Publications

Educators

October 2022
Article

A Structural Model of Organizational Buying for Business-to-Business Markets: Innovation Adoption with Share-of-Wallet Contracts

By: Navid Mojir and K. Sudhir

The paper develops the ﬁrst structural model of organizational buying to study innovation diﬀusion in a B2B market. Our model is particularly applicable for routinized exchange relationships, whereby centralized buyers periodically evaluate and choose contracts,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Buying Behavior; Healthcare Marketing; B2B Markets; B2B Innovation; New Product Diffusion; New Product Adoption; Organizations; Acquisition; Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Marketing; Innovation and Invention

2008
Chapter

Knowledge Work, Craft Work, and Calling

Social critics have often complained that industrial revolution management transfers control of a job away from workers, encourages human exploitation in pursuit of cost minimization, and alienates workers from their labor. But the arrangements of work that have been... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Working Conditions; Production; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Management Practices and Processes; Employees

March–April 2012
Article

The Genesis and Dynamics of Organizational Networks

By: Gautam Ahuja, Guiseppe Soda and Akbar Zaheer

An extensive body of knowledge exists on network outcomes and on how network structures may contribute to the creation of outcomes at different levels of analysis, but less attention has been paid to understanding how and why organizational networks emerge, evolve, and... View Details

Keywords: Economic Sociology; Economics And Organization; Social Networks; Organization And Management Theory; Interorganizatonal Relationships; Networks; Strategy; Change

22 Oct 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Variation in Experience and Team Familiarity: Addressing the Knowledge Acquisition-Application Problem

Keywords: by Robert S. Huckman & Bradley R. Staats; Video Game; Web Services

August 2011
Supplement

Interview with Raj Datta, Former Chief Knowledge Officer of MindTree

By: David A. Garvin

MindTree is a mid-sized Indian IT services company known for its knowledge management practices, its collborative communities, and its strong culture and values. The CEO has a set a goal of becoming a $1 billion company by 2014; to reach that goal, employees must... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Social and Collaborative Networks; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Culture; Learning; Values and Beliefs; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry; India

07 Oct 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Specific Knowledge and Divisional Performance Measurement

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling

Awards

Academy of Management. Organizational Behavior Division. Outstanding Practical Implications Paper

Won the 2009 Outstanding Practical Implications for Management Paper from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management for “Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams’ Knowledge Use and Performance” (Best Paper Proceedings of... View Details

September 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

Transferring Knowledge Between Projects at NASA JPL (A)

By: Dorothy Leonard and Christopher Myers

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research institution within NASA, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has played a large role in many space and planetary explorations, particularly to the planet Mars. As a project-based... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Employees; Experience and Expertise; Aerospace Industry; United States

Educators

Web

Organizational Behavior - Faculty & Research

Information featured in The New Yorker Kodak's Old-School Response to Disruption By: Ryan Raffaelli More Information HBS Working Knowledge CEOs and Coaches How Important is Organizational 'Fit'? By: Boris... View Details

June 2008
Article

Decomposability in Knowledge Structures and Its Impact on the Usefulness of Inventions and Knowledge-base Malleability

By: Sai Yayavaram and Gautam Ahuja

We use patent data from the worldwide semiconductor industry from 1984 to 1994 to study the effect of the structure of organizational knowledge bases, or the patterns of coupling between their elements of technical knowledge, on the usefulness of inventions and... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Semiconductor Industry

Web

HBS Working Knowledge – Harvard Business School Faculty Research

What Wartime Service Taught These Historic Leaders What Wartime Service Taught These Historic Leaders What can corporate leaders learn from executives who served their country during wartime conflicts? Drawing on a series of case studies, Robert Simons View Details

01 Aug 2022
What Do You Think?

Does Religious Belief Affect Organizational Performance?

predominant religious or political beliefs on performance, will it influence who we hire, how we lead and manage, and how well we perform? Does religious belief affect organizational performance? Does it matter? What do you think? View Details

Keywords: Re: James L. Heskett

December 2002
Article

Something Old, Something New: A Longitudinal Study of Search Behavior and New Product Introduction

By: Riitta Katila and Gautam Ahuja

We examine how firms search, or solve problems, to create new products. According to organizational learning research, firms position themselves in a unidimensional search space that spans a spectrum from local to distant search. Our findings in the global robotics... View Details

Keywords: Problem Solving; New Products; Organizational Learning; Uncertainty; Organizational Research; Knowledge Management; Robotics; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Effectiveness; Innovation Adoption; Strategy; Product Design; Business Processes; Product Development

2012
Book

Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of learning challenges today's companies face. I show that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups within those... View Details

Keywords: Change; Interpersonal Communication; Learning; Values and Beliefs; Innovation and Invention; Management; Performance Improvement; Groups and Teams; Research; Strategy; Complexity; Value

23 Nov 2021
Book

What It Takes to Build an Organizational Culture That Wins

hope for is “transient competitive advantage.” It’s a world in which, among other things, smaller, faster, more agile organizational entities marshal resources rather than own them and management-by-consensus is replaced by management... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

2024
Working Paper

The Effect of a System for Sharing Best Practices Within Pre-existing Peer Networks

By: Shelley Xin Li and Tatiana Sandino

Peer networks, such as enterprise social networks (ESNs), can facilitate knowledge transfer across employees. However, such systems can also lead to information overload or difficulty in finding useful information. We examine data from a natural field experiment where... View Details

Keywords: Social and Collaborative Networks; Communication Technology; Knowledge Sharing; Sales

Read Now

2009
Article

Expertise Utilization in Accounting & Consulting Teams: The Effects of Shared Representations

By: Heidi K. Gardner

Why are some teams more effective than others in using their members' knowledge? This paper identifies shared representations as a critical moderator of effective knowledge utilization in teams, revealing how and when teams appropriately draw on their members'... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Groups and Teams; Performance Effectiveness