Publications

February 3, 2020
Article

Should Your Family Business Have a "No In-Laws" Policy?

By: Christina R. Wing and Rohit K. Gera

Should in-laws, even if they’re highly qualified, work in the family business? While there’s no “one-size-fits-all” guideline, if you are considering involving in-laws in the family business, it’s important to think through some general policies in advance. Document a... View Details

Keywords: Family and Family Relationships; Family Business; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure

16 Sep 2002
Research & Ideas

The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs

work in exploring the forces that govern the process of CEO change. I have conducted research in four interrelated areas: factors that lead to vacancies in the CEO position; factors that affect the choice of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

office to go to and no work to do. Managers were told to expect the five stages of grief from their upset subordinates—the Kübler-Ross model typically associated with handling death. Senior leaders told... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

March 2016
Article

Where in the World are the Workers? Cultural Underrepresentation in I-O Research

By: Christopher G. Myers

Few would dispute that the nature of work, and the workers who perform it, has evolved considerably in the 70 years since the founding of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) as the American Psychological Association's (APA's) Division 14,... View Details

Keywords: Global Organizations; Research; Industrial Organization; Organizations; Globalization

April 2009 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Buro Happold

By: Robert G. Eccles and Kerry Herman

Padraic Kelly became Managing Director (MD) of the engineering services firm Buro Happold in 1996. One of his first initiatives was "Aim for Growth," which was intended to help the firm grow beyond its current size where it was constrained by a structure of having each... View Details

Keywords: Training; Entrepreneurship; Leadership Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Skills; Organizational Culture; Programs

23 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Setting the Stage: A Young Scholar at HBS

Rohit Daniel Wadhwani's research and teaching interests lie in business and financial history and public policy. He received his B.A. with honors from Yale College in 1991. From 1991 to 1995 he worked as a View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard; Banking; Financial Services

26 Apr 2016
First Look

April 26

the infant private sector in urban China. We show that a reform that untied access to housing in urban areas from working for the state sector accounts for more than a quarter of the overall increase in labor supply to the private sector... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

Instead, when the company wouldn’t pay them for their lunch hour, they intentionally scheduled deliveries to show up midday, when there wasn’t anyone working to receive them, sabotaging the project. “Top View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

December 2011 (Revised May 2014)
Case

ReSource Pro

By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr, Elisabeth Koll and David Lane

Matt Bruno, founder and general manager of ReSource Pro, left his job working for a New York City-based insurance program shortly after the World Trade Center bombing and arrived in China. Initially he planned to teach English, but soon the entrepreneurial spirit of... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Talent and Talent Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Insurance Industry; Service Industry; China

January 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Cisco Systems (2001): Building and Sustaining a Customer-Centric Culture

By: Ranjay Gulati

Customer centricity has been an important part of the culture at Cisco Systems since its inception. While part of this is attributable to values put in place by the founders and retained by subsequent management, it is also closely interwoven with its organizational... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Research and Development; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Employees; Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Business Units

Article

Breakthroughs and the 'Long Tail' of Innovation

The largely erroneous perception that breakthroughs are impossible to predict arises from the tendency to focus on just the breakthroughs while ignoring the iterative process of invention and its distribution of outcomes. When all inventions are considered, they... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Business Processes; Performance Capacity; Performance Improvement

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Read Now

24 Jul 2012
First Look

First Look: July 24

information has increased considerably in the last decade, companies are still failing to disclose material information in a comparable format. We believe this has two downsides. On the one hand, companies are not adequately managing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change

to fold AI into everyday work tasks? De Freitas offers some suggestions: For now, proceed cautiously when using AI in fast-changing conditions. Managers should be aware of when using an algorithm will speed... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

May 2008
Article

When Winning Is Everything

By: Deepak Malhotra, Gillian Ku and J. Keith Murnighan

In the heat of competition, executives can easily become obsessed with beating their rivals. This adrenaline-fueled emotional state, which the authors call competitive arousal, often leads to bad decisions. Managers can minimize the potential for competitive arousal... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Behavior; Emotions; Personal Characteristics; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage

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22 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Make AI 'Forget' All the Private Data It Shouldn't Have

underpin this technology typically subsume the information that users enter, helping the software provide better answers over time. Working Knowledge spoke with Seth Neel, an expert on machine “unlearning” who is an assistant professor at... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

January 2006 (Revised December 2006)
Case

Wal-Mart's Business Environment

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee

In 2004, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. proposed to build a new supercenter in Inglewood, a low-income community near Los Angeles. The proposal was a part of Wal-Mart's strategy to bring its supercenter format to California. Introduced in the late 1980s, supercenters added a... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Corporate Strategy; Labor Unions; Conflict and Resolution; Retail Industry; Los Angeles

08 Aug 2024
Blog Post

Leading With Curiosity: Mayowa Kuyoro (MBA 2015)

2015 as an Associate. Since that time, she has been recognized for her exceptional work with promotions to Engagement Manager and Associate Partner, and in 2021, she became the first Business Analyst to make... View Details

30 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers

research team recently set out to better understand what managers can do to encourage employees to speak up about problems, and to investigate how managers can encourage employees to offer solutions. The... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

November 2016
Case

Jollibee Foods Corporation

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly

When Tony Tan Caktiong stepped down as president and CEO of Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC) in mid-2014, Ernesto Tanmantiong, his younger brother, succeeded him. In 2016, the brothers were working together to realize the company’s vision of making JFC a truly... View Details

Keywords: Values; Vision; Fast Food; Values and Beliefs; Goals and Objectives; Expansion; Philippines