Employee Motivation - Publications - Faculty & Research

13 Dec 2021
Research & Ideas

The Unlikely Upside of Mergers: More Diverse Management Teams

Employees often feel stressed when their firms are bought by other companies, fearing they could face layoffs, demotions, or lousy working conditions. While it’s true that organizations tend to restructure their workforce following... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

09 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

How Tennis, Golf, and White Anxiety Block Racial Integration

interacting with racial minorities motivates White people to self-segregate, says Harvard Business School professor Jon M. Jachimowicz. And White people often attempt to erect barriers—even seemingly innocuous ones like stricter dress... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

05 Mar 2012
Research & Ideas

Is JC Penney’s Makeover the Future of Retailing?

haircuts?), are scheduled to debut in 2013. Johnson expects the transformation to be complete by 2015. "All department stores either rise or fall on their ability to execute a strategy," Lal says. "These are great ideas, but the ability to execute day in and day out,... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Retail

03 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles of 2010

more effective negotiator, and motivating great work from others. Here are the Top 10 articles and Top 10 working papers that appeared in HBS Working Knowledge in 2010. Now turn your attention to 2011 and tell us in the Comment section... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

motivates employees to execute strategy effectively. The value of these programs is measured by the value they create in the enterprise, not by how little is spent on them. An adequate technology... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

30 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Are You Supporting Your B Players?

are unique because: They battle against what DeLong called a natural gravitational pull toward alienation within organizational life. "In other words, if you ignore your employees over time, they will start to feel left out and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

21 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

The Pandemic Conversations That Leaders Need to Have Now

conversations with individual employees during this critical time. Conversations are the best way to get leaders and employees back into the practice of relating to one another in person. How are people... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams, and Katherine Connolly Baden

07 Apr 2015
News

Warrior Spirit

the number of employees had grown to 140. Sityodtong then moved to New York City, where he bought his mother an apartment and launched a career on Wall Street as a hedge fund manager. Having enough money to take care of his family had... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Arts, Entertainment; Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation Industries; Arts, Entertainment; Technical and Trade Schools; Educational Services

16 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist?

long-term interests with short-term pulls, etc. One of the most unexplored areas, which we are only now beginning to be able to measure, is the degree to which people are motivated by the "aerial coin of praise" and social... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

14 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restarting Under Uncertainty: Managerial Experiences from Around the World

additional informational benefit, allowing firms to fully grasp the magnitude of the pandemic in its early days, when exact information on COVID-19 was still scarce. This was the case of VacuumCo, a German company with over 3,500 View Details

Keywords: by Raffaella Sadun, Andrea Bertoni, Alexia Delfino, Giovanni Fassio, and Mariapaola Testa

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

the writing of popular film scripts like The Matrix or Star Wars. Character behaviors, actions, and motivations hook the interest of readers at all levels, regardless of their professional experience with IT, while the plot sets up a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

30 Nov 2016
What Do You Think?

How Do Leaders Manage the Tension Between Pride and Arrogance?

recommended) being attentive to the changes in the external environment communicating with middle managers and leading by example, motivating employees to speak, listening to customers.” Several asked... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Web

Organizational Leadership Course | HBS Online

and less averse to having difficult conversations. Juliana Casale Head of Marketing at Crazy Egg Learn to lead at scale and mobilize your employees as you transition your business from a startup into a growth-stage company. "HBS Online... View Details

02 Aug 2007
What Do You Think?

How Will Millennials Manage?

thus invigorate their teams and provide cultures that are profitable not because they are forced to, but because they want to." David Mullings added, "We will in fact treat our employees the way we expect to be treated."... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

03 Jul 2013
What Do You Think?

What Are the Limits of Transparency?

will be maintained." Phillip Clark weighed in with this view: "Wisdom and trust determine transparency. The comfort and motives you sense from those providing the information determines how much you will believe Transparency is... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

10 Oct 2023
Blog Post

Policy Drivers for Environmental Justice: What Businesses Need to Know

facilities like those which have disproportionately polluted low-income communities and communities of color, a contradiction within the EJ motivation for the siting of these facilities. For these practices to be effective in an EJ sense,... View Details

10 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Do You Have Change Fatigue?

bubble has burst: no longer obsessed with the need for larger-than-life leaders and their grand strategies, we can now focus on a quieter, more evolutionary approach to change, one that relies on employee View Details

Keywords: by Nick Morgan

22 Feb 2022
News

A World of Difference

understand what to do. For organizations that want to change, it’s completely accessible. You see both the capability and the motivation, whereas before maybe you had the motivation but not the capability. And now the business case for... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint

March 2017
Case

Intellectual Ambition at Harvard Business School: Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Amram Migdal

This case, set in the 1920s and 1930s, discusses the contributions of Harvard Business School (HBS) Professors Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger to management research and to the Human Relations Movement in management scholarship. The case focuses on their research... View Details

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Sergio Velasquez-Terjesen

Australia, but he seized an opportunity to change the culture of ConocoPhillips itself, becoming the co-founder of the company's first LGBT employee group. Over the course of four years, Sergio and his colleagues moved ConocoPhillips'... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing/Energy; Consulting

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