Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,911)
- Faculty Publications (356)
- July 2011 (Revised August 2011)
- Supplement
Renewing GE: The Africa Project (B)
By: David A. Thomas and Stephanie J. Creary
This case continues the story of the evolution of GE's business initiatives Africa. Between November 2010 and March 2011 several significant structural changes and leadership appointments were announced at GE, which reflected the company's commitment to global growth... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
The Power of Small Wins
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer
What is the best way to motivate employees to do creative work? Help them take a step forward every day. In an analysis of knowledge workers' diaries, the authors found that nothing contributed more to a positive inner work life (the mix of emotions, motivations, and... View Details
Keywords: Creativity; Interpersonal Communication; Employee Relationship Management; Leadership; Performance Effectiveness; Emotions; Motivation and Incentives; Groups and Teams; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Working Conditions; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Performance Productivity; Attitudes; Behavior; Happiness; Perception; Trust; Time Management; Resource Allocation; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Managerial Roles
- March 2011
- Case
Grand Circle Travel: Where Risk Comes with the Territory
A worldwide travel company is intrinsically exposed to risks of natural and man-made disasters. How do you organize a business for success when it must on a nearly daily basis cope with hazards ranging from minor mishaps to large-scale catastrophes? Alan and Harriet... View Details
- January 2011
- Case
Clean Edge Razor: Splitting Hairs in Product Positioning
By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham
After three years of development, Paramount Health and Beauty Company is preparing to launch a new technologically advanced vibrating razor called Clean Edge. The innovative new design of Clean Edge provides superior performance by stimulating the hair follicles to... View Details
- January – February 2011
- Article
Are You a Good Boss-Or a Great One?
By: Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback
Private moments of doubt and fear come even to managers who have spent years on the job. Any number of events can trigger them: an initiative is going poorly; you get a lukewarm performance review; your new assignment is daunting. HBS professor Linda Hill and executive... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
Developing an Effective Organization: Intervention Method, Empirical Evidence, and Theory
By: Michael Beer
The field of organization development is fragmented and lacks a coherent and integrated theory and method for developing an effective organization. A 20-year action research program led to the development and evaluation of the Strategic Fitness Process (SFP)-a platform... View Details
- 2011
- Article
How Do Networks Matter? The Performance Effects of Interorganizational Networks
By: Ranjay Gulati, D. Lavie and Ravi Madhavin
A growing body of research suggests that an organization's ties to other organizations furnish resources that bestow various benefits. Scholars have proposed different perspectives on how such networks of ties shape organizational behavior and performance outcomes, but... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
Learning from Customers: Individual and Organizational Effects in Outsourced Radiological Services
By: Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
The ongoing fragmentation of work has resulted in a narrowing of tasks into smaller pieces that can be sent outside the organization and, in many instances, around the world. This trend is shifting the boundaries of organizations and leading to increased outsourcing.... View Details
- October 2010
- Article
Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity
This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture-in the sense of shared beliefs and values in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details
- October 2010
- Article
Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams
By: Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman and Charles A. O'Reilly III
This article empirically explores the relations between alternative organizational designs and a firm's ability to explore as well as exploit. We operationalize exploitation and exploration in terms of innovation streams—incremental innovation in existing products as... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Performance Tradeoffs in Team Knowledge Sourcing
By: Bradley R. Staats, Melissa Valentine and Amy C. Edmondson
This research examines how teams organize knowledge sourcing (obtaining access to others' knowledge or expertise) and investigates the performance trade-offs involved in two approaches to knowledge sourcing in teams. One approach a team can take is to specialize, such... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
Leadership Competencies for Implementing Planned Organizational Change
By: Julie Battilana, Mattia Gilmartin, Anne-Claire Pache, Metin Sengul and Jeffrey A. Alexander
This paper bridges the leadership and organizational change literatures by exploring the relationship between managers' leadership competencies (namely, their effectiveness at person-oriented and task-oriented behaviors) and the likelihood that they will emphasize the... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
The China Rules: A Practical Guide for CEOs Managing Multinational Corporations in the People's Republic
By: Lynn S. Paine
To achieve growth and profitability in the world's third-largest economy, multinationals need strong leadership--but China is tough on top executives. Pulsating with opportunity, China attracts foreigners, yet HR professionals continue to rank it as one of the most... View Details
- Article
Open to Negotiation: Phenomenological Assumptions and Knowledge Dissemination
By: Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn
Phenomenological assumptions-assumptions about the fundamental qualities of the phenomenon being studied and how it relates to the environment in which it occurs-affect the dissemination of knowledge from subfields to the broader field of study. Micro-process research... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
A Contingency Theory of Leadership
By: Jay W. Lorsch
The idea of a contingency theory of leadership is not novel. In the 1960s several scholars conducted research and proposed such an approach arguing that the style of leadership that would be most effective depended upon the situation (Fiedler, Tannenbaum and Schmidt,... View Details
- 2010
- Article
An Organizational Approach to Undoing Gender: The Unlikely Case of Offshore Oil Platforms
By: Robin J. Ely and Debra E. Meyerson
This case study of two offshore oil platforms illustrates how an organizational initiative designed to enhance safety and effectiveness created a culture that unintentionally released men from societal imperatives for "manly" behavior, prompting them to let go of... View Details
- Article
Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We present a survey of recent contributions in empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries... View Details
Keywords: Economics; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Geographic Location; Motivation and Incentives; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Competition; Human Capital; Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Multinational Firms and Management; India; Brazil; United States
- 2010
- Chapter
Women and Leadership: Defining the Challenges
By: Robin J. Ely and Deborah L. Rhode
We use the experience of Carly Fiorina as an introduction to the continued challenges faced by women in top leadership roles. Although Fiorina, on becoming CEO of Hewlett Packard in 1999, asserted that "there is not a glass ceiling," her memoir eight years later... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Assess, Don't Assume, Part II: Negotiating Implications of Cross-Border Differences in Decision Making, Governance, and Political Economy
When facing a cross-border negotiation, the standard preparatory assessments—of the parties, their interests, their no-deal options, opportunities for and barriers to creating and claiming value, the most promising sequence and process design, etc.—should be... View Details
- December 2009
- Article
Hiding the Evidence of Valid Theories: How Coupled Search Processes Obscure Performance Differences Among Organizations
By: Nicolaj Siggelkow and Jan Rivkin
Theorists argue that an organization's high-level choices, such as its organizational design or the attributes of its top management team, should influence its performance, yet empirical researchers have struggled to detect such influence. The impact of high-level... View Details