by Robert Eccles - Publications - Faculty & Research

04 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Is Your Org Chart Stuck in a Rut? Try a Scientific Experiment

increasingly challenged,” says Robert Regan, a partner at Corrs Chambers Westgarth, a law firm in Sydney, Australia. “To respond to this, and deal with falling margins, law firms need to find new organizing principles.” In March,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

27 Jun 2007
Lessons from the Classroom

Learning to Make the Move to CEO

You're a successful senior executive with 20, 25 years of experience under your belt. You've made your mark and stand just 1 or 2 rungs from the position of CEO. Now what? As faculty chair of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (AMP), Professor View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

05 Mar 2009
What Do You Think?

How Frank or Deceptive Should Leaders Be?

by Nobel-prize winner in economics George Akerlof and economist Robert Sheeler of "irrational exuberance" fame. These authors cite the importance of what John Maynard Keynes once referred to as... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

20 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

HBS Workshop Encourages Corporate Reporting on Environmental and Social Sustainability

momentum for adoption? Investors? Regulators? Or is this, as Eccles said, "a giant collective-action problem--no one group can change it." What metrics would be most useful and actionable to regulators, stakeholders, and the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Accounting

03 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

The Truck Driver Who Reinvented Shipping

Malcolm P. McLean, a truck driver, fundamentally transformed the centuries-old shipping industry, an industry that had long decided that it had no incentive to change. By developing the first safe, reliable, and cost effective approach to... View Details

Keywords: by Anthony J. Mayo & Nitin Nohria; Manufacturing; Transportation; Aerospace

16 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

How the Coronavirus Is Already Rewriting the Future of Business

when life goes back to normal. Forward-thinking leaders can run better organizations by creating conditions that allow customers to be more helpful. When service provision is a true partnership and customers are pitching in, employees... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

09 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Moving From Bean Counter to Game Changer

more low key. In fact, when we looked at it more closely, the risk management team was busy developing tools diligently toiling away and gaining enterprise-wide influence at multiple levels." Next Steps Mikes, who, with HBS professor View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Banking

04 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Shackleton: An Entrepreneur of Survival

ship, the Endurance, became hopelessly trapped in pack ice, Shackleton abandoned one cherished goal and shouldered another that was forced on him by circumstance. Through extraordinary hardships that lasted almost two more years, he... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 Nov 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Data.gov: Matching Government Data with Rapid Innovation

product development in firms and communities, co-wrote the case with former HBS professor Robert D. Austin and Yumi Yi to encourage further exploration of the benefits and tactics of open-data approaches. “ All agencies will have issues,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Technology

05 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Six Ways to Build Trust in Negotiations

unaccommodating behavior by the slighted party. In their 1991 book, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations (ILR Press), Richard E. Walton and Robert B. McKersie recount such a scenario. After a string of... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

15 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

A Better Business Model for Fighting Cancer

Robert and Myra Kraft Family Foundation, the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator is a partnership between the foundation, Harvard Business School, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The alliance is working to eliminate... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health; Pharmaceutical

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

15 Podcast Episodes That Grabbed Listeners in 2023

then-controversial decision to refuse to fight in the Vietnam War. Robert Simons discusses how Ali made decisions throughout his life and career to leave a lasting impact on the world. Managing the Future of Work AI: The Good, the Bad,... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

24 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 24

invest in platform quality in open-source and proprietary two-sided platforms. Open platforms have open access, and developers invest to improve the platform. Proprietary platforms have closed access, and investment is done by the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Jun 2000
Research & Ideas

What’s an Internet Business Model? Ask a Health Care Professional

business: customers, products, value propositions, the capabilities and advantages any player brings that will allow the plans to meet success. And while businesses have always used a "platform" of technology of one kind or another to deliver products and services, the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

23 May 2019
Book

These Entrepreneurs Take a Pragmatic Approach to Solving Social Problems

Associates, Robert Waldron turned a company that was in decline in 2008 into a profitable $190-million business 10 years later by developing online learning tools as well as print workbooks for schools. In... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Green Technology

20 Oct 2010
Op-Ed

Export Competitiveness: Reversing the Logic

Editor's Note: Christian Ketels wrote this paper for the World Bank's Development Debate, "What Do We Mean by Export Competitiveness and How Do Countries Achieve it in an Uncertain World?" held March 29, 2010. Ketels is... View Details

Keywords: by Christian Ketels

01 Jun 2007
What Do You Think?

How Should Pay Be Linked to Performance?

items caught my eye recently. The first was the report from the Home Depot annual meeting contrasting this year's investor-friendlier tone set by the company's new CEO, Frank Blake, with last year's, led by... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

01 Aug 2018
What Do You Think?

Are Free Trade and Free Markets Quaint Ideas From the Past?

democracies. "Rodrik rejects the notion that efficient markets for capital, goods, and labor will always regulate themselves" Recent books by Dani Rodrik and Robert Kuttner generally support these... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

19 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

The Landscape of Integrated Reporting: An E-Book

Editor's note: Harvard Business School in mid-October played host to the 2010 Workshop on Integrated Reporting: Frameworks and Action Plan. Under direction of conference organizer Robert G. Eccles, participants recently published an... View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria; Accounting

05 Jul 2006
What Do You Think?

How Important Is “Executive Intelligence” for Leaders?

performance of an organization has long been debated, and the debate has focused most recently on the controversy over compensation for CEOs. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton cite studies that maintain that no more than 10 percent of the... View Details