Publications

Article

Design and Testing of a Mobile Health Application Rating Tool

By: David Levine, Zo Co, Lisa Newmark, Alissa Groisser, A Jay Holmgren, Jennifer Haas and David Bates

Mobile health applications (“apps”) have rapidly proliferated, yet their ability to improve outcomes for patients remains unclear. A validated tool that addresses apps’ potentially important dimensions has not been available to patients and clinicians. The objective of... View Details

Keywords: Health; Mobile Technology; Design; Analysis

March 2022
Case

Unilever: Remote Work in Manufacturing

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Susie L. Ma

In December 2021, Unilever—one of the world’s largest producers of consumer goods—was in the midst of a pilot project to digitize its manufacturing facilities and enable remote work for factory employees. This was possible because of an earlier project to retrofit a... View Details

Keywords: Change; Globalization; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Human Resources; Jobs and Positions; Operations; Education; Training; Manufacturing Industry

08 May 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate and Integrated Reporting: A Functional Perspective

Keywords: by Robert Eccles & George Serafeim

2023
Working Paper

PRIMO: Private Regression in Multiple Outcomes

By: Seth Neel

We introduce a new differentially private regression setting we call Private Regression in Multiple Outcomes (PRIMO), inspired the common situation where a data analyst wants to perform a set of l regressions while preserving privacy, where the covariates... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

2023
Article

Exploiting Discovered Regression Discontinuities to Debias Conditioned-on-observable Estimators

By: Benjamin Jakubowski, Siram Somanchi, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill

Regression discontinuity (RD) designs are widely used to estimate causal effects in the absence of a randomized experiment. However, standard approaches to RD analysis face two significant limitations. First, they require a priori knowledge of discontinuities in... View Details

Keywords: Regression Discontinuity Design; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning

12 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

The Value of a ‘Portable’ Career

case study "When Stars Migrate, Do They Still Perform Like Stars?" looks at the "portability" of performance and the likelihood that some positions may improve or diminish... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Sports

31 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams

Keywords: by Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman & Charles O'Reilly

October 1991 (Revised January 2000)
Case

Workplace Safety at Alcoa (A)

By: Kim B. Clark and Joshua D. Margolis

Examines the challenge facing the managers of a large aluminum manufacturing plant in its drive to improve workplace safety. The CEO of the company has made safety a top priority. The plant has made good progress in reducing the injury rate, but now confronts the need... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Safety; Problems and Challenges; Change Management; Operations; Resignation and Termination; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Manufacturing Industry; United States

December 21, 2021
Article

How to Become a Better Listener

By: Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg

Listening is a skill that’s vitally important, sadly undertaught, and physically and mentally taxing. In the aftermath of COVID-19, particularly with the shift to remote work and the red-hot job market, it’s never been more important—or more difficult—for leaders to be... View Details

Keywords: Listening; Nonverbal Communication; Communication; Competency and Skills; Performance Improvement

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October 1994
Case

Olympus Optical Company, Ltd. (B): Functional Group Management

Documents the emergence of the functional group management system at Olympus's camera manufacturing facility. This system increases the pressure on the work force to decrease costs and improve output by treating the facility's 10 autonomous groups as profit centers,... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Performance Improvement; Manufacturing Industry; Japan

Teaching Interest

AMP 170 - General Management: Processes and Action

The Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program (AMP) helps drive corporate performance by honing individual capabilities to the highest level of performance. The result is a... View Details

October 2008
Article

The Effect of Macro Information Environment Change on the Quality of Management Earnings Forecasts

The 1990s were characterized by substantial increases in the performance of and investor reliance on financial analysts. Because managers possess superior private information and issue forecasts to align investors' expectations with their own, we predict that... View Details

Keywords: Information; Performance Expectations; Earnings Management; Financial Reporting; Forecasting and Prediction

08 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Knowledge Transfer: You Can't Learn Surgery By Watching

While some lessons can be learned by watching—a parent’s reaction after touching a hot stove can be a good lesson for a youngster on dangers in the kitchen—other lessons are harder to learn through observation alone. No matter how many times you watch a surgeon View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

04 Apr 2023
Book

Two Centuries of Business Leaders Who Took a Stand on Social Issues

While shareholders still reign supreme at many companies, a widespread shift toward more responsible business practices is driving more leaders to take a stand on social and environmental issues today, says Harvard Business School Professor Geoffrey Jones. Jones... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Consumer Products; Fashion; Retail; Green Technology

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

2022
Working Paper

The Gender Minority Gaps in Confidence and Self-Evaluations

By: Billur Aksoy, Christine L. Exley and Judd B. Kessler

An increasing share of the population identifies as something other than male or female. Yet, we know very little about the economic preferences and beliefs of gender minorities. In this paper, we document a “gender minority gap” in confidence and in self-evaluations.... View Details

Keywords: Self-evaluation; Confidence; Gender; Identity; Perception; Income

May 2014
Article

How to Outsmart Activist Investors

By: Bill George and Jay W. Lorsch

We offer opinions on how management and corporate boards of directors can best manage investor relations with activist stockholders such as hedge funds who are demanding major changes within a corporation to improve stockholder return. Beverage industry firm PepsiCo is... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism

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Research Summary

Privatization, Regulatory Reform and Management Strategy

Alexander Dyck's research illustrates why privatization and deregulation often improve performance and factors that separate success from failure. A simplistic model of privatization and regulatory reform assumed that the shift from government to private sector... View Details

April 2008
Case

Campbell and Bailyn's Boston Office: Managing the Reorganization

By: Anne Donnellon and Dun Gifford Jr

Ken Winston, the regional sales manager at a securities brokerage firm, has reorganized his generalist salespeople into Key Account Teams (KAT) to increase sales of specialized, higher-margin fixed income products. Winston is also implementing a new corporate... View Details