Publications

Research Summary

Risk, Trust and Escalation Behavior of Owner Managers

By: Cynthia A. Montgomery

Professor Montgomery and Professor Deepak Malhotra (HBS), together with scientists from Harvard's Program on Evolutionary Dynamics, are studying risk-related decision making of owner managers in newly-founded and established companies. This experimental... View Details

April 1982
Supplement

General Electric: John F. Welch, Jr., Chairman of the Board, Video

By: Francis Aguilar and Richard G. Hamermesh

Welch discusses a variety of topics. View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Governing and Advisory Boards; Spoken Communication; Industrial Products Industry

16 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Seven Tips for Managing Price Increases

services that they truly need by giving them an unbundled menu of options. 6. Monitor Trade Terms. Beware of powerful distributors paying you more slowly than they turn the inventory they buy from you. In an inflationary environment, they're making money on the float... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

for natural gas, and to create derivative supply contracts that could help customers manage the risks of demand volatility and price swings more effectively than before. In this way, Skilling and his colleagues solved a major contracting... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

January 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

By: Anita Elberse and Melissa Rodman

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) develops and presents scripted hero-versus-villain storylines featuring its wrestlers at hundreds of live events—on several weekly television shows, on its own over-the-top streaming service, and on social media—to millions of... View Details

Keywords: Superstars; Talent; Talent Development; Labor Economics; General Management; Entertainment; Sports; Media; Talent and Talent Management; Contracts; Marketing; Strategy

October 2024
Course Overview Note

Risks, Opportunities, and Investments in the Era of Climate Change (ROICC)

By: George Serafeim

This course overview note introduces the course Risks, Opportunities, and Investments in the Era of Climate Change to students. View Details

Keywords: Environment; Innovation; Technology; General Management; Organizational Transformations; Investments; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Finance; Accounting; Leadership; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Management

05 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

Middle managers aren’t going extinct. They’re evolving. Once a wasteland where careers stalled or abruptly ended in layoffs, middle management has adapted and is thriving, seeing double-digit growth in some... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

April 1993 (Revised December 2001)
Case

General Dynamics and Computer Sciences Corporation: Outsourcing the IS Function (B)

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Katherine Seger

Designed to look at outsourcing from the perspective of a major computer services company trying to get into the business. View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Business Startups; Business Plan; Business Strategy; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Financial Management; Management Teams; Communication Strategy; Organizational Design; Product Design; Accounting; Activity Based Costing and Management; Computer Industry; Information Technology Industry

10 Jan 2008
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Operations Management

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions to be answered: Can "lean" productions methods improve service industries? How can a company's order View Details

2023
Working Paper

Design-Based Confidence Sequences: A General Approach to Risk Mitigation in Online Experimentation

By: Dae Woong Ham, Michael Lindon, Martin Tingley and Iavor Bojinov

Randomized experiments have become the standard method for companies to evaluate the performance of new products or services. In addition to augmenting managers’ decision-making, experimentation mitigates risk by limiting the proportion of customers exposed to... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Research and Development; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

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01 Jun 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Stakeholder Management Facing New Headwinds?

(iStockphoto/Krle) Advocates for stakeholders—including employees, customers, suppliers, the “community,” and investors—have dominated the discussion of leadership and management over the past two decades. They believe that enlightened... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

April 2025
Case

Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Vickers Oils and Resolving Family Conflict over Generations

By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan

Will Vickers, a seventh-generation (G7) member of the Vickers Family, grappled with a pressing challenge: how to re-integrate family members into the firm to recover lost talent. His father, Peter Vickers, was the lone leader of the Vickers Oils—despite having stepped... View Details

Keywords: Shareholder; Involvement; Family Office; Family Firms; Family Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Experience and Expertise; Retention; Leadership Development; Business or Company Management; Management Succession; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Diversification; Conflict and Resolution; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom

12 Mar 2012
Research & Ideas

Crowded at the Top: The Rise of the Functional Manager

businesses.” In 2008, companies averaged 2.9 general managers, compared to 1.6 in 1986, according to data from several surveys. The average number of functional managers reporting directly to the CEO... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

13 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Managing the Family Business: Leadership Roles

members who grew up in the family company and know it well, to become focused on its operating effectiveness. But too much focus here generally means they give too little attention to the leadership and governance needs of the... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Davis

10 Jan 2007
HBS Case

The Challenge of Managing National Security

attacks. Garry Emmons: The focus of your work is on how to manage integration within a highly differentiated organization. Post-9/11, how's the intelligence community doing on that score? Jan Rivkin: Intelligence issues are enormously... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Service

28 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

The Clock Is Ticking: 3 Ways to Manage Your Time Better

working from home brought greater flexibility, such arrangements often blurred personal and professional boundaries and created a never-ending day for some people. We asked three Harvard Business School faculty members to offer insights from research that can help... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

October 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Relevent and LaLiga: Bringing Spanish Soccer to America

By: Anita Elberse and David Moreno Vicente

“Barcelona backs out of proposed LaLiga match in Miami.” It is December 2018, and Daniel Sillman, chief executive officer of sports and entertainment company Relevent, is tasked with finding a way forward after a significant setback. Relevent had found success by... View Details

Keywords: Soccer; Football; Superstars; Talent; Talent Development; General Management; Marketing; Entertainment; Sports; Media; Talent and Talent Management; Globalization; Strategy; Sports Industry

March 2013
Case

Robin Ash and Printzhof Press

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Lynda St. Clair

Robin Ash has just been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of Printzhof Press and Vice President of its parent company, Education and Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Her first objective is to create an action plan that will achieve two seemingly contradictory corporate... View Details

Keywords: United States; Organizational Change; Management Styles; General Management; Change Management; Morale; Communication; Human Resource Management; Book Publishing; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Conflict Management; Leading Change; Competitive Strategy; Organizational Culture; Planning; Education Industry; Publishing Industry