Hierarchy - Publications - Faculty & Research

01 Sep 2012
News

Hierarchy's Last Stand

It’s a puzzle that some people still seek high status for its own sake. Leadership, wealth, and well-being have increasingly little to do with hierarchy, and the perks of power aren’t what they used to be. Hierarchy hasn’t disappeared,... View Details

Keywords: Rosabeth Moss Kanter; Corporate Services

30 Jun 2009
First Look

First Look: June 30

provides insight into how the broader management of experience accumulation affects team performance. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-145.pdf Measuring and Understanding Hierarchy as an Architectural Element in... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Dec 2016
News

Takeaways

leads to action that produces needed results.” —Professor emeritus John Kotter (DBA 1972), That’s Not How We Do It Here!, a book written in fable form “It is now possible to build a new sort of firm that promotes open communication across the corporate View Details

02 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 2

working paper shows that the costs faced by multinational corporations in managing governments and political risk grew sharply. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-003.pdf The Architecture of Transaction Networks: A Comparative Analysis of View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Dec 2009
News

The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle

self-confidence, sophisticated analytical skills, and the ability to make decisions quickly. And unlike the top-down hierarchy found in the U.S. military, the IDF is a ground-up organization where local commanders are responsible for... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne; National Security and International Affairs; Government

21 May 2018
HBS Case

How Would You Price One of the World's Great Watches?

follow a general roadmap. The product needs to fit into a company's price hierarchy and also the rough price hierarchy of competitors and the market in general. And in the watch's case, the fact that it was... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Fashion

16 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Peeling Back the Global Brand

served no purpose at all beyond cosmetic appeal. Yet, silly as it seemed, the effect was real in terms of consumer preferences, he said. We talked about brand more and more as a hierarchy of persuasive elements.— Hans-Willi Schroiff... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; Retail

23 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

The Gulf: It’s a Family Affair

A: Make sure that the family is open to really including the non-family managers in important management decisions. Quite often in the family they get together on Sunday afternoon for dinner and make important decisions and the non-family managers aren't around. There... View Details

Keywords: by Wendy Guild & Andrea Schulman

26 Jun 2000
Research & Ideas

A New Ecosystem for Business and Society

dominant form of organization has been of a hierarchy. Now and in the future, Clark said, many more people in the organization will be responsible for taking action and initiating strategic activities. As the old hierarchy is beginning to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Profile

Matthew Boys

eBay, he “crunched data about site users” for about nine months, then transferred to Skype as a business analyst. “It was a fun company to work for,” says Matt. “We had a flat hierarchy – you could talk to anyone in the company. We had... View Details

29 May 2014
Research & Ideas

Research Symposium 2014

across several measures, including professional status (the hierarchy of each team), psychological safety (the extent to which team members felt comfortable speaking up about work-related issues), and leader inclusiveness (the extent to... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Accounting; Health

14 May 2001
Research & Ideas

Are You Managing To a ‘T’? Time To Break With Tradition

management. It relies on a new kind of executive, one who breaks out of the traditional corporate hierarchy to share knowledge freely across the organization (the horizontal part of the "T") while remaining fiercely committed to... View Details

Keywords: by Morten T. Hansen & Bolko Von Oetinger

02 Oct 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Leadership an Increasingly Difficult Balancing Act?

been unable to keep pace in no small part due to the reliance on hierarchy and the dominant position given very highly compensated CEOs." Jackie Le Fevre put it this way: "Short answer to the question—increasingly difficult... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making

hierarchy are associated with a decentralization of the decision-making process," Sadun says. "On the other hand, we have the communication technologies, which actually do exactly the opposite." It's Different Roles... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

09 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 9

Hierarchies Authors:Maria Guadalupe and Julie Wulf Publication:American Economic Journals: Applied Economics (forthcoming) Abstract This paper establishes a causal effect of product market competition on various characteristics of... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Sep 2009
News

Letters to the Editor

met and conversed with Ted and told him that I had been conducting business with Russia and countries of the Soviet bloc. He was keen to hear about my thirty years of experience in dealing with the Soviets and intrigued to hear my opinion that the lowest link of the... View Details

16 Jul 2018
Blog Post

3 Key Take-a-Ways From My Summer at Zalando

the workforce are women) they know that it’s not enough. Zalando wants to maximize diversity across all levels of the organization’s hierarchy and in all business functions. Supported by the highest levels of the organization, a diversity... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

09 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Incentives and Operational Excellence

important reason, but by no means the only one, he added. Others include communication problems, a lack of hierarchy for resolving issues—think of Ford and Firestone, and the finger-pointing on both sides—and the potential for data... View Details