Publications

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2008
Working Paper

Using Financial Innovation to Support Savers: From Coercion to Excitement

By: Peter Tufano

We review a wide variety of programs that support savings by families, in particular by low- and moderate-income families. These programs range from ones that literally compel families to save, to those that make it hard not to save, make it easier to save, provide... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Motivation and Incentives; Programs; Income; Personal Finance; Family and Family Relationships; Performance Effectiveness

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June 2010
Article

Leadership Competencies for Implementing Planned Organizational Change

By: Julie Battilana, Mattia Gilmartin, Anne-Claire Pache, Metin Sengul and Jeffrey A. Alexander

This paper bridges the leadership and organizational change literatures by exploring the relationship between managers' leadership competencies (namely, their effectiveness at person-oriented and task-oriented behaviors) and the likelihood that they will emphasize the... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Competency and Skills; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Planning; Relationships; Business Processes; Projects; Theory; Change; Behavior; Health Industry; United Kingdom

September 2006 (Revised February 2007)
Case

Friendster (A)

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In January 2006, the president of Friendster needs to choose between two strategic options to revive the company. Friendster started the social networking industry in 2003, but has been overtaken by MySpace and Facebook. The two options are: 1) offer new features to... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Social and Collaborative Networks; Brands and Branding; Service Industry

August 2019
Case

Humanistic Capitalism at Brunello Cucinelli

By: Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano

This case explores one company’s attempt to experiment with a different underlying model for a capitalist enterprise. Brunello Cucinelli, S.p.A. is a leading manufacturer of luxury fashion apparel. Despite being a publicly traded enterprise with annual revenues... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Culture; Human Resource Practices; Growth; Growth Strategy; Motivation; Values; Fashion; Capitalism; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs; Human Resources; Management; Business Model; Policy; Behavior; Growth and Development Strategy; Luxury; Italy

October 2012
Article

Honesty Requires Time (and Lack of Justifications)

By: Shaul Shalvi, Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer

Recent research suggests that refraining from cheating in tempting situations requires self-control, which indicates that serving self-interest is an automatic tendency. However, evidence also suggests that people cheat to the extent that they can justify their... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Cognition and Thinking

17 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Being the Boss

manager," Hill says. "What I've come to understand is that many of them never really made the psychological transformation from being an individual contributor to being a manager, and it really resonates with them when they read... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2021
Book

Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Business leaders have tremendous power to influence our society, how it operates, whether it is fair, and the extent to which it impacts the environment. And yet, we do not recognize or call out the responsibility that comes with that power. This book is meant to... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Power and Influence; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Leadership

04 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Shackleton: An Entrepreneur of Survival

be able to discern both of these aspects of people and of organizations. They need to see how in a moment of great trial all of Shackleton's possibility could come forward to affect his future and that of others. But in order to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

May–June 2019
Article

Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Judith K. Wallenstein and Alice de Chalendar

In 2018 the Project on Managing the Future of Work at HBS teamed up with the BCG Henderson Institute to survey 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers about the various forces reshaping the nature of work. The responses revealed a surprising gap: While the executives... View Details

Keywords: Management; Employees; Attitudes; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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March 2008 (Revised June 2011)
Case

MySpace

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, David T. Chen and Carin-Isabel Knoop

The case, set in late 2007, examines what MySpace—the largest online social network—should do to respond to its agile competitor, Facebook. Since its inception MySpace had experienced phenomenal growth, acquiring 20 million members in its first 20 months of operation,... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Partners and Partnerships; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry

June 2001 (Revised June 2001)
Case

Student Who Was Missing-in-Action, The

Assistant Professor Sam Benson was about to end the class session portion of his course with only student projects remaining. Then, he received a phone call from a student, George McHenry, who had missed 11 of 20 sessions. McHenry wanted to know what he needed to do to... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Higher Education; Decision Choices and Conditions; Learning; Education Industry

07 Mar 2022
Research & Ideas

Effective Leaders Share the Spotlight with Their Teams

pandemic that has upended typical team communication. “Inclusive leaders are becoming really important as companies get bigger and more complex,” says Zou, whose research defines “inclusive” to mean managers who engage colleagues, often junior ones, for information or... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

September 2011 (Revised February 2013)
Case

Cleveland Clinic: Improving the Patient Experience

By: Ananth Raman and Anita L. Tucker

Healthcare has traditionally focused on medical outcomes and financial performance. The big question is always, "How much is it going to cost?" What would happen, though, if healthcare also considered the question of "How does the patient feel?" This case looks at the... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Customer Satisfaction; Performance Improvement; Service Delivery; Value Creation; Personal Characteristics; Human Needs

September 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

Twiddy & Company: Trust in a Chaotic Environment

By: Sandra J. Sucher, Shalene Gupta and Tom Quinn

Twiddy & Company, known for Southern hospitality rooted in personal interactions, needed to adjust to contactless remote customer service as fear of the contagious virus prevented person-to-person contact. Local elected officials, in a bid to stop tourists from... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Health Pandemics; Organizational Culture; Disruption; Government Legislation; Transportation; Tourism Industry; North Carolina; United States

August 2018
Case

Christine Lagarde (B): Being a Public Servant

By: Julie Battilana and Carin-Isabel Knoop

This case covers the career of Christine Lagarde from 2005 to 2011 after she joins the French Government. After serving several grueling years as Finance Minister during the financial crisis that started in 2007/2008, she is being considered as the next Managing... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Government and Politics; Financial Crisis; Power and Influence