Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,556)
- Faculty Publications (968)
- September 2016 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
Collage.com: Scaling a Distributed Organization
By: Christopher Stanton and Shikhar Ghosh
Kevin Borders and Joe Golden, co-founders and co-CEOs of Collage.com, must decide how to grow their custom photo-products startup in the face of fierce competition. From 2011 through 2016, the business evolved from a hobby to a startup with $22 million in revenue and... View Details
- September 2016
- Case
Hewlett Packard Enterprise: The Dandelion Program
By: Gary P. Pisano and Robert D. Austin
This case describes Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s “Dandelion Program," which has developed a new service offering for the company’s clients by drawing on the special talents of people with autism. The company has deployed “pods” organized around 8 or 9 employees with... View Details
- September 2016
- Article
Monitoring Global Supply Chains
By: Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill
Firms seeking to avoid reputational spillovers that can arise from dangerous, illegal, and unethical behavior at supply chain factories are increasingly relying on private social auditors to provide strategic information about suppliers' conduct. But little is known... View Details
- Summer 2016
- Article
Open Content, Linus' Law, and Neutral Point of View
By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu
The diffusion of the Internet and digital technologies has enabled many organizations to use the open-content production model to produce and disseminate knowledge. While several prior studies have shown that the open-content production model can lead to high-quality... View Details
- September 2016 (Revised March 2017)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 3: Using Information for Performance Measurement and Control
By: Robert Simons
This module reading explains how managers use information to control critical business processes and outcomes. The analysis begins by illustrating how managers use information to communicate goals and track performance. Then the focus turns to the choices that managers... View Details
- July 2016 (Revised November 2018)
- Case
Code.org
By: John J-H Kim, Lauren Barley and Allison M. Ciechanover
The case explores Hadi Partovi’s mission to provide every K-12 student in the United States the opportunity to learn computer science. Students can assess how Partovi transformed his passion into an organization that reached millions around the globe through the launch... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Improving Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: The Role of Institutional Environments and Monitoring Program Design
By: Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill
Activism seeking to improve labor conditions in global supply chains has led transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct and monitor suppliers for compliance, but it is unclear whether these formal organizational structures raise labor standards. Drawing on... View Details
Keywords: Monitoring; Supplier Relationship; Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Sustainable Operations; Sustainable Supply Chains; NGO; Globalization; Corporate Accountability; Operations; Supply Chain; Supply Chain Management; Labor; Working Conditions; Business Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Evaluation; Safety; Risk and Uncertainty; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Electronics Industry; China; Indonesia; India; Bangladesh
- 2016
- Article
Organizational Decision-Making and Information: Angel Investments by Venture Capital Partners
By: Andy Wu
We study information aggregation in organizational decision-making for the financing of entrepreneurial ventures. We introduce a formal model of voting where agents face costly tacit information to improve their decision quality. Equilibrium outcomes suggest a... View Details
- Summer 2016
- Article
The Real Lessons From Kodak's Decline
By: Willy C. Shih
Eastman Kodak is often mischaracterized as a company whose managers didn't recognize soon enough that digital technology would decimate its traditional business. However, what really happened at Kodak is much more complicated—and instructive. Kodak suffered from a... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
More Effective Sports Sponsorship—Combining and Integrating Key Resources and Capabilities of International Sports Events and Their Major Sponsors
By: Ragnar Lund and Stephen A. Greyser
Organizations in the field of sports are becoming increasingly dependent on sponsors for their value creation and growth. Studies suggest that sports organizations (rights-holders) often fail to exploit the full potential of such sponsorship partnerships. The aim of... View Details
- June 2016 (Revised October 2016)
- Technical Note
The Role of the Chief Financial Officer
By: C. Fritz Foley and Michael Lemm
This note profiles the role of the modern chief financial officer (CFO). It presents insights based on a variety of surveys and descriptions of HBS graduates who hold or have held the CFO role. Although the role varies significantly from one organization to another,... View Details
- June 2016
- Case
Publicis Groupe 2016: Maurice and the Millennials
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen
Having built Publicis Groupe through acquisitions maintained as separate brands, CEO Maurice Lévy wanted to transform the advertising and marketing firm to an integrated digital-ready enterprise to address industry changes. In early 2016, following a reorganization, he... View Details
Keywords: Managing Change; Transformations; Digital; Millennials; Change; Innovation; Acquisitions; Merger; Culture; Advertising Agency; Reorganization; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Information Technology; Change Management; Restructuring; Management Succession; Marketing; Mergers and Acquisitions; Transformation; Innovation and Invention; Digital Marketing; Advertising Industry
- May 2016
- Case
Seaside Organics
By: Howard H. Stevenson and Alisa Zalosh
This case follows Sara Norton, a soccer player-turned-serial entrepreneur, as she transforms Seaside Organics from a fledgling startup into an $89 million company. Informed by the successes and failures of her first organics venture, WellBar, Norton tries to balance... View Details
- Article
Crowdsourcing City Government: Using Tournaments to Improve Inspection Accuracy
By: Edward Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers and Michael Luca
The proliferation of big data makes it possible to better target city services like hygiene inspections, but city governments rarely have the in-house talent needed for developing prediction algorithms. Cities could hire consultants, but a cheaper alternative is to... 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
- April 5, 2016
- Other Article
An Interview with Raffaella Sadun: "Information" vs. "Communication:" The Battle to Influence Decision Making
By: Raffaella Sadun and Frieda Klotz
I explain how two traditionally connected technologies may appear to pull organizations in opposing directions. View Details
- Article
Making Exit Interviews Count
By: Everett Spain and Boris Groysberg
In the knowledge economy, skilled employees are the assets that drive organizational success. Thus companies must learn from them—why they stay, why they leave, and how the organization needs to change. A thoughtful exit interview—whether it be a face-to-face... View Details
- 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
- March–April 2016
- Article
Scrutiny, Norms, and Selective Disclosure: A Global Study of Greenwashing
By: Christopher Marquis, Michael W. Toffel and Yanhua Zhou
Under increased pressure to report environmental impacts, some firms selectively disclose relatively benign impacts, creating an impression of transparency while masking their true performance. We identify key company- and country-level factors that limit firms' use of... View Details