Publications

October 1981
Background Note

Note on Rewards Systems

By: Michael Beer

Looks at rewards in general, and pay in particular, and studies the conditions that may enhance or detract from employee satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Wages; Organizations; Performance Effectiveness; Motivation and Incentives; Satisfaction

February 1989
Background Note

Note on Attracting Stakeholders

By: Amar Bhide and Howard H. Stevenson

Acquiring resources--or to put it more broadly, attracting stakeholders--is a basic entrepreneurial task. While every enterprise needs employees, customers, suppliers, and financiers who are willing to risk their time and money, attracting these "stakeholders" to an... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Customers; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Human Resources; Organizational Design; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty

19 Oct 2012
News

Past and Present

Sullivan: Fulfilling an age-old human curiosity. Photo courtesy Ancestry.com For Tim Sullivan (MBA 1991), the case method was the perfect way to learn. Sullivan, who is president and CEO of Ancestry.com—the world’s largest online... View Details

Keywords: genealogy; Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services; Information

01 Sep 2009
News

Executive Pay: Onward & Upward

reports on their stock trades and forces CEOs to return pay based on financial results that were later restated. The new disclosure requirements unexpectedly lead to uncovering the widespread practice of backdating options. 2003 With SEC... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Services; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

Profile

Kevin Nazemi

leadership was more about being a facilitator driving implementation. Now I see a leader as someone who manages an ongoing give-and -take, who builds trust and moves people toward a common goal. Real leadership doesn’t just maximize the View Details

16 Feb 2022
News

Holding Business to Account

realized, and they had a say in how a company ran and the ability to influence everything from labor practices to environmental policies. It would be years before the model Aiyer envisioned would be christened “impact investing,” but she... View Details

27 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Gen AI Marketing: How Some 'Gibberish' Code Can Give Products an Edge

on which side you’re looking from.” It also expands the debate around similar practices in search-engine optimization. Just as marketers were able to figure out how to adjust product descriptions to rank higher in search engine... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology

Web

Medium of Artistic Expression - Edwin H. Land & Polaroid | Harvard Business School

Competitiveness Recruit Alumni Recruiting MBA Recruiting Recruiting Resources Alumni Bulletin Baker Library | Bloomberg Center Business History Review Harvard Business Publishing Harvard Business Review HBS Working Knowledge Close Harvard... View Details

01 Jun 2017
News

Alumni and Faculty Books for June 2017

exceptionally favorable factors in France such as its wealth of assets, human capital, and the French brand. And the disadvantages of the system (the burdens of administration, law, and the cost of labor and taxes) are comparatively much... View Details

01 Dec 2010
News

Ilene Lang

pursue the opportunities available to her. I recently had dinner with the se-nior vice president of human resources at a large Fortune 500 company. He said, “Everything that the women employees want are... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; interview; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

25 Feb 2022
Blog Post

Climate Stories

with Jacqueline Adams (MBA 1978). Adams has spent her career as a journalist, author, and convener. Over the next few months, she will share a variety of stories that we hope will teach, inspire, and motivate our readers to create their own positive stories - ones... View Details

01 Mar 2004
News

The New Global Business Manager

Companies are finally recognizing that being global is about accessing scarce resources — and that the scarcest of all is the human resource, particularly management. The assumption that “all the smart,... View Details

Keywords: Management

May 2017
Case

Vicki Fuller: Chief Investment Officer of New York State's $150+ Billion Employee Pension Fund

By: Steven Rogers and Valerie Mosley

Vicki Fuller traveled from a four-room tenement bordering Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects to speaking at conferences around the world and typically holding court wherever she went. As a teenager, she helped raise her siblings. As a Wall Street... View Details

10 Mar 2011
News

Philanthropy’s Dilemma

underperformance,” write Tom Tierney (MBA ’80) and Joel Fleishman, two of the nation’s leading authorities on high-performance giving, in their new book, Give $mart, Philanthropy That Gets Results. “The generosity that causes people to use their wealth on others’... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional, and Similar Organizations; Personal Services

03 Mar 2010
What Do You Think?

To What Degree Does “Identity” Affect Economic Performance?

Summing Up Is "identity" a victim of competitiveness? A recent study of organizational behavior published by Timothy Kieningham and Lerzan Toksoy shows that employees' perceptions of their employers' levels of commitment to them track their own levels of... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

May 2022
Article

When Harry Fired Sally: The Double Standard in Punishing Misconduct

By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru

We examine gender differences in misconduct punishment in the financial advisory industry. We find evidence of a “gender punishment gap”: following an incident of misconduct, female advisers are 20% more likely to lose their jobs and 30% less likely to find new jobs... View Details

Keywords: Financial Advisers; Brokers; Gender Discrimination; Consumer Finance; Financial Misconduct And Fraud; FINRA; Financial Institutions; Employees; Crime and Corruption; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Personal Finance; Financial Services Industry

Find at Harvard

Read Now

May 2019
Supplement

Kjell and Company: Motivating Salespeople with Incentive Compensation (D)

By: Doug J. Chung

Kjell & Company was a Swedish retail electronics chain. The company’s products consisted of home electronics and accessories. The company was noted for its excellent customer service and a fair “one-for-all” HR policy. Historically, the salespeople had been compensated... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Change Management; Behavior; Electronics Industry; Sweden

2018
Working Paper

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

When workers make operational decisions, the firm's global knowledge and the workers’ domain-specific knowledge complement each other. Oftentimes workers have the final decision-making power. Two key decisions a firm makes when designing systems to support these... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Training; Performance Improvement; Money; Mobile Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Services Industry

SSRN

September 2016
Supplement

ZenRecruit: Sales Coaching and Performance Reviews

By: Mark N. Roberge

Amara Kaggwa leads the small but rapidly expanding sales team at ZenRecruit, a recruiting software application used by small businesses. Armed with six months of sales performance metrics, Kaggwa is preparing for her monthly performance conversations with two... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Salesforce Management; Applications and Software; Employees; Performance Evaluation; Information Technology Industry; Retail Industry