Publications

April 2025
Case

Thrivent: From Insurance Agents to Financial Advisors

By: Hubert Joly, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Tom Quinn

Thrivent, a midwestern financial services company with a centuries-long history rooted in Lutheranism, had reached $10 billion in revenue mostly by selling life insurance. In the 2020s, however, CEO Terry Rasmussen began a transformation process centered around the... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Forecasting and Prediction; Employee Relationship Management; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Job Design and Levels; Human Capital; Leading Change; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Insurance Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States; Minneapolis

December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Alltech

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

Alltech was a Lexington, Kentucky–based producer of supplements for animal feed, with revenues of over $2 billion (projected to reach $3 billion in 2018), sales in 120 countries, 5,000 employees, and 100 manufacturing plants worldwide. For nearly four decades, Alltech... View Details

April 2003 (Revised July 2003)
Teaching Note

Singapore Inc. (TN)

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

Teaching Note for (9-703-040). View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Growth and Development Strategy; Taxation; Industry Clusters; Competitive Strategy; Foreign Direct Investment; Policy; Organizational Culture; Saving; Performance Productivity; Balance and Stability; China; Singapore

21 May 2013
First Look

First Look: May 21

credentializing strategies (Power, 1992); they mobilized and drew on different cultural resources to construct the reliability of their techniques and to discredit and "minoritize" the others. This credibility contest was won by... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Aug 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, August 21, 2018

A., Tom Fangyun Tan, Bradley R. Staats, and Amy C. Edmondson Abstract—To scale service operations requires retrieving knowledge across the organization. However, prior work highlights that individuals on the periphery of organizational... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

25 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 25, 2007

which had historically been very manual in nature. CEO Juan Villarzu's initial turnaround attempts introduced a customer-centric corporate culture to his ranks, but he was still challenged by how to create an outsourcing strategy given... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

24 Apr 2020
Op-Ed

Lessons from the NFL: Virtual Hiring, Leadership, Building Teams and COVID-19

organizational overhaul. Long-term coach Ron Rivera was fired and Matt Rhule was hired as the new head coach. Newton, having started only two games all last season, was in the last year on his contract. With his injury concerns, Carolina... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Abbott , Boris Groysberg, Tali Groysberg, and Abhijit Naik; Sports

July 2021
Supplement

Trouble at Basecamp: Managing Politics, Polarization, and Conflict in the Workplace (B)

By: Nour Kteily, Deepak Malhotra and David Lane

Supplement to the (A) case View Details

April 2025
Supplement

Joe Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics (B)

By: Linda A. Hill, James I. Cash and Lydia Begag

This case is a supplement to “Joe Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics” (A) and is set against the backdrop of the 2024 NBA Finals. It describes the impact of Mazzulla’s decision to rally his team with an aggressive “go for the kill” mindset instead of choosing language... View Details

17 Jun 2020
Blog Post

Black MBA Students Pen Letters to the HBS Community: Letter 2/5

America, the rural South, or a global cosmopolitan city. Moreover, this worldview has been one of America’s most effective cultural products and exports, influencing how generations of immigrants and much of the world perceives Blackness... View Details

01 Dec 2017
News

Alumni and Faculty Books for December 2017

calling out workplace discrimination and retaliation against women and other underrepresented groups. Her suit exposed the tech world’s toxic culture and its homogeneity. Though she lost her suit, Pao revolutionized the conversation at... View Details

23 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas and Research: May 23, 2017

demand is relatively unimportant in explaining variation in spending after accounting for physician beliefs. Physician organizational factors matter, but the single most important factor is physician beliefs about treatment: 35% of... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

22 Dec 2015
First Look

December 22, 2015

demand, and supporting infrastructures, including business ecosystems) and, when feasible, the wider institutional, regulatory, and even cultural context that conventional International business literature takes as a datum. This is... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

31 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

The Faculty Reader: Who is Reading What This Summer?

Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth . Both books marry a focus on performance with a look at leadership and organizational change—how to enable, support, and empower positive team and... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Information; Publishing

04 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

The Fantastic Horizon: How to Invest in a New City

creates wealth for some people): The lesson of successes like Iskandar in Malaysia are that real estate follows other activity: population growth and GDP growth. Dynamism and jobs can't be created on a large scale just by people wanting to live in a place if it has no... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction; Real Estate

06 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Women MBAs at Harvard Business School

since 2010, Senior Associate Dean for the School's Culture and Community Initiative, organized a research team to look into the factors that made female students and faculty thrive. By 2012, men and women were performing equally in terms... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

11 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Four Ways to Create Lasting Change

activities aimed at reshaping the organizational context, including a redefinition of roles and reporting relationships as well as new approaches to monitoring, measurement, and compensation. These four processes represent critical... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

October 2019
Case

GRIT Fitness

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Olivia Hull

In December 2018, GRIT Fitness was a growing chain of boutique fitness studios offering a variety of workout classes, including weightlifting, high intensity interval training, and cardio dance. With 400 members and three Dallas studios, CEO Brittani Rettig believed... View Details