Publications

August 2000 (Revised July 2002)
Case

Sara's Options

By: Peter Tufano, Brian J. Hall and Joshua Musher

This case describes the pay packages offered to Sara Becker, a graduating MBA student, including detailed information about two stock option packages (one of which is an indexed option package). She gathers the information and attempts to compare those compensation... View Details

Keywords: Stock Options; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Information; Valuation

September 1998 (Revised May 1999)
Case

Strategic Services at Andersen Consulting

By: Thomas J. DeLong, Catherine M. Conneely and Abby J. Hansen PHD

Bill Copacino, Andersen Consulting's managing partner of Strategic Services Americas, needed to submit his recommendation to Peter Fuchs, Strategic Services worldwide director, for the operating plan for Strategic Services Americas for fiscal year 1999. Strategic... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Recruitment; Organizational Culture; Expansion; Business Units; Consulting Industry

October 1998
Background Note

Welfare-to-Work Information and Statistics

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Ellen Pruyne

Summarizes information on the national issue of hiring people from the welfare roles. Organized by topics relevant to business, this note reviews research findings and statistics and poses questions to assist business decision-makers in assessing a company's current or... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Recruitment; Risk Management; Planning; Programs; Research; Welfare

September 1987 (Revised October 1987)
Background Note

The Job of the General Manager

By: James L. Heskett

Describes elements of the job of the general manager that are addressed in the Management Policy and Practice course at the Harvard Business School. These include: 1) establishing strategic direction, 2) setting goals and managing standards of performance, 3)... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Policy; Recruitment; Working Conditions; Managerial Roles; Resource Allocation; Mission and Purpose; Performance Evaluation; Strategy; Value

25 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Chasing Stars: Why the Mighty Red Sox Struck Out

signees crash and burn when it mattered most? It's a case study in the common but misguided business practice of recruiting superstars, says Harvard Business School Professor Boris Groysberg, author of Chasing Stars—The Myth of Talent and... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Sports; Banking

15 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

A Mass Crisis Can Overwhelm Health Care. Liberia Found a Solution.

a situation like the current global pandemic. The case shows that if community health workers could be trained on the front lines, you might have access to capabilities to everything from initial screening to contact tracing on the back end, Trelstad says. “You might... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

05 Feb 2009
What Do You Think?

Why Can’t We Figure Out How to Select Leaders?

need to get the wrong people off the bus, but what about the need to avoid putting the wrong people on the bus in the first place? As Capital One's CEO, Richard Fairbank, put it several years ago, "At most companies, people spend 2 percent of their time View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

December 1992 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Becton Dickinson Division: Marketing Organization

By: Frank V. Cespedes

The marketing director for the largest division of a health care products company is reviewing the structure and staffing of the division's marketing organization. The division has authorization to hire an additional marketing manager. Hence, the immediate case... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Health Care and Treatment; Human Resources; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Managerial Roles; Product Marketing; Measurement and Metrics; Organizational Structure; Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Health Industry

2012
Article

Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of 'Independent' Directors

By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher Malloy

We provide evidence that firms appoint independent directors who are overly sympathetic to management, while still technically independent according to regulatory definitions. We explore a subset of independent directors for whom we have detailed, micro-level data on... View Details

Keywords: Recruitment; Management; Corporate Governance; Performance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Prejudice and Bias

Read Now

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

Looking for CEOs in All the Wrong Places

"Three-Party Exchanges: The Case of Executive Search Firms and the CEO Search," he describes how the function of search firms in CEO recruiting differs from the role they perform when recruiting... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs; Employment

August 2023
Article

Formal Employment and Organized Crime: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Colombia

By: Gaurav Khanna, Carlos Medina, Anant Nyshadham, Jorge Tamayo and Nicolas Torres

Safety net programs, common in settings with high informality like Latin America, often use a means test to establish eligibility. We ask: in settings in which organised crime provides lucrative opportunities in the informal market, will discouraging formal employment... View Details

Keywords: Gangs; Informality; Crime and Corruption; Job Search; Recruitment; Colombia

29 Apr 2013
Research & Ideas

Diagnosing the ‘Flutie Effect’ on College Marketing

rises from mediocre to great on the gridiron, applications increase by 17.7 percent. To attain similar effects, a school has to either lower tuition by 3.8 percent or increase the quality of its education by recruiting higher-quality... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Education; Advertising; Sports

May–June 2023
Article

The High Cost of Neglecting Low-Wage Workers: Six Mistakes That Companies Make—and How They Can Do Better

By: Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman

Many companies blame outside factors for the trouble they’ve been having in finding and retaining frontline workers: the pandemic, the government’s stimulus checks, the intrinsic nature of low-wage work. The authors argue that in fact the real problem lies in six big... View Details

Keywords: Retention; Recruitment; Human Capital; Personal Development and Career; Compensation and Benefits; Performance Productivity

Register to Read

September 1985
Background Note

Finding a Job with a Small Company

By: Howard H. Stevenson

Describes a process of self-evaluation for working in small companies, discusses small company issues, focuses on some basic search techniques, and ends with a little how-to section. The goal is to facilitate the process of securing a job in a small company and to show... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Higher Education; Recruitment; Work-Life Balance; Interests

29 May 2001
Research & Ideas

Race Does Matter in Mentoring

By the end of his early career, Williams had won additional supporters within the company, including Barrett's boss and several white peers who, when they were promoted to management before Williams, vouched for him with their colleagues and View Details

Keywords: by David A. Thomas

April 2017
Case

The Future of Patent Examination at the USPTO

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Sarah Mehta

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the federal government agency responsible for evaluating and granting patents and trademarks. In 2015, the USPTO employed approximately 8,000 patent examiners who granted nearly 300,000 patents to inventors. As of April... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Telework; Collaborating With Unions; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Trademarks; Knowledge Sharing; Technology Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; District of Columbia

November 2015 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Cisco Systems: In Search of the Next CEO

By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott, Olivia Hull and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

It’s August 2014 and John Chambers is expected to announce his retirement after 17 years as CEO of global technology giant Cisco Systems. Under Chambers’s leadership, Cisco has grown from $2.2 billion in annual revenues and under 4,000 employees to revenues of $46... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Succession Planning; CEO Succession; Managing Change; Person-organization Fit; Management Succession; Transition; Talent and Talent Management; Change Management; Retirement; Innovation Leadership; Recruitment; Corporate Governance; Experience and Expertise; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; San Jose; California

November 2008
Article

Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets

By: Douglas A. Ready, Linda A. Hill and Jay A. Conger

"This war for talent is like nothing we've ever seen before," write the authors, who have spent decades studying talent management and leadership development. Recently they interviewed executives at more than 20 global companies to identify strategies for attracting... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Selection and Staffing; Talent and Talent Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Organizational Culture; Recruitment; Diversity; Developing Countries and Economies