Business Goals - Publications - Faculty & Research

February 2004 (Revised April 2004)
Exercise

Family Business Ownership Goals Worksheet

By: John A. Davis

Family members who either own a business or who could inherit ownership in a business are helped to clarify how they would like to have the business owned in the future. View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Family Ownership; Decision Making

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24 Apr 2014
News

Balancing business goals and social benefits

Ravi Venkatesan (MBA 1992), former chairman of Microsoft India, talks about the social and business benefits of teaching more than 3 million children to use computers. (Published April 2014) View Details

November 2016 (Revised December 2016)
Module Note

Strategy Execution Module 12: Aligning Performance Goals and Incentives

By: Robert Simons

This module reading explains how managers use performance goals and incentives to ensure that employee actions align with the overall business strategy of the organization. The module begins by discussing how managers use goals to communicate business strategy, the... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Performance Goals; Performance Measures; Incentives; Benchmarks; Motivation; Compensation; Bonuses; Strategy

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01 Apr 2012
News

Aligning the Goals of Development and Business

02 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

When Goal Setting Goes Bad

It's the rare manager who doesn't partake in quarterly or annual goal-setting exercises. And woe to those who don't make their goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely). But do these View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Other Article

Sustainable Strategies and Net-Zero Goals

By: Mark L. Frigo, Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Kaplan and Ramanna describe a rigorous approach, the E-liability method, for companies’ ESG reporting, especially as it pertains to GHG emissions measurements. They argue that the current standards for measuring... View Details

Keywords: Measurement; Sustainability; Net-zero Emissions; Environmental Sustainability; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Measurement and Metrics; Strategy

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2009
Chapter

On the Goals of Successful Family Companies

By: John A. Davis and Renato Tagiuri

Providing clear goals for a company and communicating them are among the most powerful means for guiding the behavior of the people in an organization. In this article, we explore the range of objectives or goals of family-owned and -managed companies and identify... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Interpersonal Communication; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership

Citation

15 Nov 2010
News

Connecting Goals and Go-To-Market Initiatives

15 Nov 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Connecting Goals and Go-To-Market Initiatives

from a global recession and financial shock, it would be naive to assume a return to business as usual. All companies need to reexamine the fundamental links between their espoused strategic goals and the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

July 9, 2019
Article

Setting Better Sales Goals with Analytics

By: Doug J. Chung, Isabel Huber, Vinay Murthy, Varun Sunku and Marije Weber

Sales compensation is a critical lever in motivating a salesforce and driving growth in the business-to-business sector: Studies show that revising compensation in line with market trends can have a 50% greater impact on sales than advertisements have, for instance. A... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives

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05 Mar 2021
Blog Post

Intensive Bootcamp Kicked my Entrepreneurship Goals Into Gear

When I started at HBS in the fall of 2020, I had one goal in mind: to challenge myself. I previously worked in communications at Cloudflare, a security, performance and reliability company founded in 2009 by two HBS alumni. Cloudflare had... View Details

20 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

How CEOs Sustain Higher-Ambition Goals

At a recent Harvard Business School conference, dozens of CEOs committed to the idea of working toward "higher-ambition" goals that go beyond just short-term shareholder value. Inspired by the book Higher... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

20 May 2009
Working Paper Summaries

On Good Scholarship, Goal Setting, and Scholars Gone Wild

Keywords: by Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky & Max H. Bazerman

January 4, 2019
Article

How Companies Can Balance Social Impact and Financial Goals

By: Marya L. Besharov, Wendy K. Smith and Michael Tushman

It’s notoriously difficult for a business to manage two separate-but-equal goals—making money and creating social value at the same time, for example, or managing an existing business at the same time that you invent a new one. Most attempts at managing these... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Profit; Decision Making

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01 Apr 1999
News

WSA Conference Focuses on Reaching Goals

"There is today a great need for leaders who live their lives with integrity, courage, and commitment," declared Dean Kim B. Clark in his welcoming comments at the Women's Student Association's (WSA) eighth annual business leadership... View Details

Keywords: Eileen K. McCluskey

01 Jul 2019
What Do You Think?

Are Super Stretch Goals Only for the Very Young?

little communication between the ranks and the top about how they were (or were to be) achieved. Both are now trying to regain reputations that may be lost for some time. Stretch goals have wide acceptance in the View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett