Publications

November 2018 (Revised July 2023)
Case

The Weir Group: Reforming Executive Pay (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Federica Gabrieli

In February 2018, the Remuneration Committee together with the full Board of Directors of the Scotland-based engineering company The Weir Group had to decide whether to seek a shareholder vote at the upcoming Annual General Meeting in April on a proposal to reform the... View Details

03 Dec 2020
Research & Ideas

Cut Payroll Costs with Transparency, Fairness, and Compassion

Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Sarah Abbott is a research associate at Harvard Business School. [Image: InYang] How humane is your organization when it comes to cost reductions involving employees? Share... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott

13 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

Don't Turn Your Marketing Function Over to AI Just Yet

envisioned “virtual market” machine could become a reality but would still require one missing ingredient: a soul. The “soul” is our human intuition, scientific expertise, awareness of customer preferences, and industry knowledge—all... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

29 Sep 2022
Op-Ed

Inclusive Leadership Advice: Get Comfortable With the Uncomfortable

“Difference is an acquired preference,” a colleague once told me. The statement seemed rather strange to me at first. Upon reflection, though, I understood what my colleague was saying: Difference is uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and sometimes even unsafe. Whether it is... View Details

Keywords: by Francesca Gino

June 2013
Supplement

Hexcel Turnaround—2001 (Video Supplement)

This is the Video Supplement for Hexcel Turnaround - 2001(A), (B) and (C), HBS Cases 806099, 806100, 806101. View Details

06 Jul 2016
What Do You Think?

How Do We Pay for the Costs of Globalization?

three-sentence summary of responses to this month’s very thorny question on how the human and societal costs caused by globalization can be remedied. As if the topic were not sufficiently complex, Hugh Quick questioned my use of the term... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett; Manufacturing

07 Aug 2013
What Do You Think?

Is There Still a Role for Judgment in Decision-Making?

Summing Up What is the Proper Role of Judgment in Decision-Making? There is a seemingly universal (and currently popular) quest for rational processes—what Hamilton Carvalho terms "cognitive repairs"—to counter the foibles of View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Research Summary

Trust

By: Sandra J. Sucher

In this research, I aim to provide a practical orientation to trust—how to build it, how it can be damaged, how it might be repaired—grounded in my experience as an executive and in the research on organizational trust and moral philosophy. As a case researcher, I... View Details

07 Jun 2004
Research & Ideas

What Drives Supply Chain Behavior?

types of process. Unfortunately, just identifying biases is not enough to get rid of them. We humans are resilient in our beliefs and assumptions. Intervention needs to be at the processes(roles, activities) and structural levels... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston

03 May 2017
Book

The Clear Connection Between Slavery and American Capitalism

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2024
Working Paper

The Crowdless Future? Generative AI and Creative Problem Solving

By: Léonard Boussioux, Jacqueline N. Lane, Miaomiao Zhang, Vladimir Jacimovic and Karim R. Lakhani

The rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) open up attractive opportunities for creative problem-solving through human-guided AI partnerships. To explore this potential, we initiated a crowdsourcing challenge focused on sustainable, circular economy... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Models; Crowdsourcing; Generative Ai; Creative Problem-solving; Organizational Search; AI-in-the-loop; Prompt Engineering; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

Read Now

April 2021 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Capitalism, Slavery, and Reparations

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Cary Williams

The birth of “Modern Economic Growth” constituted a watershed in human history, allowing societies to escape the Malthusian impasse and permanently raise living standards. While the new growth regime had lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty over the last... View Details

Keywords: Reparations; Living Standards; Poverty; Social Issues; Economic Growth; Equality and Inequality; Globalized Economies and Regions; Human Needs

April 1983 (Revised October 2000)
Case

People Express (A)

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Debra Whitestone

Describes the start up, strategy, organizational design, and operations over the first eighteen months of the airline. Focuses on the creative use of human resources as an integral part of the business strategy. View Details

Keywords: Human Capital; Air Transportation; Organizational Design; Operations; Business Startups; Business Strategy; Air Transportation Industry; United States

June 2008 (Revised January 2010)
Case

Name Your Price: Compensation Negotiation at Whole Health Management (A)

By: Brian J. Hall, Deepak Malhotra and Nicole Bennett

MBA student Monroe Davies is asked by a potential employer to determine his own compensation package. This case follows Jim Hummer, President and CEO of Whole Health Management and Davies through a unique recruitment process that raises questions of compensation and... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Job Interviews; Negotiation Process; Personal Development and Career; Motivation and Incentives; Value

06 Jun 2008
What Do You Think?

Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?

According to the Zaltmans, while nearly all research techniques commonly used today probe humans only at their conscious level, the subconscious (offering deep insights) really determines behavior, and that explains why View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

01 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The ‘Luxury Prime’: How Luxury Changes People

Y.J. Chua and Xi Zou, an assistant professor at London Business School, suggest that luxury goods have an important effect on human behavior that is only now becoming clear—and that may have implications for addressing the continuation of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

February 2010 (Revised January 2013)
Case

The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Mona Sinha

Describes the Mumbai-based Dabbawala organization, which achieves very high service performance (6 Sigma equivalent or better) with a low-cost and very simple operating system. The case explores all aspects of their system (mission, information management, material... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Logistics; Alignment; Management Systems; Human Resources; Innovation and Invention; Mumbai

June 2000
Case

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

Four Seasons has a love/hate relationship with technology, including the best Web site in the industry. This case examines how a leading service delivers high-tech/high-touch, and looks at its progressive human resource strategy. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Service Operations; Accommodations Industry

2023
Working Paper

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement