Publications

16 Jan 2018
News

Luis Viceira: Activism, Indexing, and the Investment Management Workshop (IMW)

10 Jan 2008
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Operations Management

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions to be answered: Can "lean" productions methods improve service industries? How can a company's order View Details

21 Mar 2023
HBS Seminar

Stefan Dimitriadis, University of Toronto Rotman School of Management

01 Jun 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Stakeholder Management Facing New Headwinds?

shareholders. Stakeholder management requires prioritizing various constituencies and their influence on a strategic decision. For example, one approach to prioritization involves identifying the power and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

06 Dec 2004
What Do You Think?

Why Do Managers Fail to Act on Their Predictions?

Summing Up Respondents to the December column produced such a lengthy list of reasons why managers fail to act on their predictions that it is a wonder that organizations are ever able to respond with the foresight needed to avert... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

11 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

The High Risks of Short-Term Management

Companies that manage for short-term gain rather than long-term growth have been blamed for everything from popularizing celebrity CEOs to causing a significant chunk of the current financial crisis. Now new research findings suggest that... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

Teaching Interest

Management of Technology: Strategies for the Digital Economy

Companies make decisions daily to compete in the digital age; some are laying strategic building blocks for the future while others are toiling away on tactical distractions or leading their organizations headlong down the path to obsolescence. The advent of digital... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Technology Industry

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

September 2023 (Revised September 2024)
Technical Note

Measuring and Managing Social Impact

By: Brian Trelstad, Gerald Chertavian and Susan Pinckney

A brief overview of how to measure social impact at nonprofits, social organizations, and impact investments. View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Change; Transformation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Public Sector; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Fairness; Entrepreneurial Finance; Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Policy; Innovation and Management; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Practices and Processes; Resource Allocation; Measurement and Metrics; Standards; Strength and Weakness; Mission and Purpose; Success; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Strategic Planning; Programs; Risk and Uncertainty; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Issues; United States

Educators

December 2009 (Revised January 2010)
Case

Managing Talent at Bertelsmann AG (A)

By: Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria, Mark Maletz and Kerry Herman

Bertelsmann's EVP HR Immanuel Hermreck and his team were focused on four key HR issues. Three of these were somewhat discreet: improving Bertelsmann's employer brand; managing Bertelsmann talent across the firm's decentralized businesses; and ensuring early... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Leadership Development; Strategic Planning; Competitive Advantage; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Germany

Educators

August 1995
Background Note

Managing in an Information Age: IT Challenges and Opportunities

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: Information Technology; Information Management; Restructuring; Technological Innovation; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Information Technology Industry

02 Feb 2016
Blog Post

A Summer Internship in General Management

Like many of his classmates, Andrew Ling (MBA 2015) decided to use the summer between his first and second year to try out something new. Formerly a consultant at McKinsey, he spent his summer working in a marketing and general management... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

2010
Article

Hiring for Strength, Hiring for Weakness: Evidence of Internal Strategic Fit from the NFL

By: Andrew Hill

Firms may hire senior managers to shore up a weakness or to build on a strength. Using evidence on the hiring of NFL head coaches, this paper finds that teams that hire for strength outperform teams that hire for weakness. View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Selection and Staffing; Performance; Sports; Sports Industry

August 2006 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Management Levels at Staples (A): Company and Organization

By: David A. Garvin and Lynne Levesque

One of six cases that describe the roles and responsibilities of managers at each of the hierarchical levels of management within the U.S. Stores business unit of Staples, the world's largest office supply company. Together, the cases form a complete integrated... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Managerial Roles; Operations; Performance Effectiveness; Strategic Planning; Perspective; Retail Industry

Educators

26 Sep 2023
Book

Digital Strategy: A Handbook for Managing a Moving Target

providing firms with a wide variety of strategic solutions. The book was coedited by Feng Zhu, the MBA Class of 1958 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, along with Carmelo Cennamo of Copenhagen Business School... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Information Technology; Technology

Article

La Nueva Ruta: alianzas sociales estrategicas (The New Path: Strategic Social Alliances)

By: James E. Austin, Gustavo Herrero and Ezequiel Reficco

Keywords: Strategy; Society; Alliances; Growth and Development Strategy

21 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Employee Negativity Is Like Wildfire. Manage It Before It Spreads.

a function of the wind, and whether its overall intensity is increasing or decreasing.” Thinking about managing collective emotions is like thinking about controlling a fire. You care less about the individual trees and more about whether... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

13 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

How to Pick Managers for Disruptive Growth

We suspect that the mistakes happen when firms choose managers at any level—from CEO to business unit head to project manager—based on what we call "right stuff" thinking, borrowing the term from Tom Wolfe's famous book and the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Raynor

March 2009
Article

Customer Experience Creation: Determinants, Dynamics and Management Strategies

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Peter C. Verhoef, Katherine N. Lemon, A. Parasuraman, Anne Roggeveen and Michael Tsiros

Retailers, such as Starbucks and Victoria's Secret, aim to provide customers a great experience across channels. In this paper we provide an overview of the existing literature on customer experience and expand on it to examine the creation of a customer experience... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry