HBS Working Knowledge - Publications - Faculty & Research

20 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Open Source Science: A New Model for Innovation

that a lot and I think we're providing some systematic evidence now with this study," Lakhani says. He met recently with HBS Working Knowledge to discuss the View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Is Web Surfing Distracting Your Workers?

temptation on work performance. The idea for the study came from a conversation that Piovesan and his research partner Alessandro Bucciol of the University of Verona had with Daniel Houser, head of George Mason's Interdisciplinary Center... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

25 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

The Importance of Teaming

team's composition may change at any given moment. Teaming, she says, is essential to organizational learning. She elaborates on this concept in her new book, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge... View Details

Keywords: Re: Amy C. Edmondson

21 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Inside the OR: Disrupted Routines and New Technologies

HBS working paper "Disrupted Routines: Effects of Team Learning on New Technology Adaptation" delves into the disruptive nature of MICS technology on the dynamic of the surgical team in an arena... View Details

Keywords: by Hilah Geer

March 2004 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Salt Lake Organizing Committee, The: 2002 Olympics

By: H. Kent Bowen, Bryce LaPierre and Courtney Purrington

After two and a half years of effort, Fraser Bullock, COO of the 2002 Winter Olympics, faced projected deficits and post-9/11 security requirements only five months before the opening ceremony. Summarizes the organizational structure and processes put in place by... View Details

Keywords: Framework; Knowledge Dissemination; Business or Company Management; Managerial Roles; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Planning; Practice; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Sports; System

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Research Summary

Workforce Change

By: Sandra J. Sucher

This research encompasses layoffs, furloughs and restructuring, global practices that affect millions of employees and thousands of companies every year. In this work I aim to replace bad practice that damages trust with good (or at least better) practice through... View Details

Keywords: Layoffs; Leadership And Change Management; Global Innovation; Strategic Decision Making; Multinational Corporations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; United States; France; Germany; Hungary; Finland; United Kingdom; Netherlands; China; Japan; Brazil

27 Dec 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Team Learning Capabilities: A Meso Model of Sustained Innovation and Superior Firm Performance

Keywords: by Jean-François Harvey, Henrik Bresman, and Amy C. Edmondson

March 2023
Case

Ownership Works: Scaling a Profitable Social Mission

By: Ethan Rouen, Dennis Campbell and Andrew Robinson

Pete Stavros was on a high after his latest experiment with employee ownership. As the head of industrial investments for KKR, Stavros orchestrated the sale of CHI Overhead Doors, which turned into KKR’s best investment in more than two decades and created $360 million... View Details

Keywords: Employee Ownership; Knowledge Sharing; Nonprofit Organizations

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November 1995
Background Note

Business Process Reengineering: Its Past, Present, and Possible Future

Explores the origins of reengineering; its evolution during the 1980s and 1990s; the current state of reengineering, which is prevalent in business today; and several possible futures of reengineering, specifically in relation to process management, knowledge work, and... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Business Processes

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Summer 2018
Article

Why High-Tech Commoditization Is Accelerating

By: Willy C. Shih

Knowledge embedded within state-of-the-art production and design tools is a powerful force that is leveling the global technology playing field. It democratizes innovation and makes future competition more challenging. This paper describes the knowledge flows through... View Details

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14 Jun 2023
Op-Ed

Every Company Should Have These Leaders—or Develop Them if They Don't

than ever. Amid all this turbulence, strategic thinkers must quickly evaluate opportunities and threats while operationalizing strategy. What organizations need now are “T-shaped leaders”—those who share knowledge across the organization... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson

30 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

Looking Behind Bad Decisions

African government take a stand against an effective AIDS treatment drug? The inability of government to make wise tradeoffs—give up small losses for much larger gain—has been investigated by HBS professor Max Bazerman and his research... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

08 May 2020
Research & Ideas

We’ve Now Been Asking “What Do You Think?” for 20 Years

This month marks the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of my “What do you think?” column. The Working Knowledge website was the brainchild of a faculty and staff committee organized in 2000 by then Dean... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

18 Apr 2000
Research & Ideas

Learning in Action

well-known consultants and CAP was born. Participants come to CAP in teams of eight to twelve people with a real problem to solve. At Welch's insistence, the problems are "need to do; not nice to do." Each team works with a coach, a... View Details

Keywords: by David A. Garvin

18 Feb 2021
Interview

Amy Edmondson: Are You Missing One of Your Most Important Jobs as a Manager?

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Chris Clearfield

During our conversation, we talked about:

• The renewed interest in the concept of psychological safety
• J.D. Thompson’s notion of “reciprocal coordination needs”
• How knowledge work does not produce objective or mechanical... View Details

Keywords: Psychological Safety; Management Skills; Management Style; Interpersonal Communication

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Research Summary

Trust

By: Sandra J. Sucher

In this research, I aim to provide a practical orientation to trust—how to build it, how it can be damaged, how it might be repaired—grounded in my experience as an executive and in the research on organizational trust and moral philosophy. As a case researcher, I... View Details

June 2024
Teaching Note

Major League Baseball: Changing the Rules of America's Pastime

By: Stephen A. Greyser, Mac Levin and Brent Schwarz

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 924-307. The Teaching Note offers suggestions for using the case as a “product innovation” for different levels of students and their knowledge of baseball. Discussion plan questions for instructors are provided in the context of MLB’s... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Media; Product; Sports Industry

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22 Dec 2008
Research & Ideas

10 Reasons to Design a Better Corporate Culture

Why is it that many of the same companies appear repeatedly on lists of the best places to work, the best providers of customer service, and the most profitable in their industries? In their new book, The Ownership Quotient, HBS... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser & Joe Wheeler

21 Apr 2009
First Look

First Look: April 21, 2009

Working PapersHow Firms Respond to Being Rated (revised) Authors:Aaron K. Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel Abstract While many rating systems seek to help buyers overcome information asymmetries when making purchasing decisions, we... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Article

What Managers Need to Know About Social Tools: Avoid the Common Pitfalls So That Your Organization Can Collaborate, Learn, and Innovate

By: Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley

Workplaces have adopted internal social tools—think stand-alone technologies such as Slack, Yammer, and Chatter, or embedded applications such as Microsoft Teams and JIRA—at a staggering rate. In an ambitious study of 4,200 companies, conducted by the McKinsey Global... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Social Tools; Social and Collaborative Networks; Knowledge Sharing; Performance Improvement; Management

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