Modern management emphasizes empowerment, flexibility, collaboration, and innovation. But what should we call it? While there are a number of labels thrown around for modern management, none have stuck as much as “command-control” (used to describe traditional management practices). In this Advisor, Cutter Fellow Emeritus Jim Highsmith offers a new label for today’s emerging management practices: agile-adaptive leadership.

To achieve a circular economy, companies must first develop a comprehensive view of emissions data across their extended supply chain. Developing such a baseline at the supplier and category level is essential to identifying the greatest opportunities and developing an effective action plan.

Blockchain, a complex technology, and sustainability, an abstract concept, have two things in common: they are (1) fairly comprehensive, and (2) vaguely defined. To understand how the former can impact the latter, core terms and existing trade-offs must be properly explained, and all positive or negative blockchain sustainability implications must be carefully evaluated.

People made decisions for many millennia without the benefit of IT, and it’s not self-evident that we make our really big decisions in the computer age consistently better than before. Smaller decisions in relatively information-rich situations are another matter. As this Advisor explores, IT has been and will continue to be important to decision makers in critical ways.

Modern large language models (LLMs) require huge amounts of computing power to churn through huge amounts of data. In this Advisor, we analyze the carbon footprint of these LLMs and its impact on the environment.

In a recent survey, we asked organizations about the primary challenges hindering them from carrying out their GenAI plans. This Advisor explores some of their major concerns.

In this Advisor, Sara Cook of the Wildlife Habitat Council offers imperatives for aligning corporate ambitions with place-based action that is both stakeholder-informed and fully resourced.

How do organizations create business adaptability? How can CIOs guide their CEOs and other business leaders to build truly adaptable organizations? We asked a group of CIOs these questions; this Advisor shares their responses.

To demonstrate the degree to which digital twins are becoming a powerful tool, this Advisor examines a digital twin framework that was used to create, adjust, and deploy a digital twin of a NATO member’s naval ship. The tool can be used for training, engineering, and operational activities.

The US Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action has prompted concern among DEI leaders. In this Advisor, I address several of these issues and offer some thoughts based on my experience leading DEI transformation efforts.

Proactive measurement and management of consumer product impacts can minimize the risks of running afoul of social expectations and enable analysis and decision-making alongside financial metrics by translating those impacts into units of currency we call “monetary impact accounts.” This Advisor takes a closer look at this new way of capturing a more complete view of corporate ESG activities.

Make no bones about it, data privacy/security and the ethical/responsible use of generative AI (GAI) are hot-button issues. But to what extent are enterprises actually taking steps to address these concerns as they rapidly adopt GAI? In a recent Cutter survey, we asked organizations this key question.

As a woman of color, it is important that when I consider employment with your organization, I see representations of myself in roles across the spectrum — including at the senior level. I’m not suggesting that job qualifications are irrelevant, of course, but I’m asking you to adjust your lens to look past gender and color for talent. Better still, look at women of color and recognize that your organization is in need of their talent.

How a company handles environmental concerns — or crises — is central to what it stands for, and it’s becoming increasingly divisive. Not surprisingly, it seems every major country is focused on how environmental information should be disclosed to stakeholders, with a focus on climate-related information. For many years, companies have been presented with a patchwork of conflicting rules and requirements, making it hard to compare them, even within an industry. Executives and boards have been calling for the multiple prevailing standard-setters to not only consolidate but to do so on a global scale. This Advisor examines the landscape of climate-related information disclosure.

During the next decade, the healthcare industry will undergo a profound transformation as many important technologies, including AI, reach mainstream adoption. Clinical workflow will become more agile by virtue of AI and advanced analytics that automate decision-making processes. The emergence of these technologies requires a transformation from mere digital health to data-driven healthcare given the fundamental role of data in automated decision-making.

In this Advisor, Avenga CEO Yuriy Adamchuk delves into repercussions from an actual, ongoing war — in Ukraine. Avenga has 11 offices and 1,300 professionals in the country, and, knowing the risks of an attack (based on the 2014 invasion and subsequent expert predictions of escalation), the company developed its Service Endurance Plan.

Last year, we conducted six focus groups, each containing seven participants and a moderator, to discuss topics related to just business behavior by the largest public corporations in America. Participants said that honest, transparent disclosures affect how positively or negatively consumers and shareholders value the company. This Advisor takes a closer look at the issue of corporate transparency.

This Advisor explores three strategies tech companies can employ to avoid being damaged in the current atmosphere of treacherous geopolitics: lobbying, bandwagoning, and corporate de-risking. While some policymakers and pundits may view these strategies as violating the ideals of economic efficiency, new geopolitical realities dictate more corporate flexibility in pursuing healthy bottom lines.

A leader’s decision to leave a foreign country requires complex financial, operational, and ethical considerations. First, the financial analysis of the operation under scrutiny must be adjusted to account for losses incurred elsewhere in the global organization. This Advisor takes a closer look at this initial step in an exit strategy decision tree.

Scope 3 sources (GHGs produced by external suppliers and customer activities) represent the largest opportunity to lower emissions, making up at least 70% of overall emissions for most industries. As such, companies that are serious about minimizing their carbon footprint must focus strongly on Scope 3.

This Advisor examines results from a recent Cutter Consortium survey on enterprise adoption of generative artificial intelligence. Based on our survey findings, approximately one-third of organizations currently indicate they plan to integrate large language models into their own applications, while nearly half are taking a wait-and-see approach.

How can technology leaders accelerate the delivery of business value from the cloud? What inhibits cloud adoption and cloud projects? Myles Suer recently posed these questions to a group of CIOs; this Advisor shares the insights gleaned from that conversation.

The aviation industry is committed to achieving decarbonization by continuing energy-efficiency efforts and introducing sustainable fuels and new types of aircraft. As we explore in this Advisor, this decarbonization will require steady, transformational growth.

This Advisor explores how a data science team at Sanofi began an initiative to move toward prescriptive analytics. It sought to increase timely process monitor­ing and diagnosis and to move from a reactive to a proactive mode of operation that would enhance data analytics capabilities and increase efficiencies.

This Advisor presents three rules that can help business leaders manage digital era risk: (1) question analytics, (2) don’t excuse technological glitches, and (3) promote business acumen, not digital transformation.