Publications

March 2019
Technical Note

Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both—Lessons from Retail & Service Chains (Abridged)

By: Tatiana Sandino

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Standards; Employees; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Retail Industry; Service Industry

March 2023
Case

MrBeast: Building a YouTube Empire

By: Anita Elberse and Oliver Band

Wednesday November 16, 2022 was a historic day in the ascent of Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, to the top echelon of YouTube creators. That day he became the YouTuber with the most subscribers ever—a total of 112 million. The meteoric rise of the 24-year-old... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Power and Influence; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

03 Apr 2025
HBS Seminar

Ziad Obermeyer, UC Berkeley School of Public Health

What You Don't Know About Making Decisions

Most executives think of decision making as a singular event that occurs at a particular point in time. In reality, though, decision making is a process fraught with power plays, politics, personal nuances, and institutional history. Leaders who recognize this make... View Details

Web

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets - Faculty & Research

is observable to a co-partisan audience. Moreover, reputation can drive punishment in ambiguous situations even among individuals who personally question the morality of punishment, highlighting the power of reputation to push people away... View Details

Web

The Hawthorne Plant – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

production, distribution, and marketing under one corporation as a way to centralize its operations and eliminate competition. Western Electric, the manufacturing unit of the company, produced telephones, cables, transmission equipment, and switching equipment.... View Details

October 2022
Exercise

Shanty Real Estate: Updated Confidential Information for Homebuyer

By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro and Nathan Sun

Shanty is a simulation in which students inhabit the role of either a traditional home buyer or an iBuyer, both bidding on the same condo. The traditional home buyer has access to a “comp sheet” of similar properties that have recently sold, and has done a walkthrough.... View Details

Keywords: Algorithm; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making; Market Timing; Measurement and Metrics

December 2020
Other Article

Digital Health Care: Empowering Consumers: Q&A with Professor Regina Herzlinger

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Regina Herzlinger, the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration, has been studying the health care sector for nearly half a century. In that time, she has seen significant innovation in the field—and she has also seen the powerful sway of the status quo,... View Details

Keywords: Digital Health; Telemedicine; Wearable Sensors; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Health Industry

Read Now

January 2018
Case

Blue Harbour's Activism at Babcock & Wilcox

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

The case describes Blue Harbour Group's investment in Babcock & Wilcox and its transformation into BWX Technologies. In 2004, activist hedge fund Blue Harbour Group invested in Babcock & Wilcox, an energy and construction company. Blue Harbour developed an investment... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Investment Activism; Leading Change; Energy Industry; Construction Industry; United States

2010
Working Paper

Corporate Governance When Founders Are Directors

By: Feng Li and Suraj Srinivasan

We examine CEO compensation, CEO retention policies, and M&A decisions in firms where founders serve as a director with a non-founder CEO (founder-director firms). We find that founder-director firms offer a different mix of incentives to their CEOs than other firms.... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Retention; Managerial Roles; United States

SSRN

April 2004
Case

Marks & Spencer: The Phoenix Rises - A Multimedia Case Study

By: Joseph L. Bower

Enables students to interactively research the steps Marks & Spencer's top executives took to restore prosperity and explore in depth the major issues remaining. The perspective is that of Luc Vandevelde, who arrived at the venerable U.K. retailer in 2001, and that of... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Corporate Strategy; Management Teams; Retail Industry; United Kingdom

October 2003 (Revised November 2003)
Module Note

Organizing to Learn Module Note

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Teaches a framework for managing in dynamic or uncertain organizational contexts, designed for either MBA or Executive Education courses. Offers a new perspective on how managers can help stimulate and guide a collective learning process in their organizations. The... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Business Strategy

19 Apr 2021
News

Ari Emanuel Takes on the World

27 Mar 2019
HBS Seminar

Caitlin Rosenthal, UC Berkeley, Department of History

Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation

Every company's ability to innovate depends on a process of experimentation whereby new products and services are created and existing ones improved. But the cost of experimentation is limiting. New technologies—including computer modeling and simulation—promise to... View Details

Web

MBA Experience - Leadership

S.Bernstein Fall Power & Influence Associate Professors Julie Battilana and Lakshmi Ramarajan Fall & Spring People Analytics: Leading in a Data-Driven World Professor Jeffrey Polzer Spring 200 Leadership roles available in Student... View Details

02 May 2023
What Do You Think?

How Should Artificial Intelligence Be Regulated—if at All?

that will relieve humanity of mind-numbing desk work with attendant improvements in quality and reductions in cost and allow people to pursue more creative and interesting work? Or a tool so powerful that it begins to crowd out even the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Information Technology; Technology

2020
Chapter

Islamic Capitalism and the Rise of Religious-Conservative Big Business

By: Kristin Fabbe, Űmit Őzlale and Efe Murat Balikçioğlu

This chapter argues that the rise of “Islamic capitalism” and the country’s so-called “conservative bourgeoisie” owes much to the pragmatism and agility of Islamic actors who are quick to seize upon new economic and political opportunities by leveraging religious... View Details

Keywords: Islamic Capitalism; Economic Systems; Religion; Values and Beliefs; Government and Politics; Power and Influence; Turkey

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