Publications

Read Now

20 Mar 2000
Research & Ideas

No Place Like Home: America’s Housing Crisis and Its Impact on Business

food, shelter is perhaps the most basic human need. In modern society, stable, safe housing is more than a matter of comfort and convenience; it positively affects childhood development, individual self-esteem, and family viability.... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Construction; Real Estate

April 1994 (Revised August 1996)
Case

American Express (A)

By: Jay W. Lorsch

In January 1993, the American Express board met to decide who would succeed James D. Robinson, III as chairman and CEO. The board needed to act in the spotlight of intense media and investor scrutiny, and after leaks had revealed that there was a conflict among the... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Corporate Governance; Resignation and Termination; Leadership; Management Succession; Performance Evaluation

Program

Aligning Strategy and Sales

sales recruitment, development, compensation, and performance management systems support corporate strategy Coordinate sales activities across different sales groups and throughout the enterprise Establish a flexible approach that enables you to readjust strategies as... View Details

May 2016 (Revised September 2016)
Case

Hillside Beach Club: Delivering the Ultimate Family Vacation in the Mediterranean

By: Rajiv Lal and Gamze Yucaoglu

In 2015, Edip Ilkbahar, HBC’s founder and CEO, was looking over the plans for a new branch in Cyprus. Since the inception of the company by the Alarko Group of companies in 1994, Ilkbahar’s company had enjoyed high occupancy, high guest satisfaction, and high... View Details

17 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

What the Stockdale Paradox Tells Us About Crisis Leadership

survival behaviour: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic survival is supported by our daily, regular, routine behaviours within our normative environment. Extrinsic survival refers to those new behaviours we need to survive in an... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

September 1999 (Revised October 2000)
Case

Eggrock Partners, LLC (A)

By: Thomas J. DeLong, Myra M. Hart and Sharon Peyus

Explores the challenges of choosing how to grow a professional services firm (PSF). Before developing a growth strategy, the partners need to agree on what business(es) the company should be in. Each of the three partners has differing views of what the company should... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Expansion; Business Processes; Industry Structures; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Partners and Partnerships; Service Industry

Find at Harvard

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

variable that would make a big difference to costs that they needed shop workers vested in controlling. They tied its reduction to dividends, but that “didn’t move the needle one bit,” Bangert recalls in the case. Employees “still felt... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

09 Feb 2009
Research & Ideas

Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times

Economic difficulties need not mean that we lower our standards for leadership. If anything, we should raise our sights. New work by HBS professor Michael Beer and colleagues shows that there is still a place for what they term... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2022
Working Paper

Rethinking Explainability as a Dialogue: A Practitioner's Perspective

By: Himabindu Lakkaraju, Dylan Slack, Yuxin Chen, Chenhao Tan and Sameer Singh

As practitioners increasingly deploy machine learning models in critical domains such as healthcare, finance, and policy, it becomes vital to ensure that domain experts function effectively alongside these models. Explainability is one way to bridge the gap between... View Details

Keywords: Natural Language Conversations; AI and Machine Learning; Experience and Expertise; Interactive Communication; Business and Stakeholder Relations

Read Now

2022
Chapter

Connecter les rêves

By: Hubert Joly and Mariana Arnaut

Trouver du sens dans son travail est plus que jamais vécu comme essentiel. L’entreprise, l’une des organisations humaines les plus capables d’innovation, a un rôle central à jouer face aux enjeux sociaux et environnementaux. Reste à déterminer quels principes peuvent... View Details

28 May 2024
In Practice

Job Search Advice for a Tough Market: Think Broadly and Stay Flexible

need to get to breakeven and to deal with unreasonable valuation expectations of the last several years. That being said, my research and research by others has shown that venture capital and startup market slowdowns are opportune times... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

14 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Working Moms Are Mostly Thriving Again. Can We Finally Achieve Gender Parity?

McGinn also found that fathers are beginning to recognize the toll of parenting on work and the need for more flexible work-life balance. But there’s a catch. “From our data—and it looks like other scholars are seeing the same thing—dads... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

November–December 2020
Article

Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey and Nithya Vaduganathan

As companies struggle with chronic skills shortages and changing labor demographics, a new generation of talent platforms, offering on-demand access to highly trained workers, has begun to help. These platforms include marketplaces for premium expertise (such as Toptal... View Details

Keywords: Talent Acquisition; Platforms; Skilled Labor Recruitment; Gig Economy; Talent and Talent Management; Selection and Staffing; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Digital Platforms

Find at Harvard

November 1992 (Revised November 1998)
Case

Bitstream

Focuses on the new CEO of a growing software firm, the culture he's tried to create, and the need to hire a manager to spearhead a new product division. Includes details on how the search was conducted and presents resumes of four candidates who are being considered... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Organizational Culture; Selection and Staffing; Recruitment; Cognition and Thinking; Applications and Software; Business Divisions; Information Technology Industry

September 1999 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Deloitte & Touche (B): Changing the Workplace

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Jane Roessner

Deloitte & Touche women's initiative changed the workplace culture at the firm, solved retention problems, and brought external benefits. Now a new CEO must decide how to take this a step further as competition for talent was even stronger, young people had different... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Organizational Culture; Accounting; Gender; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Loss; Change Management; Jobs and Positions; Resignation and Termination; Accounting Industry; United States

January 2014 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Henry Schein: Doing Well by Doing Good?

By: Rebecca Henderson, Raffaella Sadun, Aldo Sesia and Russell Eisenstat

Henry Schein Inc., a distributor of supplies to dentist, physician, and veterinary practices, had sales approaching $9 billion and employed nearly 16,000 people. The company had experienced impressive growth under the leadership of Stanley Bergman and his executive... View Details

November 1990 (Revised August 1992)
Case

American Airlines (B): Compensation and Cost Reduction

American Airlines' strategy in the 1990s calls for continued growth, improvements in customer service, and cost reduction. Central to cost reduction efforts is the need to contain labor costs. After having signed a very expensive new contract with its pilots' union in... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Labor Unions; Compensation and Benefits; Air Transportation Industry; United States

December 2008 (Revised February 2015)
Case

A.J. Washington: Retaining an NFL Star

By: Andrew Wasynczuk and Nicole Shae Bennett

General Manager Luke Kolville, of the Los Angeles Spartans, struggles with the best approach to negotiate a long-term contract for his star quarterback. The agent for Washington is relatively new to the industry and has his sights set particularly high. Kolville needs... View Details

Keywords: Retention; Human Capital; Contracts; Managerial Roles; Negotiation; Groups and Teams; Sports Industry; Los Angeles