Publications

September 2013
Article

Great Leaders Who Make the Mix Work

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly

Business leaders send a powerful message when they make a commitment to diversity that goes beyond rhetoric. But what motivates them to do so, and how do they actually create inclusive cultures? To find out, the authors interviewed 24 CEOs whose firms were known for... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Working Conditions; Leading Change; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Diversity; Gender

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April–June 2012
Article

Hybrid Organizations: The Next Chapter in Sustainable Business

By: Nardia Haigh and Andrew J. Hoffman

In this article, we describe how hybrid organizations are developing business models that are competitive and create positive social and environmental change. We discuss the distinctive characteristics of the hybrid business model, both conceptually and in practice. We... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Mission and Purpose; Environmental Management; Social Enterprise

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22 Mar 2018
Blog Post

“Mission + Profit: What’s the Balance?” asks SECON 2018

Shad Hall. Matt shared with us the growing pains OAF endured from being merely an idea born during his MBA years in Kellogg School of Management with Andrew Youn (founder of OAF) to the global organization... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing; Nonprofit / Government; Technology; Entrepreneurship; Health Care

September 2018
Article

Do Experts or Crowd-Based Models Produce More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia

By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu

Organizations today can use both crowds and experts to produce knowledge. While prior work compares the accuracy of crowd-produced and expert-produced knowledge, we compare bias in these two models in the context of contested knowledge, which involves subjective,... View Details

Keywords: Online Community; Collective Intelligence; Wisdom Of Crowds; Bias; Wikipedia; Britannica; Knowledge Production; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Dissemination; Prejudice and Bias

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24 Feb 2022
Op-Ed

Want to Prevent the Next Hospital Bed Crisis? Enlist the SEC

out to bolster the “ability to identify and disseminate crucial information during the formative moments of a crisis," but has yet to offer implementation guidelines. How can such complex requirements—housed within the HHS, a $1.4 trillion View Details

Keywords: by Regina Herzlinger and Richard Boxer; Health

August 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

Product Development at Dell Computer Corporation

By: Stefan H. Thomke, Vish V. Krishnan and Ashok Nimgade

Describes how Dell redesigned its new product development process after experiencing a major product setback and a significant decline in firm profits in 1993. Dell's new process is challenged during the development of a new line of portable computers when the incoming... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Profit; Managerial Roles; Risk Management; Product Development; Business Processes; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Hardware; Computer Industry

November–December 2023
Article

Iterative Coordination and Innovation: Prioritizing Value over Novelty

By: Sourobh Ghosh and Andy Wu

An innovating organization faces the challenge of how to prioritize distinct goals of novelty and value, both of which underlie innovation. Popular practitioner frameworks like Agile management suggest that organizations can adopt an iterative approach of frequent... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Novelty; Goals; Specialization; Coordination; Field Experiment; Software Development; Agile; Scrum; Iteration; Iterative; Organizations; Innovation and Invention; Value; Goals and Objectives; Integration; Applications and Software

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October 2024 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Lanco Medical Group: Fostering Happiness for Growth

By: Susanna Gallani, Jenyfeer Martínez Buitrago and Katherine Sonnefeldt

This case describes how Lanco Medical Group, a fast-growing pharmaceutical distributor serving Latin America, approached the design of their employee benefits and incentives program. After learning about gaps between what leadership believed motivated employees and... View Details

Keywords: Fairness; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Growth Management; Motivation and Incentives; Expansion; Pharmaceutical Industry; Latin America

12 Jul 2010
Research & Ideas

Rocket Science Retailing: A Practical Guide

organizations and in the supply chain. In the book, we identify three reasons for perverse incentive misalignment: Incentives exist to induce specific behavior. Managers who design incentives often are not... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Retail; Auto

January 1988 (Revised January 2007)
Background Note

Leading Change

By: Michael Beer

Presents a conceptual framework for understanding the process of leading organizational change. Change leaders must create dissatisfaction with the status quo, develop a vision of the future state, and manage a process that sequences and orchestrates events and changes... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Leading Change

February 2001 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Howard Schultz and Starbucks Coffee Company

By: Nancy F. Koehn

Investigates the entrepreneur's strategic initiatives to develop a mass market for specialty coffee in the 1980s and 1990s. These initiatives included the development of premium products, rapid expansion of company-owned stores--each with attractive retail environments... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Groups and Teams; Brands and Branding; Growth Management; Employee Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Design; Leadership Style; Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Advantage; Vertical Integration; Food and Beverage Industry

2009
Chapter

The Principles of Embedded Liberalism: Social Legitimacy and Global Capitalism

By: Rawi Abdelal and John G. Ruggie

In this essay we revisit the principles of “embedded liberalism” and argue for their relevance to the contemporary global economy. The most essential principle is the need for markets to enjoy social legitimacy, because their political sustainability ultimately depends... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Ethics; International Finance; Globalization; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Labor

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November 2021 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Babban Gona: Great Farm

By: Kristin Fabbe, Tarun Khanna, Caroline M. Elkins, Zeke Gillman, Eleni Kyrkopoulou and Thomaz Teodorovicz

In 2020, Babban Gona was one of the world’s largest farming operations with over 140,000 acres of maize farms, an area over ten times as large as Manhattan, and over 80,000 member-farmers in Nigeria. According to the company, the average Nigerian farmer’s net income... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Value Creation; Agribusiness; Capital Budgeting; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Nigeria; Africa

13 Nov 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, November 13, 2018

because of the challenges associated with measuring effectiveness. Notably, these obstacles are not limited to evaluation by external parties, as firm managers also struggle to assess the returns associated with investments in compliance.... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

14 Apr 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces

Keywords: by Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein & David Lazer

October 2002 (Revised May 2004)
Case

Starbucks and Conservation International

By: James E. Austin and Cate Reavis

Starbucks, the world's leading specialty coffee company, developed a strategic alliance with Conservation International, a major international environmental nonprofit organization. The purpose of the alliance was to promote coffee-growing practices of small farms that... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Growth and Development Strategy; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Production; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Alliances; Nonprofit Organizations; Food and Beverage Industry; Mexico

Research Summary

Business Leadership Coalitions

By: James E. Austin

This multiyear research project has been studying the creation and functioning of the organizations business leaders have created in order to mobilize their collective capabilities to address significant issues and problems facing them and their communities. These... View Details

06 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

The Determinants of Corporate Venture Capital Success

only with its own equipment. The establishment of XTV was driven by two events in 1988. First, several senior Xerox managers were involved in negotiating and approving a spin-off from Xerox, ParcPlace, which sought to commercialize an... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Gompers & Josh Lerner

October 2015
Case

A Challenger's Strategy: Pinar Abay at ING Bank Turkey

By: Paul M. Healy, Gautam Mukunda and Esel Çekin

In 2013, Pinar Abay was appointed as the CEO of ING Bank Turkey. At 34, she was the youngest bank CEO in Turkey's history. Her appointment raised eyebrows because of her youth and because her career at McKinsey had given her no day-to-day bank management experience.... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Change Management; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Culture; Emerging Markets; Transformation; Banks and Banking; Growth and Development Strategy; Banking Industry; Turkey