Middle Managers - Publications - Faculty & Research

05 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Fixing the ‘I Hate Work’ Blues

highly bureaucratic, multilayered organizations that companies are using to execute their plans. There is so much pressure to realize short-term results that middle managers are consumed by making this... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

December 1998
Case

Bell Atlantic and the Union City Schools (B): Education Reform in Union City

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Ellen Pruyne

The second in a five-part series about Bell Atlantic Corp.'s technology-in-education partnership with the Union City, New Jersey school system. Reviews the education reform efforts planned and implemented in the school system, which coincided with the partnership and... View Details

Keywords: Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Change Management; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology; Education Industry; Telecommunications Industry; New Jersey

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29 May 2001
Research & Ideas

Race Does Matter in Mentoring

reached the executive level at his organization. Why did he make it when so many other minorities plateaued in middle management? First, Williams had the good fortune to be hired by Nathan Barrett, a white View Details

Keywords: by David A. Thomas

March 2018 (Revised June 2018)
Case

City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and James Weber

In 2018, City Year was a 30-year-old nonprofit that recruited and organized teams of young-adult “volunteers” (corps teams) to provide a year of citizen service. It had 3,100 corps members serving in 327 schools located in 28 U.S. cities. In its early decades, City... View Details

Keywords: Education; Service Operations; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Resource Allocation; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Human Capital; Growth Management; Service Delivery; Organizational Design; Social Enterprise; Poverty; United States

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23 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

The Gulf: It’s a Family Affair

of the younger generation abroad. I'm waiting to see how open the senior generation will be to these social changes. What's true in the Gulf region more than almost anywhere else in the world is that there's a huge expatriate work force View Details

Keywords: by Wendy Guild & Andrea Schulman

18 Jun 2001
Research & Ideas

Caught in the Cogs: When Manufacturing and IT Meet

Manufacturing and information technology these days go together like bread and butter. But it wasn't always so. As Professor David Upton pointed out in a Global Alumni Conference panel titled "E-Commerce and the New Operations," it wasn't that long ago that... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

23 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 23, 2018

Purchase this case:https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/219030-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 318-082 Sandra Brown Goes Digital (A): The Promise and Perils of Social Movements in a Healthcare Company As a middle View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

13 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

Small Businesses Are Worse Off Than We Thought

months. If normal operations were to resume within one month, 72 percent reported a high likelihood of staying in business. “Fifty percent of respondents believe that the crisis will last at least until the middle of June,” the... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Financial Services

12 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

Can Our Parenting Struggles Make Us Better Leaders?

can adopt a middle ground, promoting a sense of autonomy while also allowing for at least some structure. As I’ve found, the best leaders also adopt this middle ground inside organizations, albeit a somewhat... View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati; Air Transportation

29 Jun 2009
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Leading Change

there is a danger that commitment to an organization can undermine work-life balance. Successful CEOs are good role models. In addition to open and honest communication and continued investment in HCHP management practices, corporations... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

12 Feb 2016
Op-Ed

The Real Jobs Tragedy in the US: We've Lost the Skills

market, such as retail, health care, and construction—that is, jobs insulated from global competition. Those changes have broken the back of America’s middle class in two ways. First, both trends put pressure on wages. They combined to... View Details

Keywords: by Joe Fuller and Matt Sigelman; Manufacturing; Electronics

06 Nov 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Top-Down Resource Allocation on the Rise?

drew attention to the resource allocation process (RAP) with his seminal study of four organizations in 1970. He concluded that a bottom-up process of idea generation begun by operational managers and shaped by View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

16 Sep 2014
First Look

First Look: September 16

middle of a $1 billion capital expansion in its effort to become a vertically integrated supplier of rare earth minerals, oxides, and metals. After reporting lower than expected revenues and earnings for the second quarter of 2012, View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

04 Feb 2021
Research & Ideas

Inside CEOs' Pandemic Worries: Uncertainty, Employees, and Kids

How will my children learn via Zoom? We interviewed 10 CEOs in July about how they are managing the unprecedented stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then checked in with them again at the end of 2020. The interviewees hail from... View Details

Keywords: by Gamze D. Yucaoglu, Robin Abrahams, and Boris Groysberg

March 2021
Supplement

Snapp: Scaling Under Sanctions in Iran (B)

By: Meg Rithmire and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in November 2020 as Eyad Alkassar and Mahmoud Fouz, co-founders of Iran’s first and leading ride-hailing platform, Snapp, eagerly await the results of the U.S. presidential elections.
The case takes us through the challenging times between... View Details

Keywords: Sanctions; Change Management; Disruption; Volatility; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Government and Politics; International Relations; National Security; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Health Pandemics; Transportation Industry; Middle East; Iran

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02 Nov 2016
Op-Ed

Government and Financial Tech Can Fix Cash Woes for Small Businesses

Ask any small business owner and they will tell you that cash flow is on their mind pretty much all the time. This isn’t surprising, given that they are continuously managing dollars coming in from customers and going out to pay for... View Details

Keywords: by Karen Mills

27 Mar 2005
Research & Ideas

Should I Pay the Bribe?

corruption exposes the managers and the organizations they work for. But it may also be quite profitable. And, as I explain in the comment to the HBR case, it may sometimes be unavoidable. Q: How can View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia D. Churchwell

13 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

Does Business Get Done the Same Way in Emerging and Developed Countries?

interviews, I walked away deeply impressed by the managerial capacity in emerging markets. The domestic firms are very, very capable. Yes, they operate under particular constraints—we do not see the many middle View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

06 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Women MBAs at Harvard Business School

product." A Class of 1973 alumna recalls professors "who, in the middle of a class, would look at the women and the African Americans and say, 'Is this too difficult for you?' " By 1985 women made up 25 percent of the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

August 2024
Case

Coca Cola İçecek—Managing a Sudden Turbulence

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Namrata Arora and Gizem Cihan Dincsoy

In November 2021, Kerem Kerimoğlu, Coca Cola İçecek (CCI) Group Supply Chain Development Director, is alarmed by a news headline revealing a shortage of Turkish truck drivers impacting Europe. This crisis quickly affects CCI's distribution as third-party logistics... View Details