Article Co-authored by Rotman School Professor Named as a Finalist for the 2019 HBR McKinsey Award.

Toronto – An article co-authored by Tiziana Casciaro, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management was recognized today as a finalist for the 2019 HBR McKinsey Award, which honors the best Harvard Business Review article of the year. 

“Cross-Silo Leadership” by Prof. Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School, and Sujin Jang of INSEAD was published in the May-June 2019 issue of the magazine. The authors observe that realizing the most promising innovation and business opportunities requires that companies break down silos and get people working together across boundaries. But this is a challenge for many leaders, because employees tend to focus on vertical relationships and formal restructuring is costly, confusing, and slow. The proposed solution lies in four mutually reinforcing activities that foster horizontal collaboration: (1) developing cultural brokers or employees who excel at connecting across divides; (2) encouraging people to ask questions in an open-ended, unbiased way that genuinely explores others’ thinking; (3) getting people to actively take other points of view; and (4) broadening employees’ vision to include more-distant networks. Promoting these activities helps employees to learn from and relate to people who think very differently from them. And when that happens, interface collaboration becomes second nature.

Tiziana Casciaro is a professor of organizational behaviour and is the Jim Fisher Professor in Leadership Development. Her research explores how structural and psychological forces jointly shape behavior in organizations. Her award-winning research on organizational networks, power dynamics, change implementation, and professional networking is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, and Harvard Business Review, and featured in The Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, Fortune and TIME. In 2018, Thinkers50 recognized Tiziana as one of the thirty thinkers most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.

Since 1959, the HBR McKinsey Awards have recognized practical and groundbreaking management thinking determining the best articles published each year in Harvard Business Review. Past winners include former Rotman School Dean Roger Martin, Clayton M. Christensen, Peter Drucker, Daniel Goleman, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, John Kotter, Mark R. Kramer, Michael E. Porter, and former Rotman School Adjunct Professor George Stalk. The winner of the 2019 award is Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School for his article, “The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures.”

The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca. 

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For more information:

Ken McGuffin

Manager, Media Relations

Rotman School of Management

University of Toronto

Voice 416.946.3818

E-mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca