Meaningful Work - Publications - Faculty & Research

27 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

What Happens When Ordinary People Get Creative?

team found that a sense of making progress on meaningful work was the single most important factor in igniting creativity, satisfaction, and productivity among employees–far more than factors like monetary... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Value Judgments: Business Ethics Across Borders

plants. After much debate around the choice of technology," she continues, "the company reexamined its concerns about the environment and realized they originated in a broader commitment to social responsibility. Managers then began View Details

Keywords: by Judith A. Ross

27 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Gen AI Marketing: How Some 'Gibberish' Code Can Give Products an Edge

machines that included information about the product’s name, price, description, and consumer ranking. Two of the 10 products included in their product information pages a strategic text string, a sequence of letters and numbers produced by machine-learning techniques... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology

05 Jun 2013
Op-Ed

Corporate Leaders Need to Step Up on Climate Change

Green initiatives are ubiquitous these days, implemented with zeal at companies like Dupont, IBM, Walmart, and Walt Disney. The programs being rolled out—lighting retrofits, zero-waste factories, and carpool incentives—save money and provide a green glow. Most large... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Toffel & Auden Schendler

11 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

How Do You Grade Out as a Negotiator?

drop. It's all fine to read books and take courses, but we have this rich negotiation experience, and if we could tap it and analyze it in a meaningful way, it could lead to more improvement." With that in mind, Wheeler conceived of a new... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

18 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Getting It Done: Improving Nonprofit Performance

easier to achieve in a for-profit organization than in a comparable nonprofit," he writes in a recent working paper, "Philanthropic Social Capital Markets and Performance-Driven Philanthropy," and the most important reason is capital. "It... View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

Stop Thinking of Climate Change as a Religious or Political Issue

exactly how fast we are changing the climate. We do know that we are treating the atmosphere as though it were free. This used to be a reasonable way to behave: our numbers were small enough, and our technologies sufficiently primitive, that we could have no View Details

Keywords: by Forest Reinhardt; Energy; Utilities

23 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Brand Power from Wedgwood to Dell: Part Two

entrepreneurs, says HBS professor Nancy F. Koehn. In Part One of a discussion about her recent book—in the April 16 issue of HBS Working Knowledge—Koehn described the brand-building savvy of three entrepreneurs in the past, as well as... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

The Climate Needs Aggressive CEO Leadership

Corporations are facing great uncertainty. For the world to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the United States eventually will have to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, as has been done by Europe, parts of Canada, and California. To plan for the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Toffel & Auden Schendler; Energy; Utilities

26 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

A Clear Eye for Innovation

preparing for the innovations that will define the future. This mental balancing act can be one of the toughest of all managerial challenges—it requires executives to explore new opportunities even as they work diligently to exploit... View Details

Keywords: by Charles A. O'Reilly III & Michael L. Tushman

03 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 3, 2018

Chiroleu-Assouline, Patricia Crifo, Rodolphe Durand, Jean-Pascal Gond, Andrew King, Michael Lenox, Michael W. Toffel, David Vogel, and Frank Wijen Abstract—Corporate sustainability has gone mainstream, and many companies have taken View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

23 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

How to Break the Expert’s Curse

challenges, and meaningful interactions with colleagues. Two months after the internships ended, the participants received a follow-up questionnaire about their summer experiences. Half of them also received copies of their summer... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

17 Sep 2024
Research & Ideas

Advice for the New CEO: Talk to Your Employees Early and Often

bottom,” she says. Middle managers may fill a critical gap here—especially since the study suggests that they are the ones who often reignite communication after the initial decline. Invest in meaningful ways for employees to... View Details

Keywords: by Ami Albernaz

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Women Entrepreneurs Use Springboard for Funding

Policy Officer A. G. Breitenstein. PrivaSource integrates and "scrubs" healthcare data for pharma, biotech, and healthcare companies so that it is meaningful to them scientifically. At the same time individual patients are... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

06 Mar 2018
First Look

First Look at Research and Ideas, March 6, 2018

prepackaged or processed foods, and providing meaningful work for front-line food services employees. To instill employees with a sense of ownership, JOE & THE JUICE had developed a transparent promotion... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

16 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Confronting the Reality of Web Services

communication exchanges, are not going to happen unless managers better integrate common standards. McAfee studied IBM's B2B midrange ordering system and interviewed key players to find out what worked and what didn't. Using his case... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant

02 Apr 2013
First Look

First Look: April 2

recent work in regional political economy of contemporary China. In keeping with a movement in comparative politics toward analyzing subnational politics, the "new regionalists" seek to identify and explain View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

09 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

The Entrepreneurs Who Invented Economic Forecasting

was simply too vast to be controlled in any meaningful way. Others thought differently—including Mitchell and Herbert Hoover. Hoover, who was Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1928 (when he began his successful campaign to become... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

13 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Improving Public Health for the Poor

low cost or a business providing goods or services that end or reduce respiratory ailments. Bringing together public healthcare and market forces "could have huge impact," says Chu. That feeling was underscored by Chu's own extensive experience in... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

07 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

The Case for Combating Climate Change with Nuclear Power and Fracking

If you ask any given environmentalist to identify the biggest threat to the planet, you may expect to hear about man-made climate change, consumerism, or overpopulation. But if you ask Harvard Business School's Joseph B. Lassiter, he'll toss in another: single-issue... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities

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