Publications

August 1995 (Revised September 1995)
Background Note

Designing and Managing the Information Age IT Architecture

By: Lynda M. Applegate

The co-evolution of technology, work, and the workforce over the past 30 years has dramatically influenced our concept of organizations and the industries within which they compete. No longer simply a tool to support "back-office" transactions, IT has become a... View Details

Keywords: Design; Management; Organizations; Information Technology

December 2012
Background Note

Glossary of Municipal Finance Terms

A note on municipal bond structuring. View Details

Keywords: Local Government; Political Process; Debt Management; Financial Planning; Financial Management; Bonds; Urban Development; Local Range; Government Administration

Teaching Interest

Technology and Operations Management - MBA Required Curriculum

This course enables students to develop the skills and concepts needed to ensure the ongoing contribution of a firm's operations to its competitive position. It helps them to understand the complex processes underlying the development and manufacture of products as... View Details

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

for natural gas, and to create derivative supply contracts that could help customers manage the risks of demand volatility and price swings more effectively than before. In this way, Skilling and his colleagues solved a major contracting... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

January 2013
Case

Cabot Corporation: The Fuel Cell Decision (A)

By: Willy Shih and Ying Zhou

Managers at Cabot Corporation are faced with deciding the future of its fuel cell program. The (A) case recounts the view of the business manager and the technical project lead, and the (B) case describes the perspective of a senior manager who is the head of the New... View Details

11 Aug 2006 - 15 Aug 2006
Conference Presentation

A Match Made in Heaven? Joining Leadership Competencies to the Process of Organizational Change

By: Julie Battilana, M.J. Gilmartin, A.-C. Pache, M. Sengul and J. Alexander

Keywords: Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change; Management Practices and Processes

August 2018
Case

Four Products: Predicting Diffusion (2018)

By: John Gourville

One job of product managers, marketers, strategic planners, and other corporate executives is to predict what the demand will be for a new product. This task is easier for certain classes of new products than for others. For new consumer package goods, for instance,... View Details

Keywords: Diffusion Processes; Product Adoption; Marketing; Forecasting and Prediction; Demand and Consumers; Adoption; Product Launch

Article

Organizational Ambidexterity in Action: How Managers Explore and Exploit

By: Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman

Dynamic capabilities have been proposed as a useful way to understand how organizations are able to adapt to changes in technology and markets. Organizational ambidexterity, the ability of senior managers to seize opportunities through the orchestration and integration... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Management Practices and Processes; Resource Allocation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Opportunities

Find at Harvard

30 Apr 2024
Book

When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners

organization, says Paine, a Baker Foundation Professor. In fact, the fault often lies with managers who set unrealistic deadlines, production targets, or other objectives that lead decent people to take shortcuts to achieve the goal... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Web

General Management - Faculty & Research

programs: Management Policy and Process Management Information Systems Society and Enterprise Leadership, Values, and Corporate Responsibility Recent Publications How to Build... View Details

Article

Conversational Receptiveness: Expressing Engagement with Opposing Views

By: M. Yeomans, J. Minson, H. Collins, H. Chen and F. Gino

We examine “conversational receptiveness”—the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then... View Details

Keywords: Receptiveness; Natural Language Processing; Disagreement; Interpersonal Communication; Relationships; Conflict Management

Read Now

13 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

How to Pick Managers for Disruptive Growth

succeed in that context. The "graduates" of this school would have finely honed operational skills in managing quality programs, process improvement teams, and cost-control efforts. Even the most... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Raynor

March 2014
Case

Managing Change at Axis Bank (A)

By: Paul Healy and Rachna Tahilyani

Axis Bank is India's third largest private sector bank. In April 2009, Shikha Sharma, an outsider, was appointed as its CEO. She took over from a person who had overseen ten years of rapid growth at the bank. The selection of an outsider as the new CEO surprised many... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Valuation; Finance; Banks and Banking; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; India

Research Summary

The role of the manager in cross-sector interactions

My second stream of research takes the individual manager as the unit of analysis in examining cross-sector interactions. Two papers explore processes and mechanisms that allow managers to cross sectoral boundaries more effectively.

The first paper... View Details

Web

Online Management Course | HBS Online

and look at the management processes within each—what worked and what didn't—provided a unique method of learning, and incomparable to other course offerings available. Monica Higgins Account Director at... View Details

13 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

Managing the Support Staff Identity Crisis

adversarial custodians." More often than not, support staffers are unhappy about this role. They would rather identify themselves as necessary and important, not as innovation blockers. But when Gulati asks managers in finance, HR,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

22 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

Manager Visibility No Guarantee of Fixing Problems

Motions: An Empirical Test of Management Involvement in Process Improvement," HBS professor Anita L. Tucker and Harvard School of Public Health professor Sara J. Singer show that communicating with... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

2010
Simulation

Change Management Simulation: Power and Influence

By: Linda A. Hill and William Q. Judge

In this single-player simulation, students play one of two roles at a sunglass manufacturing firm and face the challenges associated with implementing an organization-wide environmental sustainability initiative. The initiative seeks to change raw material inputs in... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Power and Influence; Problems and Challenges; Environmental Sustainability; Production; Wastes and Waste Processing; Adoption