MIT Talks to Costco CEO About Success, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week, including a visit from the Costco CEO at MIT.
How Costco’s Obsession with Culture Drove Success – MIT Sloan Newsroom
Costco CEO James Sinegal, along with renowned Costco butcher Todd Miner, stopped by professor MIT Sloan Zeynep Ton’s “Management of Services: Concepts, Design, and Delivery” class earlier this month to discuss how Costco’s employee-focused culture was “critical to its success.”
In Ton’s 2014 book, “The Good Jobs Strategy,” she analyzed four “operational choices” that she believes Costco’s culture encapsulates—and are responsible for its status as a “wholesale giant.
- Offer less
- Standardize and empower
- Cross-train
- Operate with slack.
Sinegal explained that the key to Costco’s success is a culture that promotes “passion, integrity, ownership, and motivation in his employees and [ensures] that the customer can trust that they are always getting the best deal by shopping with Costco.”
He also highlighted the company’s well-known high-pay for its employees; among the best in the U.S. for retail workers.
“No one was going to be able to say we’re making money off the backs of our employees, because we were going to pay the highest wages in all of retail,” Costco CEO James Sinegal said.
Click here to get more insights from the Costco CEO.
The Evolution of Conflict Resolution – D’Amore-McKim Blog
Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business assistant professor Christoph Riedel recently published new research that offers insights into the social and biological evolution of how humans resolve conflict.
In “Conflict and Convention in Dynamic Networks,” Riedel researched how “dynamic networks allow individuals to resolve conflicts by managing their network connections rather than changing their strategy.”
His team applied computer simulations to common situations like when a single appetizer remains between a host and a guest. Riedel writes:
“Host-guest norms or ‘paradoxical behavior’ account for the vast majority of our simulated final state solutions—in other words, the host gives the guest the last appetizer. The opposite solution where the host takes the appetizer for himself, called ownership norms or ‘bourgeois behavior,’ is quite rare. This is especially interesting in the context of human biological behavior because in the animal kingdom, territoriality or ownership norms are ubiquitous.”
You can read more about Professor Riedel’s research here.
How Companies Can Use the Data They Collect to Further the Public Good – Harvard Business Review
HBS professors Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca published a marketing piece in which they implored companies that collect data to recognize the possibility of “re-purposing their data for the public good,” which can allow companies to “do well by doing good.”
“[There is] broader potential for data from online platforms to improve our understanding of all of America. Just as Yelp can shed light on local economic changes, Zillow could inform our understanding of housing markets, LinkedIn could provide insight about labor markets, and Glassdoor could teach us about the quality of employment options in an area.”
You can check out the full article here.
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
