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- All HBS Web (2,654)
- Faculty Publications (1,150)
- December 2022
- Article
Social Skills Improve Business Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial with Entrepreneurs in Togo
By: Stefan Dimitriadis and Rembrand Koning
Recent field experiments demonstrate that advice, mentorship, and feedback from randomly assigned peers improve entrepreneurial performance. These results raise a natural question: what is preventing entrepreneurs and managers from forming these peer connections... View Details
Keywords: Social Skills; Business Performance; Entrepreneurs; Peer Relationships; Field Experiment; Entrepreneurship; Performance; Relationships; Interpersonal Communication; Togo
Dimitriadis, Stefan, and Rembrand Koning. "Social Skills Improve Business Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial with Entrepreneurs in Togo." Management Science 68, no. 12 (December 2022): 8635–8657.
- March 2014
- Article
Choosing the Right Customer
By: Robert Simons
Companies that win in competitive markets identify a primary customer and dedicate maximum resources to meeting that customer's needs. This article will show you how to identify the best primary customer for your business by analyzing perspective, capabilities, and... View Details
Keywords: Strategy Execution; Customer Focus; Organization Design; Accountability; Management Control Systems; Customer Relationship Management; Organizational Design
Simons, Robert. "Choosing the Right Customer." Harvard Business Review 92, no. 3 (March 2014): 48–55.
- 09 May 2017
- What Do You Think?
Should Management Be Primarily Responsible to Shareholders?
Summing Up How Do We Encourage CEOs to Manage for Sustainability? Important forces encourage short-term perspectives among managers as well as investors today. These include governance biases, tax policies,... View Details
Keywords: by James Heskett
- September 2011
- Article
On Testing Business Models
By: D. Huelsbeck, K. Merchant and Tatiana Sandino
This study explored management decisions regarding formal empirical testing of business models. It documented a test of one company's business model under seemingly favorable conditions for such a test – a successful single product firm following a consistent strategy... View Details
Keywords: Performance Measurement; Non-financial Performance Measures; Business Models; Management Control; Decisions; Business Model; Performance Evaluation
Huelsbeck, D., K. Merchant, and Tatiana Sandino. "On Testing Business Models." Accounting Review 86, no. 5 (September 2011): 1631–1654. (Awarded a Research Grant from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.)
- September 2016 (Revised January 2018)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 4: Organizing for Performance
By: Robert Simons
This module reading explores the implications of different business models on organization design. After discussing the distinction between units focused on work processes and those devoted to markets, the analysis provides insight as to when to organize businesses by... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Customer Focused Organization; Specialization; Span Of Control; Span Of Accountability; Span Of Attention; Strategy; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure
Simons, Robert. "Strategy Execution Module 4: Organizing for Performance." Harvard Business School Module Note 117-104, September 2016. (Revised January 2018.)
- 2008
- Working Paper
From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America
By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana
As the main producers of managerial elites, business schools represent strategic research sites for understanding the formation of economic practices and representations. This article draws on historical material to analyze the changing place of economics in American... View Details
- 2 PM – 3 PM EST, 02 Dec 2015
- Webinars: Trending@HBS
Managing Family Strife: Market Baskets Lessons about Buyouts
You'd have to have been sleeping under a rock to miss the family war and media frenzy over Market Basket, the Boston-based, family-owned supermarket chain. The confrontation between two cousins (both named Arthur Demoulas) over control of the company was finally... View Details
- September 2009
- Case
The Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions, Inc.
By: Richard M.J. Bohmer, Stephen P. Bradley and Natalie Kindred
Through its uniquely proactive approach to medical malpractice risk management, the Risk Management Foundation (RMF) has decreased claims—and premiums—for the Harvard hospitals it insures. The RMF is the captive medico-legal insurer of the Harvard medical institutions... View Details
Keywords: Cost Management; Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Risk Management; Performance Improvement; Safety; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; Boston
Bohmer, Richard M.J., Stephen P. Bradley, and Natalie Kindred. "The Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions, Inc." Harvard Business School Case 610-014, September 2009.
- March 2011 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
The Whiz Kids
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
In October 1945, Henry Ford II received a telegram in his office at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan written by Charles "Tex" Thornton, a U.S. Air Force colonel. The telegram presented an opportunity for Ford to deploy a system of statistical control which... View Details
Keywords: Ford Motor Company; Statistical Control; Management Systems; Accounting; Operations; Strategy; Mathematical Methods; Auto Industry; United States
Nicholas, Tom, and David Chen. "The Whiz Kids." Harvard Business School Case 811-042, March 2011. (Revised April 2021.)
- October 1990
- Article
Bankruptcy, Boards, Banks, and Blockholders: Evidence on Changes in Corporate Ownership and Control When Firms Default
By: S. C. Gilson
In 111 publicly traded firms that either file for bankruptcy or privately restructure their debt between 1979 and 1985, bank lenders frequently become major stockholders or appoint new directors. On average, only 46% of incumbent directors remain when bankruptcy or... View Details
Keywords: Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governance; Banks and Banking; Change; Business Ventures; Ownership
Gilson, S. C. "Bankruptcy, Boards, Banks, and Blockholders: Evidence on Changes in Corporate Ownership and Control When Firms Default." Journal of Financial Economics 27, no. 2 (October 1990): 355–387.
- 02 May 2011
- Research & Ideas
Casino Payoff: Hands-Off Management Works Best
ensure that the casinos' best customers return to play another day. “It's not absolute freedom—it's freedom within a framework" —Francisco de Asís Martinez-Jerez And it turns out that casino hosts are ideal subjects to gain insight into an ongoing question debated for... View Details
- February 2012
- Article
Management Practices across Firms and Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details
Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Competency and Skills; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizations; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Sectors; Performance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Private Equity; Multinational Firms and Management; United States; Germany; Japan; China; India
Bloom, Nicholas, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen. "Management Practices across Firms and Countries." Academy of Management Perspectives 26, no. 1 (February 2012): 12–33.
- September 1988 (Revised November 1995)
- Teaching Note
Phillips 66: Controlling a Company Through Crisis & Transforming for the 1990s, Teaching Note
- October 1997 (Revised March 2000)
- Case
Oxford Health Plans: Specialty Management (A)
By: James L. Heskett, Jody H. Gittell and James Slayton
Describes an innovative approach to organizing health care proposed by Oxford CEO Steve Wiggins. Wiggins contends that the primary care physician "gatekeeper" model typically used by health maintenance organizations to control access to and coordinate specialist care... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Groups and Teams; Innovation and Management; Medical Specialties; Health Care and Treatment; Cooperation; Management Teams; Health Industry; United States
Heskett, James L., Jody H. Gittell, and James Slayton. "Oxford Health Plans: Specialty Management (A)." Harvard Business School Case 898-042, October 1997. (Revised March 2000.)
- June 2017 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Organizing for Performance: Four Vignettes
By: Robert Simons
This case provides four examples of organizations with very different business strategies: Walmart, Starbucks, Harvard Business School, and Google. To support their varying strategies, each of these organizations requires a specific configuration to provide the most... View Details
Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Organization; Span Of Control; Job Design; Resource Allocation; Organizational Design; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation
Simons, Robert. "Organizing for Performance: Four Vignettes." Harvard Business School Case 117-062, June 2017. (Revised October 2017.)
- 01 Mar 2023
- News
The Exchange: Micro Management
randomized control studies started to emerge that all showed the same surprisingly lukewarm message about the impact of microfinance on livelihoods. Natalia Rigol: People expected to see shifts in household income, business growth, and... View Details
- 05 Mar 2008
- What Do You Think?
Where Will Management Innovation Take Us?
transparency and communities it has spawned, new attitudes toward work and the way it is performed, and global competition and cooperation, much of it fostered by the Internet. But will these forces outweigh the natural tendency of those in View Details
Keywords: by Jim Heskett
- December 2016
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 10: Using the Job Design Optimization Tool to Build Effective Organizations
By: Robert Simons
This module reading provides directions for using the online Job Design Optimization Tool (JDOT) which is available free of charge from Harvard Business School Publishing at https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/resources/marketing/multimedia/JDOT/index.html. This tool can... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Span Of Control; Span Of Accountability; Performance Measurement; Job Design; Organization Design; Strategy; Entrepreneurship
Simons, Robert. "Strategy Execution Module 10: Using the Job Design Optimization Tool to Build Effective Organizations." Harvard Business School Module Note 117-110, December 2016.
- 2012
- Teaching Note
Zhejiang Semir Garment Co., Ltd. (TN)
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Jie Jiao and Yuren Fang
With the rapid growth of China's economy and China's increasing integration into the global economy in the past two decades, China's leisure clothing and garment enterprises achieved a rapid rise and became an important competitive force confronting the foreign brands... View Details
McFarlan, F. Warren, Jie Jiao, and Yuren Fang. "Zhejiang Semir Garment Co., Ltd. (TN)." Tsinghua University Teaching Note, 2012.
- June 2010 (Revised April 2017)
- Teaching Note
Pfizer: Letter from the Chairman (A) and (B)
By: Robert Simons and Kathryn Rosenberg
Teaching Note for 110003 and 110004. View Details