Publications

18 Jun 2015
News

Working Out With Your Co-Workers Is as Bad as You Think

September 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Shinsei Bank: Developing an Integrated Firm

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Masako Egawa

Tom Pedersen, newly appointed chief learning officer (CLO) of Shinsei Bank in Japan, pondered how he could facilitate development of an integrated culture and transformation of the organization. Shinsei Bank had not developed longstanding tradition or a strong... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Cooperation; Diversity; Japan

02 Dec 2019
What Do You Think?

How Does a Company like Boeing Respond to Intense Competitive Pressure?

in understanding between departments staffed with employees whose responsibilities and training vary widely? Inherent organizational conflict takes many forms—for example, between home office staff (“who don’t understand how the business... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Air Transportation

31 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

You’re Wasting Your Employees! What You Can Do About It

operations of any company that wishes to flourish in the new age. And yet, a decade of organizational delayering, destaffing, restructuring, and reengineering has produced employees who are more exhausted than empowered, more cynical than... View Details

Keywords: by Christopher A. Bartlett & Sumantra Ghoshal

06 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

The Growth of the Social Enterprise

expansion. In contrast, across all organizational structures, the benefits from both brand and organizational learning were considerably greater than our survey respondents... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

March 2005 (Revised April 2005)
Module Note

A Relational Approach to Self-Assessment and Career Development

By: Monica C. Higgins

Describes the main ideas in a module on relational self-assessment as part of a course on self-assessment and career development or as part of a course on leadership and organizational behavior for MBA students or executives. Reflects a "relational" approach to career... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Relationships; Leadership; Organizations; Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks

2011
Chapter

Developing an Effective Organization: Intervention Method, Empirical Evidence, and Theory

By: Michael Beer

The field of organization development is fragmented and lacks a coherent and integrated theory and method for developing an effective organization. A 20-year action research program led to the development and evaluation of the Strategic Fitness Process (SFP)-a platform... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Corporate Governance; Leadership Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Teams; Organizational Design; Performance Effectiveness; Research; Alignment; Theory; Value

February 2013
Case

LEGO (A): The Crisis

By: Jan W. Rivkin, Stefan H. Thomke and Daniela Beyersdorfer

As this case opens, iconic toymaker LEGO stands on the brink of bankruptcy. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, LEGO's young and newly appointed CEO, must size up changes in the toy industry, learn from the company's recent moves, and craft a strategy that will put LEGO back on... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Competitive Strategy; Crisis Management; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Consumer Products Industry

Frances Frei is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders accelerate performance and design for excellence in leadership, strategy, and operations. She regularly advises senior executives... View Details

Keywords: airline; banking; fast food; financial services; health care; hotels ＆ motels; management consulting; media; nonprofit industry; professional services; retail financial services; service industry; sports; telecommunications; tourism; travel

2018
Book

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

By: Amy C. Edmondson

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation,... View Details

Keywords: Psychological Safety; Knowledge Economy; Teaming; Management; Organizational Culture; Innovation and Management; Learning

Find at Harvard

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative. Hill is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership and innovation. Hill is... View Details

Article

Making Exit Interviews Count

By: Everett Spain and Boris Groysberg

In the knowledge economy, skilled employees are the assets that drive organizational success. Thus companies must learn from them—why they stay, why they leave, and how the organization needs to change. A thoughtful exit interview—whether it be a face-to-face... View Details

Keywords: Information; Management Practices and Processes; Retention; Resignation and Termination

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

September 2003 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Best Buy Co., Inc. (A): An Innovator's Journey

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Brian DeLacey

The CEO of Best Buy, a hugely successful retailing company, has hired consulting firm Strategos to imbue the company with an improved innovative capability. The six-month program of experimental learning yields new business ideas and also trains Best Buy employees as... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Management Teams; Creativity; Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employees; Learning; Training; Programs; Retail Industry; United States

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Benjamin C. Esty

I created and teach a course called Strategies for Value Creation (SVC). It is designed to be a capstone course in the Elective Curriculum (EC or second year of the MBA program) that integrates and further develops concepts developed in several Required Curriculum (RC... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Finance; Value Creation; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Financial Management

2023
Book

Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems

By: Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss

Speed has gotten a bad name in business, much of it deserved. When Facebook made "Move fast and break things" an informal company motto, it fueled a widely held belief that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. That a certain amount of... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Performance Improvement; Problems and Challenges; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture

25 Nov 2008
First Look

First Look: November 25, 2008

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14483 The Flattening Firm and Product Market Competition: The Effect of Trade Liberalization Authors: Maria Guadalupe and Julie M. Wulf Abstract This paper establishes a causal effect of competition from trade liberalization on various... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

05 Jul 2023
Cold Call Podcast

How Unilever Is Preparing for the Future of Work

Keywords: Re: William R. Kerr; Retail; Consumer Products

Meeting the Challenge of Corporate Entrepreneurship

To be competitive, companies must grow innovative new businesses. Corporate entrepreneurship, however, isn't easy. New ventures face innumerable barriers and seldom mesh smoothly with well-established systems, processes, and cultures. Nonetheless, success requires a... View Details

March 2023 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Accelerating AI Adoption in the U.S. Air Force

By: Maria P. Roche and Alexander Farrow

In August 2022, the Pentagon tasked U.S. Air Force Captain Victor Lopez to launch a new office for AFWERX, an Air Force innovation unit that leveraged commercial developers and military talent to acquire advanced technologies. This task was particularly arduous because... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Organizational Design; AI and Machine Learning; Adoption; Technology Adoption; United States