Executive Ability (Management) - Publications - Faculty & Research

13 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

How to Pick Managers for Disruptive Growth

hiring executives classify candidates by right-stuff attributes. They assume that successful managers can be identified using phrases such as "good communicator," "results oriented,"... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Raynor

2024
Chapter

Managing for Organisational Integrity: My Take After Three Decades

By: Lynn S. Paine

This chapter revisits core ideas from my 1994 article “Managing for Organizational Integrity” and explores a critical issue not discussed in the article: the role of corporate boards. In the chapter, I first re-examine the article’s ideas about the origins of... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Ethics; Corporate Governance

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05 Dec 2007
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Marketing

productivity, says Professor Gail J. McGovern. In this Q&A, she discusses what executives can do to repair the split and introduces a new diagnostic tool for measuring marketing performance used in the HBS View Details

01 Jun 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Stakeholder Management Facing New Headwinds?

concluded that this thinking gained momentum after the scandalous failure of organizations like WorldCom and Enron 20 years ago. These companies supposedly were led and managed for the primary benefit of shareholders (and the top View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Article

The Translucent Hand of Managed Ecosystems: Engaging Communities for Value Creation and Capture

By: Elizabeth J. Altman, Frank Nagle and Michael Tushman

Management research has increasingly explored the domains of ecosystems, platforms, and open/user/distributed innovation—governance structures focused on engaging with external communities. While these research areas include substantial empirical and theoretical work... View Details

Keywords: Ecosystems; Platforms; Open And User Innovation Strategy; Capabilities; Governance; Innovation Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Value Creation

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04 Mar 2014
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation

Should managers lead innovation or get out of the way? It's not an either/or decision. Executives of some great innovative companies—Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg—are active participants in... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

1999
Other Unpublished Work

Executive Ownership and Control in Newly Public Firms: The Role of Venture Capitalists

By: Malcolm Baker and Paul Gompers

We study the implications of CEO equity ownership for incentives and control in a sample of 1,011 newly public firms. Before an initial public offering, equity investments by venture capitalists reduce CEO ownership by about half, from an average of 35 percent to 19... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Ownership; Motivation and Incentives; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Venture Capital; Managerial Roles; Cost Management; Governance Controls; Executive Compensation

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17 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Rating Fund Managers by the Company They Keep

stock picks of fund managers have outperformed the market. It's just that fees and trading costs have more than eaten up those stock-picking profits. Our approach appears far better able to identify stock-picking View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

24 Oct 2007
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation

innovative solutions? Can Innovation And Creativity Be Managed? High Note: Managing the Medici String Quartet Many managers in business experience difficulty dealing with their best creative thinkers. So how... View Details

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

Thanks to technology and instant global communication, it has never been easier for companies to seek solutions to problems or find new ideas from sources outside their own corporate walls. But the art of managing these external... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

June 2010 (Revised April 2017)
Teaching Note

Pfizer: Letter from the Chairman (A) and (B)

By: Robert Simons and Kathryn Rosenberg

Teaching Note for 110003 and 110004. View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Strategy And Execution; Performance Measurement; Pharmaceutical Industry

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14 May 2007
Research & Ideas

The Key to Managing Stars? Think Team

can really impact your performance. But losing those ties, especially ties to the top performing colleagues, can be detrimental to maintaining top performance. Q: How should managers at the firm level evaluate their organization's... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2018
Chapter

The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Paul Verdin

Despite discussion in the management literature about agile organizations or learning organizations, many large organizations are top-down, slow to change, and fraught with obstacles to learning. We describe “strategy-as-learning” to contrast with the traditional... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Learning; Safety; Organizational Culture; Performance Consistency

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May 2017
Supplement

ATH Technologies (D)

By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard

Supplements the (A) case. Designed as an on-class handout. View Details

Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Performance Management; Balancing Innovation And Control; Health Industry

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May 1990 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Note on Financial Reporting Strategy and Analysis When Managers Have Proprietary Information

By: Krishna G. Palepu

Provides a framework that helps explain these real-world observations about accounting and financial statement analysis. When managers have superior information on firms' strategies, and when investors suspect that managers have incentives not to fully disclose this... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Strategy; Knowledge Management

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05 Jul 2023
What Do You Think?

How Are Middle Managers Falling Down Most Often on Employee Inclusion?

(iStockphoto/AzmanL) Search “inclusion” on Amazon and the majority of book entries that come up are for children. Is that an indicator of the current state of management art on the subject? Fortunately, there is a growing body of research... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Teaching Interest

Performance Management for Nonprofit Organizations (Executive Education, Faculty Co-chair)

This Executive Education course —a joint program presented by the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative and Harvard University's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations—explores the impact of measurement on resource allocation, organizational learning, internal processes,... View Details

May 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Case

EY China (A): Strengthening Presence in a Critical Market

By: Ashish Nanda, Das Narayandas and Lisa Rohrer

Soon after being named regional managing partner for Ernst & Young (EY) China in September 2009, Albert Ng reflects on the enormity of challenges facing EY China. Despite EY Global's commitment to the China practice, EY China’s growth agenda has been reversed, post... View Details