Publications

2021
Chapter

The Economic and Political Effects of Immigration: Evidence from the Age of Mass Migration

By: Marco Tabellini

Between 1850 and 1920, during the Age of Mass Migration, more than 30 million Europeans moved to the United States. European immigrants provided ample supply of cheap labor as well as specific skills and know-how, contributing to American economic growth. These... View Details

Keywords: Age Of Mass Migration; Political Ideology; Political Economy; Assimilation; Immigration; Economics; History; United States

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02 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

10 Trends to Watch in 2024

The lightning-fast ascent of generative AI isn’t the only sea change on the horizon for businesses in the new year. The global economy is in flux as war, climate change, trade issues, and infrastructure problems demand attention. Many companies continue to struggle to... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

July 2024
Article

Whether to Apply

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Manuela Collis and Leena Kulkarni

Labor market outcomes depend, in part, upon an individual’s willingness to put herself forward for different opportunities. We use a series of experiments to explore gender differences in willingness to apply for higher return, more challenging work. We find that, in... View Details

Keywords: Beliefs; Recruitment; Job Search; Gender; Attitudes

The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality to the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism.

Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the... View Details

September 2021 (Revised December 2023)
Case

On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb

Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high... View Details

July 2020 (Revised September 2020)
Case

The Honor Foundation: Accessing Special Operations Talent

By: Boris Groysberg and John Masko

In 2020, The Honor Foundation (THF), a nonprofit dedicated to helping U.S. military special operators to transition into civilian careers, was facing a series of strategic challenges. THF had been founded in 2013 by former Navy SEAL trainee Joe Musselman, who observed... View Details

October 2014 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Sanford C. Bernstein Goes to Asia

By: Linda A. Hill, Dana M. Teppert and Allison J. Wigen

Sanford C. Bernstein, a premier sell-side research firm, is expanding globally. Three years after launching Bernstein's Asian business, senior management has appointed Ghislain de Charentenay, a six-year sales veteran of the firm, as director of Asian research in Hong... View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Talent Management; Leadership; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Design; Emerging Markets; Globalization; Hong Kong

August 29, 2017
Article

How to Successfully Work Across Countries, Languages, and Cultures

By: Tsedal Neeley

According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, the number of people in the global labor force will reach 3.5 billion by 2030. Among the enormous changes this will demand are new skills, attitudes, and behaviors. A five-year study of the global workforce at... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Globalized Firms and Management; Employees; Competency and Skills; Success

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Web

Publications - Faculty & Research

form of smart, connected elevators.... View Details Keywords: Training ; Competency and Skills ; Employees ; Change Management ; Leading Change Citation Find at Harvard Read Now Related Kerr, William. "Case Study: Do We Reskill or Replace... View Details

May 2025
Background Note

Skills-First Talent Management: The Importance of Managers

By: Boris Groysberg, Nicole Zelazko, Tom Quinn, Robin Abrahams, Izzy Yeoh and Colleen Ammerman

This note supplements a 2025 series on skills-first talent management in organizations, comprising “Skills-First Talent Management: Hiring” (HBS No. 425-019), “Skills-First Talent Management: Onboarding, Development, and Performance Management” (HBS No. 425-020), and... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Job Design and Levels; Employment; Human Capital; Management Practices and Processes; United States

Article

Organizational Beliefs and Managerial Vision

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

Can managers have an impact on their firm that goes beyond their direct actions and decisions? This article shows that a manager with strong beliefs about the right course of action will attract, through sorting in the labor market, employees with similar beliefs. This... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Goals and Objectives; Decisions; Labor; Markets; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Recruitment; Risk and Uncertainty; Values and Beliefs

November 2007
Case

The 1995 Release of the Institutional Investor Research Report: The Impact of New Information

By: Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria and Derek Haas

In 1995, Institutional Investor magazine began selling a complete ranking of the best equity research analysts. This report allowed research firms to assess the relative quality of each analyst across the industry, and this enabled firms to know nearly as much about... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Investment Banking; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Reports; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Performance Evaluation; Banking Industry

January 2009
Journal Article

The Fiscal Impact of High-skilled Emigration: Flows of Indians to the U.S.

By: Mihir Desai, D. Kapur, J. McHale and K Rogers

Easing immigration restrictions for the highly skilled in developed countries portends a future of increased human capital outflows from developing countries. The myriad consequences of these developments for developing countries include the direct loss of the fiscal... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Diasporas; Developing Countries and Economies; Taxation; Compensation and Benefits; Human Capital; Mathematical Methods; India; United States

October 3, 2023
Article

The Employer-Educator Partnership That Can Fill U.S. Jobs

By: Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman

Middle-skills workers—those with less than a four-year college education but more than a high school diploma—make up more than 60% of U.S. workers over the age of 25. These workers are the life force that keeps America’s economic engine humming, but, increasingly, as... View Details

Keywords: Jobs and Positions; Higher Education; Recruitment

22 Jul 2015
News

Learning from Starbucks on job creation

Research Summary

The Effect of the Internet on Wages

Who benefits from the adoption of technology in the workplace? To explore, I combine worker-level wage data with information on broadband adoption by Brazilian firms to estimate the effects of broadband on wages. Overall, wages increase 2.3 percent following... View Details

Keywords: Internet; Organization Design; Brazil; Technology; Wages; Brazil

January 2018
Article

Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Competition Among Applicants

By: Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

Despite seeming to be an important requirement for hiring, the concept of a slot is absent from virtually all of economics. Macroeconomic studies of vacancies and search come closest, but the implications of slot-based hiring for individual worker outcomes has not been... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Selection and Staffing; Employment; Competency and Skills

November–December 2024
Article

Why Employees Quit

By: Ethan Bernstein, Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta

The so-called war for talent is still raging. But in that fight, employers continue to rely on the same hiring and retention strategies they’ve been using for decades. Why? Because they’ve been so focused on challenges such as poaching by industry rivals, competing in... View Details

Keywords: Retention; Recruitment; Talent and Talent Management; Employee Relationship Management; Motivation and Incentives