Publications

September 2007 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Still Leading (A): Issues in Transitioning to New Forms of Service Later in Life

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Lance Pierce

Identifies the challenges for experienced leaders who transition from their primary income-earning careers to a next phase of public service or social-purpose work, based on interviews and published sources. View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Personal Development and Career; Transition; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Society

November 2012
Article

The Organization of Firms Across Countries

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details

Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management

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01 Jun 2004
News

The Ambidextrous Organization

processes of the past, while also gazing forward, preparing for the innovations that will define the future. This mental balancing act is one of the toughest of all managerial... View Details

Keywords: ambidextrous manager; ambidextrous organization; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

July–August 2016
Article

Beyond the Holacracy Hype: The Overwrought Claims—and Actual Promise—of the Next Generation of Self-Managed Teams

By: Ethan Bernstein, John Bunch, Niko Canner and Michael Lee

Holacracy and other forms of self-organization have been getting a lot of press. Proponents hail them as "flat" environments that foster flexibility, engagement, productivity, and efficiency. Critics say they're naive, unrealistic experiments. We argue, using evidence... View Details

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01 Dec 2016
News

Is Cash the Best Form of Charity?

the forefront of a trend reshaping the development sector. The organization doesn’t only have touching stories to tell. It also has numbers. GiveDirectly began its efforts in Siaya County, on the... View Details

Keywords: April White

01 Feb 2000
News

Spangler Center in Top Form

A cloudless blue sky and a chilly wind provided a brisk backdrop for a December celebration of progress made in the construction of the new Spangler Center. The "topping out"... View Details

Spatial Organization of Firms

We explore the impact of geographically bounded intra-firm spillovers (internal agglomeration economies) and geographically bounded inter-firm spillovers (external agglomeration economies) on firms’ location strategies. Using data from the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal... View Details

March 2020
Article

Organizing Knowledge Production Teams Within Firms for Innovation

By: Vikas A. Aggarwal, David H. Hsu and Andy Wu

How should firms organize their pool of inventive human capital for firm-level innovation? While access to diverse knowledge may aid knowledge recombination, which can facilitate innovation, prior literature has focused primarily on one way of achieving that: diversity... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Recombination; Organization Design; Team Boundary; Innovation; Knowledge Sharing; Diversity; Innovation and Invention; Groups and Teams; Human Capital; Organizational Design

2014
Working Paper

The New Empirical Economics of Management

By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen

Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details

Keywords: Management; Organization; Productivity; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Microeconomics

01 Dec 2020
News

New News

consumption it’s not an accessible product for the vast majority of people who are reading the news online. Many respected news outlets don’t make it easy. Sometimes it’s a... View Details

Keywords: entrepreneuship; digital media; startups; news; business models; young alumni; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

2011
Working Paper

Organizations in the Shadow of Communities

By: Siobhan O'Mahony and Karim R. Lakhani

The concept of a community form is drawn upon in many subfields of organizational theory. Although there is not much convergence on a level of analysis, there is convergence on a mode of action that is increasingly relevant to a knowledge-based economy marked by porous... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Organizational Culture; Civil Society or Community; Boundaries; Information Technology; Theory; Value Creation

2012
Article

Organization Design for Business Ecosystems

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The modern corporation has long been the central focus of the field of organization design. Such firms can be likened to nation-states: they have boundaries that circumscribe citizen-employees, and they engage in production and trade. But individual corporations are... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Business Ecosystems; Distributed Innovation; Problem Solving; Property Rights; Organization Design; Networks; Integration; Competition; Organizational Design; Innovation and Management

Research Summary

Economics of Organization and Firm Performance

A great deal of theoretical and empirical research indicates that economic actors should organize activities so as to minimize the 'transaction costs' associated with managing these activities. But little is known about the consequences of violating this prescription.... View Details

November 2016
Article

Spatial Organization of Firms and Location Choices Through the Value Chain

By: Juan Alcacer and Mercedes Delgado

We explore the impact of geographically bounded, intra-firm linkages (internal agglomerations) and geographically bounded, inter-firm linkages (external agglomerations) on firms' location strategies. Using data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database,... View Details

Keywords: Location Choices; Agglomeration Economies; Value Chain; Organization Theory; Geographic Location; Business Strategy

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January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Royal DSM: From Continuous Transformation to Organic Growth

By: William W. George, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Amram Migdal

Royal DSM CEO Feike Sijbesma was pondering the challenges of shifting DSM’s global organization from the constant transformations of the past 100 years to creating organic growth. When Sijbesma took the helm as CEO in 2007, he further pushed and completed the company’s... View Details

Keywords: Organic Growth; Organizational Change; M＆A; Mergers And Acquisitions; Divestment; Business Ventures; Business Divisions; Business Growth and Maturation; Restructuring; Change; Change Management; Transformation; Transition; Engineering; Chemicals; Mining; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Capital Markets; Financial Markets; Food; Globalization; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Health; Nutrition; History; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Practices and Processes; Management Style; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Ownership; Public Ownership; Performance; Strategy; Adaptation; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Value; Value Creation; Biotechnology Industry; Chemical Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Mining Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Europe; Netherlands

January 2007 (Revised December 2008)
Case

Mercy Corps: Positioning the Organization to Reach New Heights

By: Allen S. Grossman and Caroline Joan King

Mercy Corps, the world's 5th largest international relief and development agency, is at a turning point. The nonprofit's opportunities to grow and serve a larger number of beneficiaries are unprecedented. By looking at the unique relationship between headquarters and... View Details

Keywords: Business Offices; Business Headquarters; Globalized Firms and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Structure; Nonprofit Organizations

28 Nov 2011
Research & Ideas

Rethinking the Fairness of Organ Transplants

recipients get organs as they become available—decisions that must be based on various priority and fairness criteria. “The new system will explicitly give points based on the likelihood View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Health

February 2023 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Amazon and the Future of Organized Labor

By: Reshmaan Hussam, Trevor Fetter and Grace Liu

From their peak in the 1950s, private-sector labor unions in the United States declined rapidly in membership and influence, decade after decade. But growing inequality—especially visible during the COVID-19 pandemic—sparked new interest in labor and organizing.... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Labor Unions

May 2020
Article

Into the Fray: Adaptive Approaches to Studying Novel Teamwork Forms

By: Michaela Kerrissey, Patricia Satterstrom and Amy C. Edmondson

Novel forms of teamwork—created by rapid change and growing diversity among collaborators—are increasingly common, and they present substantial methodological challenges for research. We highlight two aspects of new team forms that challenge conventional methods.... View Details

Keywords: Team Member Fluidity; Temporary Teams; Knowledge Diversity; Entitativity; Concordance; Methods; Groups and Teams; Problems and Challenges; Research