Publications

Find at Harvard

August 2009 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Swire Beverages: Implementing CSR in China

By: Christopher Marquis, G.A. Donovan and YiKwan Chu

Swire Beverage, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in China, recently created a corporate social responsibility (CSR) organization to oversee environmental, community, health and safety initiatives at the companies' nine bottling plants in China. The case considers... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Design; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Non-Governmental Organizations; Food and Beverage Industry; China

31 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

You’re Wasting Your Employees! What You Can Do About It

operations of any company that wishes to flourish in the new age. And yet, a decade of organizational delayering, destaffing, restructuring, and reengineering has produced employees who are more exhausted than empowered, more cynical than... View Details

Keywords: by Christopher A. Bartlett & Sumantra Ghoshal

David A. Thomas

David Thomas is H. Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research addresses issues related to executive development, cultural diversity in organizations, leadership and organizational change. He recently served as a... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; consulting; consumer products; education industry; financial services; media

December 1989
Background Note

Note on How Organizations Can be Structured

By: D. Q. Mills

Describes four basic organizational forms--hierarchy, division, matrix, and cluster. Diagrams of each are included. Their strengths and weaknesses under different business environment conditions are detailed. There is a table comparing the forms on several key... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure

2021
Book

Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work

By: Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg

Why does the gender gap persist and how can we close it? For years women have made up the majority of college-educated workers in the United States. In 2019, the gap between the percentage of women and the percentage of men in the workforce was the smallest on record.... View Details

Keywords: Women; Career; Gender Gap; Glass Ceiling; Gender; Employment; Personal Development and Career; Equality and Inequality; Organizational Culture; Diversity; Management; Strategy

September 2006 (Revised August 2008)
Module Note

Assessing Your Organization's Capabilities: Resources, Processes and Priorities

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Stephen P. Kaufman

Summarizes a model that helps managers determine what sorts of initiatives an organization is capable and incapable of managing successfully. The factors that affect what an organizational unit can and cannot accomplish can be grouped as resources, processes, and the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Experience and Expertise; Innovation and Management; Business Processes; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Mathematical Methods

Dennis W. Campbell is currently the Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research and teaching activities focus broadly on how management control systems can be designed to balance short-term strategy execution... View Details

Keywords: financial services; service industry; hotels ＆ motels; consumer products; restaurant; manufacturing; professional services

20 Dec 2006
Working Paper Summaries

The Demise of Cost and Profit Centers

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

01 Jun 2018
News

It's Not Technology That Will Take the Swiss Watch Down

June 2000 (Revised October 2017)
Case

IDEO

By: Stefan Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes IDEO, the world's leading product design firm, and its innovation culture and process. Emphasis is placed on the important role of prototyping and experimentation in general, and in the design of the very successful Palm V handheld computer in particular. A... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Innovation Strategy; Business or Company Management; Time Management; Product Design; Product Development; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Practice; Problems and Challenges; Creativity; Hardware

02 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

Negotiating in Three Dimensions

kinds of mistakes from the U.S. Midwest. In this case, environmentalists and farmers opposed a power company's plans to build a dam. On the surface, the parties appeared to have deep, irreconcilable positions, which had resulted in a long stalemate. Yet a superior deal... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

May 1997
Teaching Note

Product Development Performance, Instructor's Note

By: Marco Iansiti

Focuses on what constitutes product development performance and how it is assessed. Performance, as explained in both the note and in the materials for this three-session module, refers to the performance of both the product and the organizational process producing it.... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Infrastructure; Product Development; Production; Performance Evaluation

02 Dec 2019
What Do You Think?

How Does a Company like Boeing Respond to Intense Competitive Pressure?

in understanding between departments staffed with employees whose responsibilities and training vary widely? Inherent organizational conflict takes many forms—for example, between home office staff (“who don’t understand how the business... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Air Transportation

November 2001 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Children's Hospital and Clinics (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Michael Roberto and Anita L. Tucker

Describes the major phases of an initiative designed to transform the organization and enhance patient safety. Raises interesting questions about how to encourage candid discussion about failures while continuing to hold people accountable for their performance. View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Leading Change; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Performance Improvement; Safety; Health Industry

August 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Dishoom: From Bombay with Love

By: Anjali M. Bhatt and Thomas J. DeLong

Shamil and Kavi Thakrar, co-founders of Dishoom, faced critical decisions as they looked to expand the UK-based restaurant group. Shamil, the CEO, was confident in Dishoom's potential for growth but he was concerned about preserving the culture and values centered... View Details

Keywords: Human Resource Management; Growth And Scaling; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs; Growth Management; Expansion; United Kingdom

Research Summary

Current Research

Professor Gardner’s research investigates two primary research questions, both particularly relevant to the management of professional service firms: (1) How are project teams able to most effectively use their members’ expertise in order... View Details

April 2019
Article

Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence

By: Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael Menietti

Understanding why employees go the extra mile at work is a key problem for many organizations. We conduct a field experiment at a medical organization to study motivations for employees to submit project proposals for organizational improvement. In total, we analyze... View Details

Keywords: Field Experiment; Innovation; Contest; Incentives; Free-rider Problem; Healthcare Organizations; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation and Invention; Organizations; Performance Improvement; Perspective