Publications

2025
Working Paper

Public Displays of Alignment: Firm Speech in Autocratic Regimes

By: Joris Mueller, Jaya Y. Wen and Cheryl Wu

Political speech by firms is increasingly common around the world. This paper examines the government as an important, yet understudied, audience for such speech, focusing on how Chinese firms rhetorically align with the state. We introduce novel, general, and... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Economic Systems; Power and Influence; Government Administration; Policy; China

July 2009
Journal Article

Dirty Work, Clean Hands: The Moral Psychology of Indirect Agency

By: Neeru Paharia, Karim Kassam, Joshua Greene and Max Bazerman

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency.... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence

2008
Working Paper

Dirty Work, Clean Hands: The Moral Psychology of Indirect Agency

By: Neeru Paharia, Karim S. Kassam, Joshua D. Greene and Max H. Bazerman

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency.... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence

Web

Harvard Business School

Baker Library Special Collections Exhibits More Exhibits Explore the Exhibit Student Pioneers The Value of Business Education The Golden Age of Black Business AASU Early Years & Influence AASU Founders Core Demands & Proposals Early Years... View Details

Article

The Performer's Reactions to Procedural Injustice: When Prosocial Identity Reduces Prosocial Behavior

By: Adam M. Grant, Andrew Molinsky, Joshua D. Margolis, Melissa Kamin and William Schiano

Considerable research has examined how procedural injustice affects victims and witnesses of unfavorable outcomes, with little attention to the “performers” who deliver these outcomes. Drawing on dissonance theory, we hypothesized that performers' reactions to... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Judgments; Fairness; Outcome or Result; Behavior; Identity; Power and Influence

07 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

What Leaders Need to Do To Restore Investor Confidence

They do not punish with sufficient speed and force to eliminate the incentive for misconduct. At a time when the temptation before some managers is orders of magnitude greater than twenty or thirty years ago, the concern is that the external checks and balances have... View Details

Keywords: by Harvard Management Update

23 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

Oil Price Fallout: What Happens Next?

published dozens of cases on energy policy. Of late, he's taken a keen interest in how the shifting energy market is influencing geopolitics, particularly as the shale revolution turns the US into a hotbed of domestic and foreign energy... View Details

Keywords: Re: Richard H.K. Vietor; Energy; Utilities

Profile

Gary Shi

used to think about leadership,” Gary says. “How do I lead from a junior level? How do I manage without being senior?” But, Gary says, “HBS has changed my ideas about leadership. It’s not about how high or low your position is, but how you View Details

16 Apr 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Chris Christensen: Legend of the Classroom

based at HBS, Christensen's influence and legacy extend well beyond the banks of the Charles and transcend the study of business administration. When he received the School's Distinguished Service Award in 1993, Christensen was honored... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Education

01 Mar 2008
News

Classroom Legend

question-and-answer period for the ambiguity of a hard-to-plan, free-flowing discussion driven by student ideas, which may well follow unusual paths and come to unexpected end points.” Although his teaching and research activities were based at HBS, Christensen’s View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; Roland Christensen; George Albert Smith; Fritz J. Roethlisberger; Richard Meriam; Edmund P. Learned; Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services; Management

April–May 2012
Article

Resources or Power? Implications of Social Networks on Compensation and Firm Performance

By: Joanne Horton, Yuval Millo and George Serafeim

Using a sample of 4,278 listed UK firms, we construct a social network of directorship-interlocks that comprises 31,495 directors. We use social capital theory and techniques developed in social network analysis to measure a director's connectedness and investigate... View Details

Keywords: Power and Influence; Social and Collaborative Networks; Compensation and Benefits; Performance; Relationships; Resource Allocation; United Kingdom

January – February 2012
Article

How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication

By: Paul Leonardi, Tsedal Neeley and Elizabeth M. Gerber

Several recent studies have found that managers engage in redundant communication; that is, they send the same message to the same recipient through two or more unique media sequentially. Given how busy most managers are, and how much information their subordinates... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Media; Information; Groups and Teams; Projects; Management Style; Power and Influence; Motivation and Incentives; Technology

Register to Read

November 2007 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Differences at Work: Martin (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Rachel Gordon

Martin, a gay man who was not out at his Italian firm, witnesses his division manager deliver a homophobic comment to his boss. He wonders what he should do. View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Behavior; Managerial Roles; Ethics; Gender; Diversity; Power and Influence

June 2025
Supplement

The Miccosukee Tribe and the Battle to Save the Everglades (B): The Art of Coalition Building

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small

Supplement to the (A) case, 324-002 Curtis Osceola, Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, exercised leadership to mobilize allies, deal with opposition, and forge internal and external multi-sector coalitions to help preserve the... View Details

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Leadership; Projects; Alliances; Natural Environment; Power and Influence; Florida; Everglades National Park

Article

Democratizing Work: Redistributing Power in Organizations for a Democratic and Sustainable Future

By: Julie Battilana, Julie Yen, Isabelle Ferreras and Lakshmi Ramarajan

Environmental destruction and social inequalities are increasingly urgent challenges. How can corporations, which have played a key role in creating and reproducing these problems, be part of the solution? In this paper, we advance that a shift to more democratic forms... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Citizenship; Corporate Social Responsibility; CSP; CSR; Domination; Industrial Relations; Power; Resistance; Work; Corporate Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Governance; Power and Influence; Environmental Management; Social Issues

March 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Technical Note

Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both — Lessons from Retail & Service Chains

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

Keywords: Service Operations; Standards; Employees; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Retail Industry; Service Industry

Educators

May 2009
Article

Authority versus Persuasion

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper studies a manager's trade-off between using persuasion and using interpersonal authority to get an employee to 'do the right thing' from the manager's perspective (when the manager and employee disagree on the right course of action). It... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Managerial Roles; Projects; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence