Publications

30 Apr 2024
Book

When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners

management and organisational practices. By this time, social science research had already shown that people’s behaviour is shaped as much by situational and contextual factors as by individual character. The 1963 Milgram experiments by... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2010
Chapter

The Many Faces of Nonprofit Accountability

By: Alnoor Ebrahim

Calls for greater accountability are not new. Leaders of organizations, be they nonprofit, business, or government, face a constant stream of demands from various constituents demanding accountable behavior. But what does it mean to be accountable? By and large,... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Corporate Accountability; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Taxation; Leadership; Management; Nonprofit Organizations; Behavior; Trust

January 2023
Case

Thomas Buberl: Refounding AXA

By: Hubert Joly, Mihir Desai and Amram Migdal

In 2022, AXA and its CEO Thomas Buberl faced new types of challenges, including systemic risks such as climate change, geopolitical instability, public health crises, and social tensions caused by economic risks. AXA was one of the world’s largest insurers. Since... View Details

August 2020
Teaching Note

Sesame Workshop (C): Mission Critical Responses to Global and National Crises

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

Teaching Note for Case No. 321-016. Beginning in March 2020, Sesame Workshop navigated a global pandemic, which caused unemployment, businesses shutdowns, school closures, and remote work environments along with a racial justice crisis, with a renewed mission that led... View Details

Keywords: Pandemic; Children; Health Pandemics; Social Issues; Crisis Management; Mission and Purpose; Education; Leadership; Education Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

September 1999 (Revised November 1999)
Case

Explore, Inc.

By: Allen S. Grossman, James E. Austin, Myra M. Hart and Sharon Peyus

Documents the creation of a national before and after-school day care program aimed at bridging the gap between school and parents' work schedules. This high-growth, for-profit social enterprise organization operated in what was historically the domain of nonprofit or... View Details

Keywords: Microeconomics; Growth and Development; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Mission and Purpose; Performance Expectations; Quality; Social Enterprise; Travel Industry

14 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age

and uncharted ways. Trusting executives: Distribute authority. It’s important to shake the command-control model, which depends on hierarchy and rules. Leaders must learn to exercise influence without relying on formal authority. They set the organizational... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards; Technology

2023
Working Paper

The Subjective Expected Utility Approach and a Framework for Defining Project Risk in Terms of Novelty and Feasibility—A Response to Franzoni and Stephan (2023), ‘Uncertainty and Risk-Taking in Science’

By: Jacqueline N. Lane

In their Discussion Paper, Franzoni and Stephan (F&S, 2023) discuss the shortcomings of existing peer review models in shaping the funding of risky science. Their discussion offers a conceptual framework for incorporating risk into peer review models of research... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Research; Resource Allocation; Perception

SSRN

December 2019 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Mãe Terra and Unilever (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

The case concerns the sale of Mãe Terra, one of Brazil's leading brands for packaged organic foods, to the consumer goods giant Unilever in 2017. Working with Unilever management, Mãe Terra’s CEO Alexandre Borges must determine whether and how to keep Mãe Terra's B... View Details

Keywords: Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Brand Management; Sustainability; Mergers and Acquisitions; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Environmental Sustainability; Organizational Culture; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Brazil; Latin America

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

million. “You have to be more proactive and control the acquisition process, which word-of-mouth does not allow for.” That’s where digital marketing can help, allowing companies to target specific customers through search ads or social... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

June 2006 (Revised January 2007)
Case

Dana Hall: Funding a Mission (A)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Herman B. Leonard and Melissa Tritter

Dana Hall is a private all-girls school in New England facing a crisis in its mission. As social norms shift away from single-sex education, the school's enrollment is falling and deficits are becoming the norm. At the same time, the modern vision for girls' education... View Details

Keywords: Crisis Management; Financing and Loans; Nonprofit Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Strategic Planning; Education Industry; England

August 2019
Case

Bark Gift Shop Ltd.

By: Susanna Gallani, Jan Bouwens and Peter Kroos

This case describes a setting in which the CFO of Bark Gift Shop Ltd., a gift items retailer, discovers an undesired pattern in the performance data suggesting that her shop managers that perform well during the first part of the year, purposely reduce their effort in... View Details

Keywords: Data Analytics; Employees; Behavior; Performance; Management; Goals and Objectives; Motivation and Incentives; Analysis

11 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Doing Well by Doing Good? One Industry’s Struggle to Balance Values and Profits

social media. “In any organization, you want to make the moral and material coexist.” In a recent paper, Lakshmi Ramarajan, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and Erin Reid, a professor at McMaster... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

Web

The Founding of U.S. Steel and the Power of Public Opinion | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

important move, is Public Opinion.” 10 Hill argued that “the highest purpose of public relations is to foster and promote understanding among people. For this reason, the art of communication assumes great importance in public relations.”... View Details

31 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

Customers demand more value and innovation than ever before, but they’re not always willing to pay more for that product or service. In fact, thanks to social media, dissatisfied customers can amplify their opinions about a company’s long... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

February 2025
Article

Seeing the Whole: Configurational Cognition and New Venture Resource Mobilization

By: Goran Calic, François Neville, Santi Furnari and C. S. Richard Chan

Research is scant on how multiple venture attributes combine as “whole packages” of signals (or cognitive configurations) in resource holders’ eyes, shaping a venture’s ability to mobilize resources. Drawing on a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 1,395 crowdfunding... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Mission and Purpose; Entrepreneurship; Communication; Perception

2007
Working Paper

Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

The digital interactive transformation in marketing is not unfolding, as many thought it would, on the model of direct marketing. That model anticipated that digital media using rich profiling data would intrude marketing messaging more deeply and more precisely into... View Details

Keywords: Communication Intention and Meaning; Interactive Communication; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet and the Web