Publications

05 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

on middle management During the 1980s and 1990s, middle managers became prime targets of large-scale downsizing at the behest of shareholder activists—yet the ranks of middle managers never really declined. Zhang’s data helps explain why. Managers made up 13 percent of... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

November–December 2018
Article

Slack Time and Innovation

By: Ajay Agrawal, Christian Catalini, Avi Goldfarb and Hong Luo

Traditional innovation models assume that new ideas are developed up to the point where the benefit of the marginal project is just equal to the cost. Because labor is a key input to innovation when the opportunity cost of time is lower, such as during school breaks or... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Slack Time; Innovation and Invention; Labor; Projects; Complexity; Value

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26 Nov 2007
Research & Ideas

Best Practices of Global Innovators

firm to master all these skills, let alone house them under one roof. Second, a pool of low-cost yet highly skilled labor has emerged in developing countries, creating incentives to substitute these for higher-cost equivalents. Indeed,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

October 2023
Case

Social Finance: Driving Accountability

By: Robin Greenwood, Richard S. Ruback and Robert Ialenti

Social Finance is a Boston-based nonprofit that works at the intersection of finance and policy. It raises, allocates, and manages capital to fund projects in the areas of education, early childhood development, criminal justice, and health. The case explores how... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Nonprofit Organizations; Training

2022
Working Paper

Failing Just Fine: Assessing Careers of Venture Capital-backed Entrepreneurs via a Non-wage Measure

By: Natee Amornsiripanitch, Paul Gompers, George Hu, Will Levinson and Vladimir Mukharlyamov

This paper proposes a non-pecuniary measure of career achievement, Seniority. Based on a database of over 5 million resumes, this metric exploits the variation in job titles and how long they take to attain. When non-monetary factors influence career choice, inference... View Details

Keywords: Career Outcomes; Founders; Personal Development and Career; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship

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September 2012
Article

The Relationship Between Economic Preferences and Psychological Personality Measures

By: Anke Becker, Thomas Deckers, Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk and Fabian Kosse

Although both economists and psychologists seek to identify determinants of heterogeneity in behavior, they use different concepts to capture them. In this review, we first analyze the extent to which economic preferences and psychological concepts of personality, such... View Details

Keywords: Risk Preference; Time Preference; Social Preferences; Locus Of Control; Big Five; Economics; Behavior; Personal Characteristics

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October 2002 (Revised November 2002)
Case

Welfare State and its Impact on Business Competitiveness, The: Sweden Inc. for Sale?

By: Huw Pill, Petter Johnsson, Ola Nordquist and Ingrid Vogel

The Swedish Model--sometimes presented as a third way between savage capitalism and unrealistic socialism--was much lauded in the 1960s. It was viewed as a strategy that addressed social concerns while supporting economic growth. However, the financial and currency... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Welfare; Government and Politics; Taxation; Competition; Public Administration Industry; Sweden

19 Apr 2019
HBS Seminar

Nicholas Short, Harvard University

2021
Working Paper

Accounting for Organizational Employment Impact

By: David Freiberg, Katie Panella, George Serafeim and T. Robert Zochowski

Organizations create significant positive and negative impacts through their employment practices. This paper builds on the substantial body of research regarding job quality and impact measurement to present a framework for monetized analysis of employment impact. We... View Details

Keywords: Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Employment Impact; Employment; Jobs and Positions; Quality; Measurement and Metrics; Analysis; Framework

SSRN

17 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees

labor market, and a workforce whose trust has been shaken by the pandemic. “People are quitting, and companies are noticing that it’s harder to get people to join the company and hold on to them, so they’re going back to the drawing... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

November 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

BrightStar Care: The Evolution of a Leadership Team

By: Boris Groysberg, Colleen Ammerman and John D. Vaughan

BrightStar Care was a rapidly growing franchise of home health care agencies. Founded by husband and wife team JD and Shelly Sun as a single agency near Chicago in 2002, BrightStar had opened nearly 300 franchises across the United States by 2016, generating over $300... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Services; Entrepreneurs; Board Of Directors; Boards Of Directors; Health Care Industry; Growth Strategy; Organizational Change; Brand Positioning; Entrepreneurial Organizations; Entrepreneurial Management; Franchising; Family-owned Business; Home Health Care; Managing Growth; Management Styles; Organizational Development; Talent Management; Women Executives; Women And Leadership; Business Startups; Family Business; Small Business; Talent and Talent Management; Governing and Advisory Boards; Health Care and Treatment; Human Capital; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Skills; Management Style; Management Succession; Management Systems; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Strategy

January 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

AT&T Managing Technological Change and the Future of Telephone Operators in the 20th Century

By: Daniel P. Gross and William R. Kerr

By the 1930s, AT&T dominated the American phone industry, serving 10 million telephones and employing over 100,000 switchboard operators. But beginning in the mid-1910s, the company began changing from manually operated switchboards to mechanical switching systems that... View Details

Keywords: AT＆T; Bell Telephone; Phone Lines; Phone Operators; Mechanical Switching; Layoffs; Technological Change; Transition; History; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Disruption; Change Management; Communications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

2015
Working Paper

Crowdsourced Digital Goods and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Open Source Software

By: Frank Nagle

As firms increasingly rely on crowdsourced digital goods, understanding their impact on productivity becomes critical. This study measures the firm-level productivity impact of one such good, non-pecuniary (free) open source software (OSS). The results show a... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Performance Productivity; Software

SSRN

June 2002 (Revised June 2014)
Case

The Netherlands: Is the Polder Model Sinking?

By: Huw Pill, Marie-Laure Y Goepfer, Mathijs Robbens and Ingrid Vogel

The Netherlands suffered economic crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite (or perhaps because of) its access to North Sea gas. In response to mounting inflation and unemployment, a tripartite agreement between employers, unions, and government was reached in... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Labor Unions; Netherlands

03 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Layoffs Can Be Bad Business: 5 Strategies to Consider Before Cutting Staff

legal obligations Globalization has opened new opportunities and markets for businesses, but it has also brought new complexities. Countries have different legal requirements for layoffs in areas such as required severance pay, advance notice to employees, and engaging... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Telecommunications; Technology; Financial Services; Manufacturing

June 2023
Article

The Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information

By: Zoë Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

The limited diffusion of salary information has implications for labor markets, such as wage discrimination policies and collective bargaining. Access to salary information is believed to be limited and unequal, but there is little direct evidence on the sources of... View Details

Keywords: Search Costs; Privacy; Norms; Compensation; Financial Industry; Field Experiment; Knowledge Dissemination; Equality and Inequality; Gender; Compensation and Benefits; Societal Protocols

2017
Working Paper

Innovation, Reallocation and Growth

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, Nicholas Bloom and William R. Kerr

We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth, and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the... View Details

Keywords: Entry; Growth; Industrial Policy; Innovation; R＆D; Reallocation; Selection; Business Ventures; Resource Allocation; Performance Productivity; Policy; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development; United States

July 2004 (Revised December 2004)
Case

Timberland: Commerce and Justice

By: James E. Austin, Herman B. Leonard and James Quinn

When Jeffrey Swartz became the third generation in his family to lead the Timberland Co., he pursued a strategy in which commerce and justice were "inextricably linked." Community involvement, environmental management, and global labor standards became not addenda to... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Innovation and Invention; Leadership Development; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Programs; Opportunities; Alignment; Business Strategy; Value