Culture As Commitment - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

Video: Harvard Business School at the Kumbh Mela

using the electrical power and illumination generated from 22,000 temporary light poles, and making their religious commitments as they bathed in the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers over the course of the day, many... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner; Construction; Real Estate

09 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 9, 2008

distribution, pooled intra-organizational coordination, and agency relationships—result in a trade-off between centralized and dispersed growth strategies. Which strategy prevails depends on how policy—enabling branching interacts with technological, economic, and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 11

meals and lodging planned, and their daily productivity measured and monitored. These findings disrupt prevailing narratives in business history, challenging the primacy that Alfred Chandler awarded the railroad as the testing ground for... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Women Entrepreneurs Use Springboard for Funding

challenging economic environments. However, they are entrepreneurs. So this is all they can do. They are not going back; they are not bunkering down and closing the shutters and saying 'It's too tough an environment.' They're going forward with View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

27 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

A Politician's Investment Portfolio Might Tip Off Corruption Potential

percent stocks for the scandal free. Split another way, politicians holding more than 50 percent stocks were almost twice as likely to be involved in a scandal compared to their more risk averse counterparts. Personal investments that... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

14 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The Surprising Right Fit for Software Testing

cubicles—is often treated as an afterthought at immature IT organizations, says HBS professor Robert Austin. Yet this attitude is unwise, because the sooner bugs are caught, the easier and cheaper they are to correct. But who is best... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Video Game; Web Services; Computer

02 Jun 2011
What Do You Think?

Is it Time for a National Bankruptcy?

sought could include aid from one country to another, the sale of national assets, and the deferral of commitments to allow time for a work out. A sizeable minority, however, took the view that lenders, because they helped contribute to a... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

24 Apr 2020
Op-Ed

Lessons from the NFL: Virtual Hiring, Leadership, Building Teams and COVID-19

several aspects including familiarity with systems, knowledge of co-workers, adjusting to the work culture of the firm, and most of all developing processes in harmony with colleagues. To assist new hires in getting up to speed, firms... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Abbott , Boris Groysberg, Tali Groysberg, and Abhijit Naik; Sports

15 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 15

The case concerns bidding and negotiations strategies as well as deal structuring issues. In particular, the cross border nature of the investment, a UK firm investing in Norway, leads to a number of... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

29 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors

letter actually getting to his friend—there were six referrals. This idea has passed into popular culture and urban folklore as the six degrees of separation. That's where it lay until a decade ago when a... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Publishing

10 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Government Policy

growing academic interest in the influence of social networks on entrepreneurial successes and failures, Nanda says. As an example, he cites Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

03 Dec 2008
What Do You Think?

Can Housing and Credit be “Nudged” Back to Health?

for another ... we have no choice but to let things be as they will, no matter how ludicrous and painful, until the understanding becomes knowledge." Tom Dolembo put it this way: "Nudge this back? Never ... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

30 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Computer Security is For Managers, Too

important side benefit: it allows you to make a real commitment to continuous improvement. As any experienced operations manager knows, it's impossible to identify and eradicate a problem's root cause if you... View Details

Keywords: by Robert D. Austin & Christopher A.R. Darby

16 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Earnings Calls That Get Lost in Translation

as Japan and China, tend to have the hardest time communicating effectively. Also, all industries are not equal in their use of complicated speech. The financial industry has the highest level of linguistic complexity, followed by the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

11 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How AI Could Ease the Refugee Crisis and Bring New Talent to Businesses

The world’s refugee population has exploded over the last decade, straining the resources of international resettlement agencies as staff struggle to keep up with manually matching millions of refugees and asylum seekers to host... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology; Information Technology

04 Apr 2005
What Do You Think?

Can an Organization’s “Deep Smarts” Be Preserved?

the phenomenon in large, publicly-listed business organizations. What are the causes? As Simon Griffiths puts it, "While we continue to focus on the short term, we will lose the benefits of working for the long term. Wisdom is only... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

09 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

The UK Needs a Bold Strategy Around Competition to Survive Brexit

There is a moment in the musical Hamilton, right after America wins the Revolutionary War, when British King George III strides on stage and asks cheekily, “What comes next?” This is an urgent question for the United Kingdom as it lurches... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

28 May 2012
Research & Ideas

A Pragmatic Alternative for Creating a Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy

Associates. A social responsibility strategy should fulfill two goals: create a positive social impact, and enhance the company's brand, reputation, employee morale, and/or its bottom line, Rangan says. "But it does not have to be totally integrated into the core... View Details