Publications

Web

IT Strategy: Building a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategy for HBS IT | Information Technology

resources for those beginning and wanting to continue their DEI journey. This ensures a steady focus and stream of content for the team to engage with. Focus for the current year is on View Details

Article

The Contingent Nature of Public Policy and the Growth of U.S. Commercial Banking

By: Christopher Marquis and Zhi Huang

That public policy affects organizational behaviors is well accepted, but less explored is how these effects may depend on other external environmental factors. We investigate how policy is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to understand the growth of... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Organizational Culture; Strategy; Commercial Banking; Growth and Development Strategy; United States

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April 2024
Article

An Integrative Model of Hybrid Governance: The Role of Boards in Helping Sustain Organizational Hybridity

By: Anne-Claire Pache, Julie Battilana and Channing Spencer

Hybrid organizations must sustainably attend to multiple goals embedded in different institutional spheres. Past research has highlighted the value for hybrids in recruiting board members representing different logics to avoid attentional drifts; yet, diverse boards... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Business or Company Management; Organizational Structure

April 2021
Case

Codecademy: Where to Next?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Max Mailman and Sarah Ascherman

In March 2020, Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of online education platform Codecademy, prepared for a meeting with his Chief of Staff Kunal Ahuja to discuss the company’s goals. Codecademy billed itself as the largest online resource for computer science literacy and... View Details

Keywords: Monetization Strategy; Business Model; Change Management; Venture Capital; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Teams; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Network Effects; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; United States

20 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

The Three Types of Leaders Who Create Radical Change

long-time scholar of institutional change, has identified common themes among those social movements that don't merely broadcast the need for a social change, but actually create long-term impact. According... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

January 2020
Article

Jack of All Trades and Master of Knowledge: The Role of Diversification in New Distant Knowledge Integration

By: Frank Nagle and Florenta Teodoridis

We consider the role of individual-level diversification as a mechanism through which skilled researchers engage in successful exploration—recognizing and integrating new knowledge external to one’s domains of expertise. To approach an ideal experiment, we (1) employ a... View Details

Keywords: Individual-level Knowledge Diversification; Novel Knowledge; Knowledge Acquisition; Diversification; Innovation and Invention; Research

SSRN

September–October 2023
Article

Reskilling in the Age of AI

By: Jorge Tamayo, Leila Doumi, Sagar Goel, Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic and Raffaella Sadun

In the coming decades, as the pace of technological change continues to increase, millions of workers may need to be not just upskilled but reskilled—a profoundly complex societal challenge that will sometimes require workers to both acquire new skills and... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; AI and Machine Learning; Training; Adaptation; Employees; Digital Transformation

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January 2020 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Governing PG&E

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation’s out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company’s proposed new board. PG&E, which provided electricity and natural... View Details

2011
Chapter

American Exceptionalism?: A Comparative Analysis of the Origins and Trajectory of U.S. Business Education Development

By: Rakesh Khurana

As business education in an academic setting becomes an increasingly global phenomenon, the university-based business school in America remains a unique institution. This holds true despite the fact that the American business school as it evolved in the post-World War... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Business History; Business Education; Power and Influence; Society; United States; Europe

18 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Industrial Decarbonization: Confronting the Hard Challenges of Cement

Cities like Cairo; Chongqing, China; Delhi; and Kinshasa, Congo are experiencing population explosions accompanied by unprecedented demand for homes, offices, factories, and infrastructure. In the United States, the Biden Administration’s policy-driven infrastructure... View Details

Keywords: by by Janelle Conaway; Green Technology; Energy; Industrial Products; Manufacturing

16 Nov 2021
Cold Call Podcast

Can Mass General Brigham Diversify Its Community of Innovators?

Keywords: Re: Katherine B. Coffman; Health

September 2019
Case

Shell: A Company of Opportunity?

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Emer Moloney

The Opportunity Hub was a cloud-based platform that enabled managers to market projects they were working on and associated resourcing needs as “Opportunity Owners” and employees, or “Opportunity Seekers,” to browse these statements of need and engage when they had... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Change Management; Competency and Skills; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Energy; Energy Sources; Non-Renewable Energy; Renewable Energy; Human Resources; Employees; Retention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Jobs and Positions; Job Design and Levels; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Labor; Human Capital; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Resource Allocation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Evaluation; Performance Productivity; Strategic Planning; Projects; Motivation and Incentives; Business Strategy; Social and Collaborative Networks; Technology Platform; Chemical Industry; Energy Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Netherlands

Research Summary

Overview

By: Michael W. Toffel

My research examines how companies manage environmental issues, occupational safety, and working conditions in global supply chains. More recently, I have also begun researching the drivers and implications of CEO activism, where organizational leaders speak out on... View Details

July–August 2018
Article

When Technology Gets Ahead of Society

By: Tarun Khanna

New technologies can be unsettling for industry incumbents, regulators, and consumers, because norms and institutions for dealing with them don’t yet exist. Interestingly, businesspeople in emerging economies face similar challenges: The rules are unclear and... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Society; Situation or Environment; Infrastructure; Entrepreneurship; Performance Effectiveness; Cooperation

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Program

Competing in the Age of AI—Virtual

transformation strategy Business and technology leaders and contributors who want to understand how they can deploy the latest AI tools to unlock new sources of strategic and operating value Individuals in... View Details

2022
Book

Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies

By: Ranjay Gulati

This book offers a compelling reassessment and defense of purpose as a management ethos, documenting the vast performance gains and social benefits that become possible when firms manage to get purpose right. Few business topics have aroused more skepticism in recent... View Details

Keywords: Purpose; Business And Society; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Performance Effectiveness; Organizational Culture

31 Mar 2009
News

Professor Michael Porter Hosts Mayor of Jerusalem at Harvard Business School

September 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Case

B Lab: Building a New Sector of the Economy

By: Christopher Marquis, Andrew David Klaber and Bobbi Thomason

The founders of B Lab are on a mission to create a new sector of the economy and are specifically focused on a three objectives: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations (B=Benefit) that legally expand their corporate responsibilities to include... View Details

Keywords: Economic Sectors; Social Entrepreneurship; Investment; Policy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Social Enterprise; Value Creation

Forthcoming
Article

You've Got Mail! The Late 19th-Century U.S. Postal Service Expansion, Firm Creation, and Firm Performance

By: Astrid Marinoni and Maria P. Roche

This paper examines the impact of the expansion of the US Postal Service in the late 19th century on firm creation and performance. Utilizing newly digitized archival data on historic business establishments, post office locations, and road networks in California,... View Details

Keywords: Institutional Innovation; Knowledge Exchange; US Postal Service; Firm Performance; Infrastructure; Expansion; Government Administration; Communication; Business History; Entrepreneurship; Public Administration Industry; California