Publications

January 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Cat is out of the Bag, The: KANA and the Layoff Gone Awry (A)

By: Leslie A. Perlow and David Ager

Vicki Amon-Higa, vice president of KANA, a publicly traded, midsize development company, was working with Bryan Kettle, KANA's CFO, to plan a layoff in which KANA would reduce the size of its workforce by nearly 40%. Despite the best of intentions, news of the layoff... View Details

Keywords: Crisis Management; Employees; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Problems and Challenges; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Conflict Management

04 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 4

Publications 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts By: Eisenmann, Tom, ed. Abstract—Harvard Business School Professor Tom Eisenmann annually compiles the best posts from many blogs on technology startup... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

16 May 2023
In Practice

After Silicon Valley Bank's Flameout, What's Next for Entrepreneurs?

roughly one third of our portfolio of over 200 companies had some relationship with the bank. The startup ecosystem has benefited in recent years from a combination of low interest rates and expanded credit.... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Technology; Financial Services

July 2021
Teaching Note

Digital Transformation 2.0: CEO Elie Girard at Atos

By: Tsedal Neeley

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 421-024. Elie Girard has taken the helm as CEO of multinational IT giant Atos to lead the company into the next era of digital transformation. Noticing that customers’ digital needs were evolving to become even more specialized and global... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Leading Change; Mergers and Acquisitions; Environmental Sustainability; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Transformation; Information Technology Industry

March 22, 2012
Article

Global Team Leaders Must Deliberately Create 'Moments'

By: Tsedal Neeley

Global teams face the challenge of having to operate with limited face-to-face contact and across vast distances, time zones, language backgrounds, and contexts, as well as cultural differences. In turn, these differences generate disruptions to team cohesion and top... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Groups and Teams; Management Practices and Processes

Register to Read

2006
Case

Strategies for Preventing a Knowledge-Loss Crisis

When employees leave an organization, they depart with more than what they know; they also leave with critical knowledge about who they know. Thus, the departure of key people can significantly affect the relationship structure and consequent functioning of an... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Networks; Knowledge Management; Resignation and Termination

01 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 1

Repetition of interaction may improve learning, since experience working together aids in the identification, transfer, and application of knowledge among members within a group. Additionally, experience need not be constrained to one task. Prior work examining the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

October 2016
Case

Supercell

By: William R. Kerr, Benjamin F. Jones and Alexis Brownell

Supercell is a young Finnish smartphone game company with an unusual team structure and company philosophy. It is already one of Finland’s most valuable companies, and despite being only six years old, it has put up some impressive numbers: as of 2016, it has released... View Details

Keywords: Supercell; Finland; Video Games; Firm Structure; Startups; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Groups and Teams; Video Game Industry; Finland

24 Oct 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, October 24, 2017

October 2017 Management Science The Size of the LGBT Population and the Magnitude of Anti-Gay Sentiment Are Substantially Underestimated By: Coffman, Katherine Baldiga, Lucas C. Coffman, and Keith M. Marzilli Ericson Abstract—We... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2007
Working Paper

Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager 'interpersonal authority' over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Employee Relationship Management; Managerial Roles; Motivation and Incentives; Boundaries; Theory

SSRN

February 1999 (Revised August 2004)
Case

I Lost My Volvo in New Haven: Tennis Event Sponsorship

By: Stephen A. Greyser, Brian R. Harris and Mitchell Truwit

Focuses on event management and sponsorship from the perspective of the event owner (rather than that of the sponsorship company). Describes in depth the search by one of the tennis tournaments on the professional circuit for a principal sponsor. Detailed economics of... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Communications; Decision Choices and Conditions; Management; Product Positioning; Television Entertainment; Sports; Partners and Partnerships; Sports Industry

Article

The Learning Effects of Monitoring

By: Dennis Campbell, Marc Epstein and F. Asis Martinez-Jerez

This paper investigates the relationship between monitoring, decision making, and learning among lower-level employees. We exploit a field-research setting in which business units vary in the "tightness" with which they monitor employee decisions. We find that tighter... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Business or Company Management; Decision Making; Employees; Research; Resignation and Termination; Rights; Business Units; Governance Controls; Performance; Motivation and Incentives

Find at Harvard

07 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 7, 2017

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53429 September 2017 Academy of Management Discoveries The Advocacy Trap: When Legitimacy Building Inhibits Organizational Learning By: Zuzul, Tiona, and Amy C. Edmondson... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

March 2011
Case

Cash Flow Productivity at PepsiCo: Communicating Value to Retailers

PepsiCo developed a new metric that better measured the value added by Pepsi products than did gross margin, the traditional metric used by retailers to determine shelf space and promotional activity. The new metric, cash flow productivity, captured the value of... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Cash Flow; Measurement and Metrics; Distribution; Performance Productivity; Value Creation; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry

Find at Harvard

May 2024
Teaching Note

Vineyard Wind Starts Spinning: Overcoming Onshore Challenges to Offshore Wind

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 324-113. To activate the first wind turbines in the ocean off Martha’s Vineyard eventually supplying clean energy to 400,000 households, Vineyard Wind’s leaders had to navigate the permitting process, numerous delays, and objections from... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Renewable Energy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Industry; Massachusetts; Martha's Vineyard; New Bedford