Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(936)
- Faculty Publications (130)
- Article
Designing Social Networks: Joint Tasks and the Formation and Endurance of Network Ties
By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
Can managers influence the formation of organizational networks? In this article, we evaluate the effect of joint tasks on the creation of network ties with data from a novel field experiment with 112 aspiring entrepreneurs. During the study, we randomized individuals... View Details
- September 2019
- Case
Sonia Millar: Negotiating for the C-Suite
By: Joshua D. Margolis and Anne Donnellon
This case addresses the nuances of gender dynamics and career progression at the top of the organization, where even women who have strong leadership expertise, experience, and alliances with powerful male colleagues still get stuck. Told from the point of view of... View Details
- March–April 2019
- Article
The Future of Leadership Development
By: Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu
The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that... View Details
- January 2019
- Case
AIME High: A Social Entrepreneur's Moon Shot
Describes the entrepreneurial leadership of Jack Manning Bancroft (JMB), a young Indigenous Australian university student who created the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), a nonprofit organization he formed to respond to the problem of Indigenous high... View Details
- 2019
- Article
Brokerage and Brokering: An Integrative Review and Organizing Framework for Third Party Influence
By: Nir Halevy, Eliran Halali and Julian Zlatev
Brokerage and brokering are pervasive and consequential organizational phenomena. Prevailing models underscore social structure and focus on the consequences that come from brokerage—occupying a bridging position between disconnected others in a network. By contrast,... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
New Prospects for Organizational Democracy?: How the Joint Pursuit of Social and Financial Goals Challenges Traditional Organizational Designs
By: Julie Battilana, Michael Fuerstein and Michael Lee
For an extended period during the first half of the 20th century, industrial democracy was a vibrant movement, with ideological and organizational ties to a thriving unionism. In 2015, however, things look different. While there are instances of democracy in the... View Details
- February 2018
- Background Note
Patent Trolling
By: Lauren H. Cohen, Umit G. Gurun, Scott Duke Kominers and George Hou
The U.S. Intellectual Property (IP) Ecosystem is one of the most robust and dynamic in the world—and has been for centuries. The bedrock of this system is the "patent," a legal document that allows its holder exclusive commercialization rights of a part of the "idea... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
Organizational Remedies for Discrimination
By: R. Ely and A. Feldberg
Laws now exist to protect employees from blatant forms of discrimination in hiring and promotion, but workplace discrimination persists in latent forms. These “second-generation” forms of bias arise in workplace structures, practices, and patterns of interaction that... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Explaining the Vertical-to-Horizontal Transition in the Computer Industry
This paper seeks to explain the technological forces that led to the rise of vertically integrated corporations in the late 19th century and the opposing forces that led to a vertical-to-horizontal transition in the computer industry 100 years later. I first model the... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised May 2017)
- Teaching Note
The Strategy Execution Series
By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard
This is the teaching note for the 15-module Strategy Execution series. New management tools and techniques are needed to implement strategy in the 21st century. Rapid innovation, entrepreneurial competitors, and increasingly demanding customers have radically altered... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Performance Measurement; Profit Planning; Organization Design; Profitable Growth; Management Attention; Organizational Conflict; Job Design; Business Strategy; Management Systems; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Organizational Design; Performance Evaluation; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques
- March–April 2017
- Article
Innovation Outcomes in a Distributed Organization: Intrafirm Mobility and Access to Resources
Prior research has established a relation between intra-firm mobility and innovation outcomes at distributed organizations. The literature has also uniformly agreed on the mechanism underlying this relationship: the sharing of tacit knowledge and recombination of ideas... View Details
- December 2016 (Revised May 2018)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 15: Using the Levers of Control to Implement Strategy
By: Robert Simons
This module reading pulls together key concepts and techniques from the Strategy Execution series into an integrated model—the levers of control. The four levers are: (1) belief systems, (2) boundary systems, (3) diagnostic control systems, and (4) interactive control... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Levers Of Control; Balancing Innovation And Control; Managing Growing Businesses; Turn Around Management; Human Behavior; Organizational Life Cycle; Strategy; Management Systems; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Behavior
- October 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 6: Evaluating Strategic Profit Performance
By: Robert Simons
This module reading demonstrates how to calculate and analyze the profit generated by different business strategies. Formulas and examples are provided to calculate profit generated by changes in market share, revenue growth, efficiency improvements, and support costs.... View Details
- September 2016 (Revised January 2018)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 4: Organizing for Performance
By: Robert Simons
This module reading explores the implications of different business models on organization design. After discussing the distinction between units focused on work processes and those devoted to markets, the analysis provides insight as to when to organize businesses by... View Details
- August 2016 (Revised May 2018)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 1: Managing Organizational Tensions
By: Robert Simons
This module reading lays the foundation for executing strategy using performance measurement and control systems. Properly applied, these systems can overcome the organizational blocks that impede the potential of all people who work in modern organizations. This... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Performance Measurement; Profit Planning; Organization Design; Profitable Growth; Management Attention; Organizational Conflict; Human Behavior; Strategy; Ethics; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Design; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance; Measurement and Metrics
- 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
Keywords: Self-Managed Organizations; Self-Managed Teams; Reliability; Adaptability; Holacracy; Organization Design; Organization Structure; Organizational Charts; Organizational Architecture; Organizational Forms; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Productivity; Management Practices and Processes; Management Systems; Managerial Roles; Human Resources; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Retail Industry; Public Administration Industry; Technology Industry; North America
- May 2016 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
India's Amul: Keeping Up with the Times
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Tarun Khanna, Namrata Arora and Tanya Bijlani
Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative founded in 1947—eight months before India's independence from British rule—and owned by over three million farmers in the state of Gujarat. It is India's largest food product marketing organization, selling 46 products, including... View Details
- 2016
- Article
The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence, and Exceptions
By: Lyra J. Colfer and Carliss Y. Baldwin
The mirroring hypothesis predicts that organizational ties within a project, firm, or group of firms (e.g., communication, collocation, employment) will correspond to the technical dependencies in the work being performed. This article presents a unified picture of... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence and Exceptions
By: Lyra J. Colfer and Carliss Y. Baldwin
The mirroring hypothesis predicts that organizational ties within a project, firm, or group of firms (e.g., communication, collocation, employment) will correspond to the technical patterns of dependency in the work being performed. A thorough understanding of the... View Details
Keywords: Modularity; Innovation; Product And Process Development; Organization Design; Design Structure; Organizational Ties; Mirroring Hypothesis; Industry Architecture; Product Architecture; Complex Technical Systems; Information Technology; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Relationships; Innovation and Invention; Product Development
- March 2016
- Article
Environmental Demands and the Emergence of Social Structure: Technological Dynamism and Interorganizational Network Forms
By: Adam Tatarynowicz, Maxim Sytch and Ranjay Gulati
This study investigates the origins of variation in the structures of interorganizational networks across industries. We combine empirical analyses of existing interorganizational networks in six industries with an agent-based simulation model of network emergence.... View Details