Publications

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2021
Article

Reflections: Voice and Silence in Workplace Conversations

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Tijs Besieux

We highlight conversations at work as an arena of change. Drawing on and extending the psychological safety literature, we offer a new framework to distinguish between productive and unproductive forms of both voice and silence. The framework’s four... View Details

Keywords: Conversation; Silence; Voice; Psychological Safety; Interpersonal Communication; Quality; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation

December 1992 (Revised March 1997)
Case

Peoria Engine Plant (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Amy P. Hutton

Describes the cost control system used at an automobile engine plant for labor and overhead costs. The finance staff prepares daily, weekly, and monthly variance reports against budgets. Department supervisors, finance staff, and the plant manager discuss the use and... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Cost Accounting; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Reports; Financial Reporting; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Auto Industry

2007
Book

When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance

By: Thomas J. DeLong, John J. Gabarro and Robert Lees

For too long, professional services firms (PSFs) have relied on the "producer-manager" model, which works well in uncomplicated business environments. However, today's managing directors must balance conflicting roles, more demanding clients, tougher competitors, and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Service Operations; Performance Effectiveness; Strategy

Purchase

April 1997
Case

Peoria Engine Plant (A): (Abridged)

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Amy P. Hutton

Describes the cost control system used at an automobile engine plant for labor and overhead costs. The finance staff prepares daily, weekly, and monthly variance reports against budgets. Department supervisors, finance staff, and the plant manager discuss the use and... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Cost Management; Financial Reporting; Performance Improvement; Budgets and Budgeting; Auto Industry

Educators

Purchase

2016
Working Paper

Cohort Turnover and Operational Performance: The July Phenomenon in Teaching Hospitals

By: Hummy Song, Robert S. Huckman and Jason R. Barro

We consider the impact of cohort turnover—the planned simultaneous exit of a large number of experienced employees and a similarly sized entry of new workers—on operational performance in the context of teaching hospitals. Specifically, we examine the impact of the... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Operations; Hospitals; Productivity; Empirical Operations; Service Delivery; Training; Performance Productivity; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

Spring 2020
Article

Establishing High Performing Teams: Lessons from Health Care

By: Michael Anne Kyle, Emma-Louise Aveling and Sara J. Singer

Effective teams can be significant drivers of innovations that enable broader quality improvements and efficiency gains across organizations. But despite the wealth of research and managerial expertise describing characteristics of effective teams, people and... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Performance Effectiveness

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2011
Chapter

On Knowing and Doing: A Perspective on the Synergies between Research and Practice

By: Michael Tushman

The current rigor/relevance debate is a central strategic issue for business schools and their faculty. I argue that ongoing relationships with firms, rooted on the joint acknowledgement of the importance of faculty research by firms and respect for practice by... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Education; Executive Education; Practice; Relationships; Research

09 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Does Management Matter in Schools?

Keywords: by Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen; Education

19 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 19, 2019

confidence in their mastery of what they had already learned. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, such as encouraging further learning or harming teaching evaluations. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55850... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

Toyota? With all the books and articles on Toyota, lean manufacturing, just-in-time, kanban systems, quality systems, etc. that came out in the 1980s and 90s, hasn't the topic been exhausted? Steven Spear: Well, this has been a... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

02 Sep 2002
Research & Ideas

Foreign Multinationals in the U.S.: A Rocky Road

profits and managerial problems in the United States between the 1950s and the 1980s. It seemed important to ascertain whether this was a problem unique to one firm, or part of a more general pattern. The upshot was a conference organised... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston & Martha Lagace

Research Summary

Overview

By: Jorge Tamayo

Professor Tamayo’s research focuses on theoretical modeling and structural estimation of firm decision-making and productivity.

Professor Tamayo studies dynamic competition for customer membership. Generally, firms that implement a membership model charge a... View Details

Keywords: Industrial Organization, Industrial Development; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Management Style; Energy Generation; Performance Efficiency; Market Design; Crime and Corruption; Manufacturing Industry; Energy Industry

14 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

The Widening Rift Between Corporations and Society

field questions from HBS Working Knowledge senior editor Martha Lagace in an e-mail interview.Lagace: In The Support Economy, you make the case that managerial capitalism, invented a hundred years ago, desperately needs an overhaul. How... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2011
Working Paper

What Do CEOs Do?

By: Oriana Bandiera, Luigi Guiso, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

We develop a methodology to collect and analyze data on CEOs' time use. The idea-sketched out in a simple theoretical set-up-is that CEO time is a scarce resource and its allocation can help us identify the firm's priorities as well as the presence of governance... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Employee Relationship Management; Managerial Roles; Time Management; Performance Productivity; Italy

2017
Working Paper

Management as a Technology?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

Are some management practices akin to a technology that can explain firm and national productivity, or do they simply reflect contingent management styles? We collect data on core management practices from over 11,000 firms in 34 countries. We find large cross-country... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices; Productivity; Competition; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity

SSRN

22 Jan 2007
Working Paper Summaries

“Don’ts" and "Do’s”: Insights from Experience in Mitigating Risks of Western Investors in Post-Communist Countries

Keywords: by Charalambos A. Vlachoutsicos & Paul R. Lawrence

June 2016
Article

Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-Job Inequality: Women and Men of the Transportation Security Administration

By: Curtis K. Chan and Michel Anteby

What could explain inequality within a given job between groups of workers, particularly between women and men? Extant workplace inequality scholarship has largely overlooked as a source for inequality the job’s work content—the actual tasks workers perform. It is... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Work; Mechanisms And Processes; Stratification; Labor Process; Qualitative Methods (General); Case Method; Field Research; Equality and Inequality; Working Conditions; Gender; Labor; Labor and Management Relations; Air Transportation Industry

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Working Paper

Visual Uniqueness in Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: Machine Learning Model Development, Validation, and Application

By: Flora Feng, Charis Li and Shunyuan Zhang

Peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces have seen exponential growth in recent years featured by unique offerings from individual providers. Despite the perceived value of uniqueness, scalable quantification of visual uniqueness in P2P platforms like Airbnb has been largely... View Details

Keywords: Peer-to-peer Markets; Marketplace Matching; AI and Machine Learning; Demand and Consumers; Digital Platforms; Marketing