Publications

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01 Mar 2011
Working Paper Summaries

How Foundations Think: The Ford Foundation as a Dominating Institution in the Field of American Business Schools

Keywords: by Rakesh Khurana, Kenneth Kimura & Marion Fourcad; Education

January 2025
Case

Untapped Global: Financing Africa's Missing Middle

By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli

In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion... View Details

August 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Technical Note

Congruence Model Note

By: Shon R. Hiatt and James Weber

This note describes the Congruence Model, a method by which an organization can assess whether its building blocks (critical tasks, formal organizational arrangements, people, and culture) are aligned (congruent) with its strategy. The model postulates that... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Business Processes; Alignment

July 9, 2013
Article

Why Fights Erupt in Family Businesses

By: Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer

Lack of boundaries and formal structure create potential for nasty (and lasting) disagreements. View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Conflict and Resolution; Organizational Structure

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2017
Article

Self-Managing Organizations: Exploring the Limits of Less-Hierarchical Organizing

By: Michael Y. Lee and Amy C. Edmondson

Fascination with organizations that eschew the conventional managerial hierarchy and instead radically decentralize authority has been longstanding, albeit at the margins of scholarly and practitioner attention. Recently, however, organizational experiments in radical... View Details

Keywords: Self-Managed Organizations; Self-Managed Teams; Self-organizing Systems; Self-managing Organizations; Flat Organization; Decentralization; Organization Design; Non-hierarchical Organizations; Less-hierarchical Organizing; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Research

January 1990 (Revised June 1995)
Case

Colliers International Property Consultants

By: Nitin Nohria

Describes the origins, organizational structure, management practices, and use of information technology (IT) in Colliers, a real estate network. Colliers provides local firms with a way to maintain local autonomy while gaining national and international coverage.... View Details

Keywords: Property; Organizational Structure; Information Technology; Management Practices and Processes; Partners and Partnerships; Business Model; Mission and Purpose; Business Growth and Maturation; Conflict and Resolution; Quality; Real Estate Industry

Forthcoming
Article

Training, Communications Patterns, and Spillovers Inside Organizations

By: Miguel Espinosa and Christopher T. Stanton

This paper examines how training affects productivity across hierarchical layers within organizations. After a randomized training program for frontline employees at a government agency, trained workers' output increased while their requests for managerial assistance... View Details

Keywords: Spillovers; Labor Productivity; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Training; Performance Productivity

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October 2006 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Clinical Change at Intermountain Healthcare

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Erika Ferlins

Provides a detailed description of the way in which several improvements and innovations in clinical care were arrived at. Describes individual insights, how these were evaluated and validated, and how they were translated into improved medical practices. The changes... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Business Processes; Performance Improvement; Practice; Health Industry

February 2006
Case

Bumble and bumble: Building a Successful Business in Beauty and Fashion

By: Nancy F. Koehn and Erica Helms

Explores the creation and subsequent rise of Bumble and bumble, a trend-setting hair-care company. Analyzes the vision and achievements of the founding entrepreneur, Michael Gordon, and charts the evolution of the company within the $230 billion global beauty industry.... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Brands and Branding; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Strategy; Financial Condition; Business Growth and Maturation; Success; Distribution; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Fashion Industry

September – October 2008
Article

Care Platforms: A Basic Building Block for Care Delivery

By: Richard Bohmer and David Lawrence

Without significant operational reform within the nation's health care delivery organizations, new financing models, payment systems, or structures are unlikely to realize their promise. Adapting insights from high-performing companies in other high-risk, high-cost,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management Systems; Standards; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Business Processes; Organizational Design; Customization and Personalization; Health Industry

2003
Working Paper

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Managerial Roles; Jobs and Positions; United States

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Research Summary

Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization

This is a descriptive study of the structure of communications in a modern organization. We analyze a dataset with millions of electronic mail messages, calendar meetings and teleconferences for many thousands of employees of a single, multidivisional firm during a... View Details

February 2013
Case

New Enterprise Associates

By: Felda Hardymon and Tom Nicholas

NEA was established in 1977 and it subsequently morphed into one of the largest venture capital firms in the world. Despite its size and significance, some other firms established during the same era such as Kleiner-Perkins and Sequoia (both were established in 1972),... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Venture Capital; Organizational Structure; Innovation and Invention; Financial Services Industry; United States

18 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, July 18, 2017

positively select into negotiations on observable characteristics of the negotiation environment, only women positively select on unobservables such as their ability to negotiate. Organizational Structures... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2019
Working Paper

Improving Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: The Role of Institutional Environments and Monitoring Program Design

By: Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill

Activism seeking to improve labor conditions in global supply chains has led transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct and monitor suppliers for compliance, but it is unclear whether these formal organizational structures raise labor standards. Drawing on... View Details

SSRN

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04 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Is Your Org Chart Stuck in a Rut? Try a Scientific Experiment

If you want to be awed by the pace of technological advancement over the past few decades, compare the capabilities of a bulky PC from 1984 with those of a sleek smartphone in 2016. You’ll find stark differences. But if you want to be underwhelmed, try comparing a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Research Summary

Overview

Yusaku's interests lie in the dynamics of shared beliefs, shared values, and organizational capabilities, as well as the role of leadership in them. Of particular approach is to understand the ways in which beliefs become justified, socially, so as to become "justified... View Details

2017
Working Paper

Empowering Bureaucracy: Achieving Non-Hierarchical Control and Employee Autonomy Through Dynamic Formal Roles

By: Michael Lee

Hierarchy and formal structure are conventionally viewed as two tightly coupled dimensions of organization design. As organizations move from more hierarchical to less hierarchical authority structures, they also tend to reduce formal structure. However, organic... View Details

Keywords: Organization Design; Autonomy; Decentralization; Self-Managed Organizations; Formalization; Roles; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Management Systems