Publications

Web

Building a Culture of Awareness and Accountability in your Organization - Recruiting

Insights & Advice 14 Jul 2023 Building a Culture of Awareness and Accountability in your Organization Becca Carnahan Author HBS Team tag All Industries All Locations Alumni Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging... View Details

01 Apr 2013
News

Cultural Entrepreneurship finalists named

December 2014 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization (Abridged)

By: Linda A. Hill, Anthony J. Mayo and Dana M. Teppert

This case describes how to champion and implement organizational change from the middle by recounting the experiences of Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization. View Details

During weeklong January-term trips to New York City in 2013 and 2014, students from across Harvard University studied cultural entrepreneurship: new ventures in fashion, food, fine arts, and design. Students explored how such ventures are launched, and how proximity... View Details

3 Feb 2020
Interview

Lou Shipley: [How to Build a Culture of Enablement]

By: Lou Shipley

This episode of Reveal brings Lou Shipley, investor, lecturer, and previous CEO of Black Duck Security. Lou details sales enablement's role in delivering sales excellence and an effective new hire onboarding experience. View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Company Culture; Sales; Selection and Staffing; Organizational Culture

March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Culture at Google

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Amy Klopfenstein and Sarah Mehta

Beginning in 2017, technology (tech) company Google faced a series of employee-relations issues that threatened its unique culture of innovation and open communication. Issues included protests surrounding Google’s contracts with the U.S. government, restrictions of... View Details

July 2022
Teaching Note

Netflix: A Creative Approach to Culture and Agility

By: Ranjay Gulati, Matt Higgins and Allison Ciechanover

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 420-055 and 423-026. View Details

Keywords: Netflix; Corporate Culture; Streaming; Media; Technology; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Leadership Style; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Technology Industry; California

September 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Teaching Note

Leading Culture Change at SEB

By: Amy Edmondson and Cat Huang

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 621-074. The Risk organization at SEB, a leading Nordic financial services group founded in 1856, undertook a culture change program focused on psychological safety, empathic listening, and strategic framing. The program enabled risk... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Leading Change; Organizational Culture; Decision Making; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Sweden

2018
Article

Cracking the Organizational Challenge of Pursuing Joint Social and Financial Goals: Social Enterprise as a Laboratory to Understand Hybrid Organizing

By: Julie Battilana

While in recent decades the social and business sectors have evolved on fairly separate tracks, today companies are increasingly expected to generate social value in addition to profit. As a result, they also increasingly face the distinct challenge of pursuing social... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Hybrid Organizing; Multiple Goals; Social Enterprise; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture

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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

2025
Chapter

Culture and Contemporary Political Preferences

By: Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

This chapter reviews the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences. We distinguish conceptually between the direct cultural transmission of political ideology and the transmission of more primitive preferences and beliefs that influence... View Details

Keywords: Political Preferences; Culture; Values and Beliefs; Identity; Perspective; Government and Politics

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January–February 2014
Article

IDEO's Culture of Helping

By: Teresa Amabile, Colin M. Fisher and Julianna Pillemer

Leaders can do few things more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the highest-performing companies, it is a norm that colleagues support one another's efforts to do the best work they can. That has always been true for efficiency... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Behavior; Attitudes; Organizational Culture; Relationships; Social and Collaborative Networks

28 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Profit Power of Corporate Culture

part of an effort to change the culture. This sounds like a lot, but the culture cycle provides a foundation for the creation of an organization capable of setting high goals and meeting them. Q: Your... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

09 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity

In today's global work environment, it's a given that companies need culturally diverse teams to succeed. Both scientific studies and common sense tell us that having people with different viewpoints onboard increases the creativity that... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

28 Mar 2016
News

Culture Is Not the Culprit

Building A Culture of Health

This ambitious volume sets out to understand how every company impacts public health and introduces a robust model, rooted in organizational and scientific knowledge, for companies committed to making positive contributions to health and wellness. Focusing on four... View Details

02 Apr 2018
News

Fixing the Culture at Uber

2024
Working Paper

Corporate Culture Homogeneity and Top Executive Incentive Design: Evidence from CEO Compensation Contracts

By: Dennis Campbell, Ruidi Shang and Zhifang Zhang

We examine how corporate cultures characterized by high degrees of homogeneity in the underlying values and beliefs of organizational members are related to the design of CEO incentive compensation contracts. We argue that culture homogeneity within firms lowers... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Culture; Compensation Design; Accounting; Management Control; Incentive Systems; Organizational Culture; Job Design and Levels; Governance; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives

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September – October 2011
Article

Manage the Culture Cycle

By: James L. Heskett

Organizational culture—the shared assumptions, values, and behaviors that determine "how we do things around here"—can be measured and shaped. In organizations with large numbers of customer-facing employees, it can account for up to half of the difference in operating... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Value; Behavior; Retention; Customer Focus and Relationships; Change Management; Learning; Innovation and Invention; Labor