Advancing Canada's Competitive Advantage – A national forum on management

According to Léonard Aucoin, doctors are not only responsible and accountable towards the patient, but also in a broader sense towards society. Moreover, doctors are now present at all levels of the organization: they take part in the development of the organization’s vision and strategy, in the elaboration of its structure and clinical processes. In sum, their act of sharing medical leadership with managers represents what Mr Aucoin refers to as a ‘new professionalism’. One question remains unanswered: for their part, are medical faculties adequately preparing future doctors for this new role? Watch the video excerpt.

A financial institution owned by the Government of Canada, Export Development Canada (EDC) integrates Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into its role providing financial services to Canadian companies exporting and investing abroad. Given this corporate profile, EDC encounters many CSR issues in meeting its goals and objectives. EDC’s, Jim McArdle and Yolanda Banks described their approach to the social and environmental risks that doing business abroad can pose. This approach strives to meet the high CSR expectations of the public by managing and mitigating the various risks associated with international business, from corruption to environmental impacts. View slideshow.

“Le Dr Welby est mort.” is how Fabrice Brunet put it to participants who were wanting to hear about change and innovation in health care systems and organizations. The Executive director of Hôpital Ste Justine said the workloads of nurses and doctors, patients’ needs and healthcare system issues have all changed so much in the last couple of decades that it’s only logical that the management of hospitals need to also adjust and go through a change that adapts to all the new realities. Watch the video excerpt.

Montreal has become a research powerhouse when it comes to public transit, according to Gilbert Laporte, professor and Canada Research Chair in distribution management at HEC Montréal, and Quebec would be well poised to adopt some of the conclusions that have come out of the research he and his colleagues have done. He brought up several cases of good transit planning, one of them being the Chicago subway system.

Why do we look south when studying entrepreneurs, especially considering our higher immigrant make-up? We need to draw upon our own models, said Benson Honig from McMaster University. He raised the point that new Canadians have often found social mobility by becoming entrepreneurs and that these stories from our own backyards will help in further understanding this evolving sector. Watch the video excerpt.

Henry Mintzberg, the master of the bon mot, put it well at the conference: There are too many leaders and not enough managers. In his session on retrospective and prospective views in management and strategy, the professor at McGill, as well as EMBA-HEC Montréal, said too much emphasis in this country has been focussed on training leaders, when what we really need to learn is how to teach all those managers to better manage. Watch the video excerpt.

“… If you earn $300,000 a year, sitting on the audit committee of a top company, do you have much incentive to blow the whistle on the firm that’s offering you this nice sideline? And did you know that in the U.S. there is no law to stop a nefarious CEO from papering his audit team with his golf buddies? The University of Tennessee’s Joseph Carcello has tales of negligent audit committees, conflict of interest and fraudulent incidents, with studies to back them up”. Read complete post and follow the forum, day by day.