Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,113)
- Faculty Publications (475)
- June 2019 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
Building a Meritocracy at Alghanim Industries
By: Paul M. Healy, Susanna Gallani and Esel Çekin
Building on his father’s legacy, Omar Alghanim (MBA 2002) had been working on strengthening a performance-driven culture based on meritocracy in the family business, Alghanim Industries. The task had been particularly challenging because of traditional Middle East... View Details
- 2010
- Article
Budgeting, Psychological Contracts, and Budgetary Misreporting
By: Susanna Gallani, Ranjani Krishnan, Eric J. Marinich and Michael D. Shields
This study examines the effect of psychological contract breach on budgetary misreporting. Psychological contracts are mental models or schemas that govern how employees understand their exchange relationships with their employers. Psychological contract breach leads... View Details
- May–June 2019
- Article
Cross-Silo Leadership
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Tiziana Casciaro and Sujin Jang
Today the most promising innovation and business opportunities require collaboration among functions, offices, and organizations. To realize them, companies must break down silos and get people working together across boundaries. But that’s a challenge for many... View Details
- May–June 2019
- Article
Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Judith K. Wallenstein and Alice de Chalendar
In 2018 the Project on Managing the Future of Work at HBS teamed up with the BCG Henderson Institute to survey 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers about the various forces reshaping the nature of work. The responses revealed a surprising gap: While the executives... View Details
- April 2019
- Case
Barber Cardiosystems
By: Ranjay Gulati and Paul S. Myers
Barber Cardiosystems, based in Melbourne, Australia, designs and manufactures therapeutic devices used for treatment of coronary conditions. Over four decades, it has grown to be among the top 200 medical device companies in the world. It competes against much larger... View Details
- April 16, 2019
- Article
Research Confirms: When Receiving Bad News, We Shoot the Messenger
By: Leslie John, Hayley Blunden and Heidi Liu
Most jobs require us at some point to deliver bad news—whether it be a minor revelation such as a recruiter telling a prospective employee that there’s no wiggle room in salary, or something major, like when a manager must fire an employee. We dread such discussions... View Details
- April 2019 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Sears: The Demise of an American Icon
By: Kristin Mugford and Sarah L. Abbott
In 2019, ESL Investments’ $5.2 billion offer to purchase Sears Holdings out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, was accepted, despite opposition from the company's unsecured creditors and other parties. ESL, which was led by Eddie Lampert, had acquired a stake in Sears following... View Details
- Article
Four Things No One Will Tell You About ESG Data
By: Sakis Kotsantonis and George Serafeim
As the ESG finance field and the use of ESG data in investment decision-making continue to grow, the authors seek to shed light on several important aspects of ESG measurement and data. This article is intended to provide a useful guide for the rapidly rising number of... View Details
Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Reporting; Data Analytics; Sustainability; Sustainability Reporting; CSR; Transparency; Investment Management; Socially Responsible Investing; Sustainable Finance; Sustainable Development; Inclusion; Inclusive Growth; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Investment; Management; Climate Change; Corporate Governance; Diversity; Integrated Corporate Reporting
- April 2019
- Article
Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence
By: Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael Menietti
Understanding why employees go the extra mile at work is a key problem for many organizations. We conduct a field experiment at a medical organization to study motivations for employees to submit project proposals for organizational improvement. In total, we analyze... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
When Does Gamified Training Improve Performance? The Roles of Office and Leader Engagement
By: Ryan W. Buell, Wei Cai and Tatiana Sandino
Gamified training is a novel management control system in which companies use gamification
techniques to engage and motivate employees to learn. This study empirically examines the
performance consequences of gamified training using data from a natural field... View Details
- 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
- March–April 2019
- Article
Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees
By: Ryan W. Buell
Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details
- March–April 2019
- Article
The Dual-Purpose Playbook
By: Julie Battilana, Anne-Claire Pache, Metin Sengul and Marissa Kimsey
Corporations are being pushed to dial down their single-minded pursuit of financial gain and pay closer attention to their impact on employees, customers, communities, and the environment. But changing an organization’s DNA may require upending the existing business... View Details
- March–April 2019
- Article
The Future of Leadership Development
By: Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu
The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that... View Details
- February 2019 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
Hot Chicken Takeover
By: William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman and Olivia Hull
By December 2018, entrepreneur Joe DeLoss’s fried chicken company, Hot Chicken Takeover, has opened three restaurants in Columbus, Ohio, using an unconventional employment model that helps people with criminal records get back on their feet. DeLoss is proud of the... View Details
Keywords: Fair Chance Employment; Fair Chance Hiring; Open Hiring; Inclusive Hiring; Criminal Record; Homelessness; Therapeutic Employment; Corporate Culture; Managing The Future Of Work; Food; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Values and Beliefs; Fairness; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Employees; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Innovation Strategy; Job Offer; Job Interviews; Human Capital; Leadership; Growth Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Social Issues; Poverty; Welfare; Food and Beverage Industry; Ohio; United States
- Article
Big Ideas Feature: Time for Happiness: Why the Pursuit of Money Isn't Bringing You Joy—and What Will
By: A.V. Whillans
Adam (real story, fake name) was a good employee who was given a plum project he believed could get him a promotion and a raise. Taking it seemed like the proverbial no-brainer: Work hard, nail the assignment, get more pay. He knew he’d have to put in long days and... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Immigrant Networking and Collaboration: Survey Evidence from CIC
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
Networking and the giving and receiving of advice outside of one’s own firm are important features of entrepreneurship and innovation. We study how immigrants and natives utilize the potential networking opportunities provided by CIC, formerly known as the Cambridge... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Does Public Ownership and Accountability Increase Diversity? Evidence from IPOs
By: Rembrand Koning and John-Paul Ferguson
Does public ownership improve employment diversity? Organizational researchers theorize that increased transparency to regulators and the public should lead firms to conform to legal and social norms—but that social closure and decoupling should preserve the status... View Details
Keywords: IPO; Initial Public Offering; Employees; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; United States
- January–February 2019
- Article
Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance
By: Claudine Gartenberg, Andrea Prat and George Serafeim
We construct a measure of corporate purpose within a sample of U.S. companies based on approximately 500,000 survey responses of worker perceptions about their employers. We find that this measure of purpose is not related to financial performance. However, high... View Details
- December 2018 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
Instituto Dara: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Illness at Scale
By: Julie Battilana, Marissa Kimsey, Priscilla Zogbi and Johanna Mair
Dr. Vera Cordeiro founded the NGO Instituto Dara in 1991 to help poor families break the cycle of poverty and illness in Brazil. She and her team of employees and volunteers developed a holistic methodology to address the multidimensional sources of poverty based on... View Details