Publications

December 1975 (Revised January 1987)
Background Note

Note on Organization Design

By: Jay W. Lorsch

Deals with the organizational designer trying to create a structure, rewards, and a system of measurement that are compatible with the external environment, strategy, tasks, the members of the organization, management style, and the existing culture. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design

March 2023 (Revised April 2023)
Case

Shelly Sun at BrightStar Care: The Evolution of a Leader

By: Boris Groysberg, Colleen Ammerman and Sarah L. Abbott

Shelly Sun had founded BrightStar Care, a home health care and medical staffing agency, 20 years earlier and had grown the business to over 300 franchised locations and $654 million in annual system-wide sales. Sun had spent years working to get “the right people in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Family Business; Franchising; Health Care; Women-owned Businesses; Growth And Scaling; Organization; Franchise Ownership; Entrepreneurship; Work-Life Balance; Growth and Development; Health Industry; United States

Article

The Business Case for Curiosity

By: Francesca Gino

Although leaders might say they value inquisitive minds, in reality most stifle curiosity, fearing it will increase risk and inefficiency. Harvard Business School’s Francesca Gino elaborates on the benefits of and common barriers to curiosity in the workplace and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Employees; Creativity; Cognition and Thinking; Learning; Decision Making; Performance Effectiveness

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Video

HBX Live Case Discussion: “Coca-Cola’s New Vending Machine”

October 2008
Article

Sociopolitical Dynamics in Relations Between Top Managers and Security Analysts: Favor Rendering, Reciprocity, and Analyst Stock Recommendations

By: James Westphal and Michael B. Clement

We examine how the disclosure of negative firm information may prompt top executives to render personal and professional favors for security analysts, who may reciprocate by rating firms relatively positively. We further examine how negative ratings may prompt... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Relationships; Power and Influence; Ethics

22 Feb 2021
Working Paper Summaries

Auditor Independence and Outsourcing: Aligning Incentives to Mitigate Shilling and Shirking

Keywords: by Ashley Palmarozzo, Jodi L. Short, and Michael W. Toffel; Apparel & Accessories

May 2016
Case

The Priceline Group: Booking a Place for the Future

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Anish Pathipati

The Chairman of the Priceline Group is considering the actions he must take to confront an evolving external environment, new direct competition, disintermediation and substitute offerings. Does his response require an increased coordination of each historically... View Details

Keywords: Operations Strategy; Service Management; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Operations; Service Operations; Travel Industry

10 Jun 2011
News

Something for the weekend

Video

2019 MBA Fellowship Celebration

June 2001 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Lucent Technologies: The Future of the New Ventures Group

Lucent Technologies' New Ventures Group has created innovative ways to commercialize Bell Labs research. The success of this approach now forces the group to evaluate whether to stay inside Bell Labs or become an external venture capitalist group. View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Commercialization; Research; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Telecommunications Industry

28 Jan 2025
Video

The business leaders leading Europe’s green transition

TeachingInterests

Performance Management for Nonprofit Organizations (Executive Education, Faculty Co-chair)

This Executive Education course —a joint program presented by the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative and Harvard University's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations—explores the impact of measurement on resource allocation, organizational learning, internal processes,... View Details

March 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Catalant: The Future of Work?

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Christine Snively

Catalant, founded in 2013 as an online marketplace where MBAs could bid on consulting projects posted by small- to medium-sized businesses, had expanded by 2016 to provide Fortune 1000 companies with access to over 35,000 independent experts. The founders envisioned... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Recruitment; Labor; Market Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Employment Industry; Consulting Industry; United States

Article

Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization

By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri

We present the results from a field experiment on team diversity. Individuals working as door-to-door canvassers for a non-profit organization were randomly assigned a teammate, a supervisor, and a list of individuals to canvass. This created random variation within... View Details

Keywords: Ethnic Diversity; Organizational Behavior; Labor Management; Groups and Teams; Diversity; Performance

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14 Nov 2019
Video

Health Minute: Can Non-traditional Health Care Companies Impact the Health Sector?

April 2011 (Revised July 2014)
Case

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.: Driving Change Through Internal Communication

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), confronted in 2003 with an urgent need to change how it operated externally, adopted a highly innovative approach to communicating internally. This case, set in 2010, presents an overview of the new, more interactive model of employee... View Details

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Interpersonal Communication; Employee Relationship Management; Innovation and Management; Leading Change; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Corporate Strategy; India

September 2003
Case

Allscripts, Inc.

By: William A. Sahlman and Laurence E. Katz

Describes a set of decisions confronting an entrepreneurial team that is considering taking managerial control of Allscripts, a health care venture. The company has gone through nine rounds of external financing and has changed its business model several times. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business or Company Management; Venture Capital; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Corporate Finance; Health Industry

April 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

BlackRock Solutions

By: Kenneth A. Froot and Scott Waggoner

The BlackRock Solutions case examines the different functions and economics of a global asset manager's value chain, with particular emphasis on the "money management" and the "investment systems platform" businesses. Students analyze why BlackRock decided to unbundle... View Details

Keywords: Investment Management; Strategic Vision; Organizational Behavior; Economies Of Scale And Scope; Unbundling Of Services; Strategic Planning; Risk Management; Financial Management; Asset Management; Competitive Advantage; Value; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Investment; Financial Strategy