work

If you want to radically change when and where work happens in your organization while still achieving results, you also have to change the very definition of “work” itself, moving it away from surveillance and visible busyness and toward defined outcomes and trust.

Building a Better Data Science Management Process

Organizations should manage data science with an appropriate structure and enterprisewide process. This structure, the data science bridge, drives collaboration, develops human capital, ensures data quality, manages the project portfolio, and ensures the business impact of all data science efforts.

W3C’s Battle Over Web Privacy Is Getting Heated

Over the past year, the W3C — the World Wide Web Consortium, where developers and engineers around the globe collaborate on new technical specifications to ensure that websites work no matter what browser you’re using or where you’re using it — has become a key battleground in the war over web privacy. And it’s getting pretty ugly.

What Else We’re Reading This Week

• The chief data and artificial intelligence officer at Moderna discusses the digital biotech’s platform approach to data science (Source: MIT SMR)
• The anatomy of a ransomware attack has five distinct parts: the hackers, the hack, the negotiation, the payment, and the aftermath (Source: The Washington Post)
• Email-shunning Gen Z may save us all from overwhelming inboxes (Source: The New York Times)
• Remote work has paid dividends in communication and culture practices that can further boost employee experience and productivity (Source: strategy+business)

Quote of the Week:

“Having an understanding of how race shapes norms helps any manager create a more empathetic work environment, one that can lubricate cultural changes towards equity and innovation.”

— Malia Lazu, lecturer in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, in “Why the Critical Race Theory Fight Matters in the Business World”