Publications

June 2019
Exercise

Worldwide Studios: Confidential Instructions—Sam Star's Agent

By: Ken Basin and Guhan Subramanian

1999
Chapter

Agents in Negotiations: Toward Testable Propositions

By: T. Kurtzberg, D. Moore, K. L. McGinn and M. H. Bazerman

Keywords: Negotiation Participants; Agency Theory

Find at Harvard

Read Now

1 Feb 1974
Conference Presentation

Women in Organizations: Change Agent Skills

By: R. M. Kanter

Keywords: Gender; Change; Organizations

July–August 1996
Article

The Board As a Change Agent

By: J. W. Lorsch

Keywords: Change; Governance

Find at Harvard

April 2018 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Coco Chanel: From Fashion Icon to Nazi Agent

By: Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean

This case describes the career of the iconic French fashion designer Coco Chanel who created a transformational business during the first half of the 20th century. Beginning in her early adulthood, Chanel leveraged relationships with acquaintances, friends, and... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Biography; Entrepreneurship; Relationships; Brands and Branding; Ethics; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry

Research Summary

Optimal Signaling Policy with Rational and Irrational Agents (with James Burns)

We examine situations in which a single informed agent signals a group of uniformed agents. The uniformed agents must then take an action based on this signal. The motivation for our work comes from real world examples such as terrorist alerts or job safety... View Details

June 2025
Case

Konko AI: Automating Work with AI Agents

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and Liang Wu

Keywords: AI; AI and Machine Learning

April 2025
Case

Thrivent: From Insurance Agents to Financial Advisors

By: Hubert Joly, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Tom Quinn

Thrivent, a midwestern financial services company with a centuries-long history rooted in Lutheranism, had reached $10 billion in revenue mostly by selling life insurance. In the 2020s, however, CEO Terry Rasmussen began a transformation process centered around the... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Forecasting and Prediction; Employee Relationship Management; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Job Design and Levels; Human Capital; Leading Change; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Insurance Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States; Minneapolis

April 2007
Case

ABN AMRO Bank N.V.: Global Change Agents

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Lance P. Pierce and Ryan Leo Raffaelli

ABN AMRO Global Banking Group developed its risk management function in response to expansion, and increasingly focused on environmental and social risks. The head of the function needed to influence policies and business decisions in a highly decentralized context in... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Banks and Banking; Expansion; Change; Governing and Advisory Boards; Social Enterprise; Leadership Development; History; Banking Industry; Service Industry; Brazil; India; United States

22 May 2025
News

Agentic AI Is Already Changing the Workforce

26 Jun 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Inventory Management for Mobile Money Agents in the Developing World

Keywords: by Karthik Balasubramanian, David F. Drake, and Douglas Fearing; Financial Services; Banking

November 2018
Teaching Plan

Coco Chanel: From Fashion Icon to Nazi Agent

By: Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean

Teaching Note for HBS No. 318-139. View Details

Large organizations—and the people working in them—tend to resist change. Yet some people are remarkably successful at leading transformation efforts. What makes them so effective?

View Details

24 Apr 2014
News

An agent for change through investing and philanthropy

Jim Alexandre (MBA 1983), a private equity specialist, talks about how he is an agent for change through his investments and his personal philanthropy. (Published April 2014) View Details

22 Jun 2010
News

7 tips for picking a real estate agent

2020
Conference Presentation

Learning in Social Environments with Curious Neural Agents

By: M. Sano, J. De Freitas, N. Haber and D. L. K. Yamins

2018
Working Paper

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

When workers make operational decisions, the firm's global knowledge and the workers’ domain-specific knowledge complement each other. Oftentimes workers have the final decision-making power. Two key decisions a firm makes when designing systems to support these... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Training; Performance Improvement; Money; Mobile Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Services Industry