Publications

October 2014
Article

Putting Sales at the Center of Strategy

By: Frank Cespedes

Research indicates that relatively few firms execute their strategies effectively, and, on average, companies deliver just 50% to 60% of the financial performance that their strategies promise. One reason is a disconnect between strategic goals and field implementation... View Details

18 Jun 2015
News

Working Out With Your Co-Workers Is as Bad as You Think

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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July 2009
Article

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Dolly Chugh and Max H. Bazerman

The optimal moment to address the question of how to improve human decision making has arrived. Thanks to fifty years of research by judgment and decision making scholars, psychologists have developed a detailed picture of the ways in which human judgment is bounded.... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Performance Improvement; Research; Strategy; Judgments

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

09 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

CEO Bonus Plans: And How to Fix Them

Keywords: by Kevin J. Murphy & Michael C. Jensen

September 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Shinsei Bank: Developing an Integrated Firm

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Masako Egawa

Tom Pedersen, newly appointed chief learning officer (CLO) of Shinsei Bank in Japan, pondered how he could facilitate development of an integrated culture and transformation of the organization. Shinsei Bank had not developed longstanding tradition or a strong... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Cooperation; Diversity; Japan

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

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22 Jul 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance

Keywords: by Beiting Cheng, Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim

January–February 2015
Article

Social Comparisons and Deception Across Workplace Hierarchies: Field and Experimental Evidence

By: Benjamin Edelman and Ian Larkin

We examine how unfavorable social comparisons differentially spur employees of varying hierarchical levels to engage in deception. Drawing on literatures in social psychology and workplace self-esteem, we theorize that negative comparisons with peers could cause either... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Rank and Position; Employees

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May 1990 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Note on Financial Reporting Strategy and Analysis When Managers Have Proprietary Information

By: Krishna G. Palepu

Provides a framework that helps explain these real-world observations about accounting and financial statement analysis. When managers have superior information on firms' strategies, and when investors suspect that managers have incentives not to fully disclose this... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Strategy; Knowledge Management

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

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

18 Nov 2002
Research & Ideas

Where Morals and Profits Meet: The Corporate Value Shift

Then, over time, they come to take a broader view as they see the positive effects on work life, product quality, relationships with their constituencies, or their standing in the community. Q: Having a positive value system in place can help contain costs by heading... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

November 2008
Journal Article

Can Research Committees Add Value for Investors? An Analysis of Lehman Brothers' Ten Uncommon Values® Recommendations

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Yang Gui

Since 1949 Lehman Brothers has used an investment committee to select the top ten recommendations made by its analysts each year. We examine the performance of this committee's recommendations and find that on average its selections generated abnormal returns of 2.7%... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Stocks; Financial Markets; Investment; Investment Return; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance Expectations; Groups and Teams; Research; Value Creation

October 2024
Case

Ranger Energy Services: Bridging Public & Private Markets

By: Joseph Pacelli, Ravi Ramniklal Gondalia and James Weber

In August of 2017, CSL Capital, a private equity fund founded and operated by Charlie Leykum (HBS’04), was deciding to take one of its portfolio companies, Ranger Energy Services, public. Founded in 2014, Ranger Energy was an oilfield service company providing... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Initial Public Offering; Financial Strategy; Valuation; Energy; Financial Services Industry; Energy Industry; United States

May 2013
Case

Education in Brazil: Waiting for a Revolution

By: Aldo Musacchio and Alejandra Meraz Velasco

This case describes the situation of the education system in Brazil circa 2012. The case discusses first some of the problems of the Brazilian education system. Then, the case summarizes the findings of a recent study of high performing schools in Brazil and outlines... View Details

Keywords: Quality Of Education; Federalism; Elementary Education; Quality; Human Capital; Education; Education Industry; Brazil; Korean Peninsula

The use of online A/B testing has spread rapidly in recent years, fueled by the growing appreciation of its value and the relatively low costs and increasing availability of technology needed to conduct them. Today, it is no exaggeration to say that the successful... View Details

2011
Working Paper

The Importance of Work Context in Organizational Learning from Error

By: Lucy H. MacPhail and Amy C. Edmondson

This paper examines the implications of work context for learning from errors in organizations. Prior research has shown that attitudes and behaviors related to error vary between groups within organizations but has not investigated or theorized the ways in which... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Learning; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Failure; Performance Improvement; Opportunities; Complexity