Publications

2009
Chapter

Organizational Design: Balancing Search and Stability in Strategic Decision Making

By: Jan Rivkin and Nicolaj Siggelkow

Managers often must make decisions that depend on decisions in other parts of the organization. These interactions create a network of interdependent choices and make strategizing difficult. In this chapter, the authors explore the intersection between organizing and... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Strategy; Balance and Stability

November 2000 (Revised July 2001)
Case

Intuit QuickBooks

By: Rajiv Lal and Punima P Kochikar

Internet QuickBooks, a successful product with a strong brand and an 85% share of retail sales, was faced with the challenge of meeting market growth expectations in a mature, slowing market segment. Generating recurring revenues by providing value-added online... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Decisions; Growth and Development; Brands and Branding; Market Participation; Problems and Challenges; Internet and the Web; Value; Web Services Industry

Web

Community Values | About

today includes a wide range of courses that deal with the issues of ethics and leadership. For example, Leadership and Corporate Accountability is an interdisciplinary course that draws on economics, law, psychology, and organizational behavior to help prepare students... View Details

01 Sep 2023
News

That Was Then, This Is Now

It started with a question. But before that, it started in the classroom. Tony Deifell (MBA 2002) loved the discussions in his LEAD course, taught by Professor (and now former Dean) Nitin Nohria; wanting to make them more tangible, Deifell adapted the idea of... View Details

Keywords: Photographed by Tony Deifell (MBA 2002); edited by Julia Hanna. Above: Heidi Brooks, photographed in 2003 and 2023.; life experience; family; leadership

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

Taken together, they suggest there are three critical hurdles or challenges that management faces in any restructuring program: 1. Design. What type of restructuring is appropriate for dealing with the specific challenge, problem, or... View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

August 1992 (Revised December 1994)
Case

Sexual Harassment, Free Speech or ...?

By: Lynn S. Paine

Presents two brief vignettes about female employees who object to gender discrimination in their work environment. In one case, the manager of a convenience store removes "adult" magazines from the store's shelves because she sees them as damaging to women. In the... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Working Conditions; Law; Behavior; Managerial Roles; Crime and Corruption; Groups and Teams; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Gender

Web

Healthy Outcomes - Managing the Future of Work

Stacey Vanek Smith & Cardiff Garcia 24 Dec 2018 | The Indicator William Kerr on ‘The Gift of Global Talent’ James Pethokoukis 21 Dec 2018 | AEI: Political Economy The Global HR Challenge William R. Kerr 18 Dec 2018 | HR.com The Innovation... View Details

September 2019 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Cooking Down a Storm: Changing Culture at Pasta Serafina (A)

By: Susanna Gallani, Francesca Gino and Raffaella Sadun

Plant management at Pasta Serafina, a pasta producer in the south of Italy, is struggling to contain employee absenteeism. While the misbehavior is concentrated in a minority of the workers, its effects impact not only the plant’s performance, but also the climate and... View Details

Keywords: Absenteeism; Moral Hazard; Employees; Behavior; Problems and Challenges; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Productivity; Decision Making

Web

Summer Fellowships | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

SE Summer Fellow Amal Tariq (MBA 2025) Amal Tariq 22 Jul 2024 Community Vitalization through the Arts: SE Summer Fellow Tyler Vo (MBA 2025) Tyler Vo 26 Jun 2024 70 Summer Fellows, 2024 2133 Summer Fellows since 1982 INITIATIVES focus on societal View Details

Research Summary

Creating Corporate Value Added

By: Joseph L. Bower

In response to dramatic changes in the business environment--hypercompetition in many traditional industries, short product life cycles, and new competitors based in emerging nations--successful companies have responded by repositioning themselves in the global markets... View Details

February 1993 (Revised October 1993)
Case

Brent Walker Group PLC,The

The Brent Walker Group completed the largest out-of-court restructuring in the United Kingdom. After overexpansion in the 1980s, the company pursued a large acquisition financed with debt and then encountered falling asset prices. With the assistance of the Bank of... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; United Kingdom

May 2025
Case

Boutiqaat: Influencing Retail in MENA

By: Juan Alcacer and Noor Al Qadhi

Boutiqaat, a Kuwait-based e-commerce platform, scaled an influencer-driven beauty retail model across MENA and now faces critical strategic choices about offline expansion and globalization. Founded in 2015, Boutiqaat combined social commerce, localized logistics, and... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Digital Strategy; Growth and Development; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Retail Industry; Kuwait; Saudi Arabia; Middle East; North Africa

December 13, 2022
Article

What Elon Musk Can Learn from Steve Jobs’s Return to Apple

By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic

Changing the strategic direction of an existing company is among the hardest management challenges out there. Most attempts fail. In trying to remake Twitter, Elon Musk has a daunting task ahead of him. There’s precedent, however, for dramatically reimagining a major... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Corporate Strategy; Change Management; Transformation

October 6, 2020
Article

COVID-19 Is Rewriting the Rules of Corporate Governance

By: Lynn S. Paine

Boards are facing a complex new reality as a result of COVID-19. The new environment is characterized by pressures and demands from various stakeholder groups, heightened expectations for societal engagement and corporate citizenship, and radical uncertainty about the... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards

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Article

History-informed Strategy Research: The Promise of History and Historical Research Methods in Advancing Strategy Scholarship

By: Nicholas Argyres, Alfredo De Massis, Nicolai J. Foss, Federico Frattini, Geoffrey Jones and Brian Silverman

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in the use of history and historical research methods in strategy research. This article discusses how and why history and historical research methods can enrich theoretical explanations of strategy phenomena. The article... View Details

Keywords: Methodology; Strategy; Business History; Research; History

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September 2017 (Revised March 2019)
Supplement

Henry Kissinger: Negotiating Black Majority Rule in Rhodesia (B)

By: James K. Sebenius and Laurence A. Green

In 1976, United States Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger conducted a series of intricate, multiparty negotiations in Southern Africa to persuade white Rhodesian leader Ian Smith to accede to black majority rule. Conducted near the end of President Gerald Ford’s... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Race; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Deal; Government and Politics; Africa; United States

2019
Chapter

The Case Method

By: Joseph L. Bower

The case method was developed concurrently with the emergence of business schools as a way of teaching future executives evidence-based problem solving in the classroom. Harvard Business School faculty led in developing the method. A particular challenge in the writing... View Details

Keywords: Case Method; Case Studies; Case Teaching; Problem-based Learning; Cases; Learning; Teaching

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