Publications

Find at Harvard

June 2013 (Revised September 2016)
Supplement

Governance and Sustainability at Nike (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Nien-he Hsieh and Lara Adamsons

Two members of Nike's executive team must decide what sustainability targets to propose to Nike's CEO and to the corporate responsibility committee of Nike's board of directors. Set in 2012, the case traces the evolution of Nike's approach to environmental and social... View Details

Keywords: Nike; Hannah Jones; Mark Parker; Phil Knight; Philip Knight; Eric Sprunk; Jill Ker Conway; Phyllis Wise; Don Blair; Sustainable Business And Innovation; SB＆I; Flyknit; DyeCoo; Footwear; Athletic Footwear; Apparel; Athletic Apparel; Sustainability; Greenpeace; Detox Campaign; Dirty Laundry; Water; Water Use; Water Pollution; Water Resources; Corporate Responsibility Committee; Judgment; Board Of Directors; Board Committees; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Footwear Industry; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Ethics; Fairness; Globalized Firms and Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Goals and Objectives; Management Practices and Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance; Alignment; Supply Chain; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Judgments; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Asia; China; United States; Oregon; Portland

November 2001
Background Note

Sexual Harassment Law and Policy

By: Michael A. Wheeler, Georgia Levenson and Arturo Corso

Outlines the recent development of legal principles regarding sexual harassment, including procedures in the United States and state courts, what circumstances constitute harassment, the resolution of these conflicts and the resulting consequences for the individuals... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Policy; Working Conditions; Code Law; Outcome or Result; Conflict and Resolution; United States

October 2011
Case

Chris and Alison Weston (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Celia Moore

Chris and Alison Weston describe how they, a well-educated middle class couple, ended up committing mail fraud, for which they each served a year and a half in federal prison. The case highlights for students how otherwise upstanding individuals much like themselves... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Conflict of Interests; Value

January 2023 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Nick Saban: Embracing 'The Process' of Sustaining Success

By: Ranjay Gulati and Eppa Rixey

Nick Saban, head coach of the University of Alabama football team from 2007-2022, fielded teams that won 183 of 208 games (88%), including a record-tying six national championships. Saban’s approach to coaching, known to many as “The Process,” and the consistent... View Details

Keywords: Purpose; Leadership And Managing People; Football; Recruiting; Talent Acquisition; Talent And Talent Management; Talent Development And Retention; Organization Change And Adaptation; Organizational Behavior; Sports; Leadership; Leadership Development; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Sports Industry; United States

February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

By: Jill Avery and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, an inbound marketing, sales, and customer relationship management (CRM) software provider, announced that it had acquired Motion AI, a software platform that enabled companies to easily build and deploy chatbots, fueled by artificial intelligence, to interact... View Details

January 2015 (Revised April 2015)
Case

Zeal: Launching Personalized and Social Learning

By: John J-H Kim and Christine S. An

Set in 2014, this case follows John Danner and his team at Zeal as they consider their product development strategy. In February 2013, serial entrepreneurs John Danner and Sanjay Noronha co-found Zeal, an education technology start up providing a web-based, mobile... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Education Technology; MVP; Product Development; Product Market Fit; Monetization Strategy; SaaS Business Models; Education; Personalized Learning

March 2023
Case

Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2018, Ana Owczarzak was appointed to lead Google Ads' new innovation and accelerator team - the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL). The purpose of SAIL was to offer testing and incubation services for individuals within Google Ads who were developing new... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Organizational Design; Technology Industry; Advertising Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

Research Summary

Teamwork and Innovative Behavior with Professor Jeff Polzer and Hila Lifshitz

In a field setting, we explore how teamwork could enhance team members' interpersonal relationships and work performance. We collect longitudinal survey data and measure creative performance of a US company's employees before, during, and after they... View Details

20 Jul 2020
Op-Ed

It's Time for a Bipartisan Health Plan for Employers and Employees

coverage with tax-free contributions from employer-funded ICHRAs. This HRA-Public Option combination could reduce the premiums not only of the millions of insured SME employees and family members, but also those of the 3.4 million... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard J. Boxer; Health; Insurance

June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Mobility; Strategy; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; XPRIZE; Space Industry; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

Research Summary

Team, Individual, and Organizational Learning From Experience in Two High-Hazard Industries

High-hazard industries such as nuclear power and chemical process plants must learn and improve without sole reliance on trial-and-error. Considerable attention and resources are placed on learning from operating experience, including exchange of best practices, peer... View Details

2022
Working Paper

Stories, Statistics and Memory

By: Thomas Graeber, Christopher Roth and Florian Zimmermann

For most decisions, we rely on information encountered over the course of days, months or years. We consume this information in various forms, including abstract summaries of multiple data points – statistics – and contextualized anecdotes about individual instances... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Information Types; Media; Cognition and Thinking

Read Now

Article

Coarse Thinking and Persuasion

By: Sendhil Mullainathan, Joshua Schwartzstein and Andrei Shleifer

We present a model of uninformative persuasion in which individuals "think coarsely": they group situations into categories and apply the same model of inference to all situations within a category. Coarse thinking exhibits two features that persuaders take advantage... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Brands and Branding

14 Apr 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces

Keywords: by Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein & David Lazer

November 2004
Case

Barry Diller and IAC/InterActiveCorp

By: William A. Sahlman and Ryland Matthew Willis

Describes a discussion involving Barry Diller and the top management team at IAC/InteractiveCorp. about whether to buy LendingTree.com. If so, at what price and on what terms? View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Strategy; Management Teams; Business or Company Management

February 2023 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Twitter Turnaround and Elon Musk

By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic

Late afternoon on Friday, October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk was the center of attention at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The night before, Musk officially took the company private and became Twitter’s majority shareholder, finally ending a months-long acquisition... View Details

Keywords: Elon Musk; Twitter; Acquisition; Revenue; Advertising; Social Media; Business or Company Management; Public Opinion; Job Cuts and Outsourcing

Research Summary

Motivation and Incentive Design

Professor Ashraf's research in motivation and incentives focuses on how to design incentives in sectors where it is important that individuals are motivated by service, such as healthcare or environmental conservation. An important lever is the... View Details

Teaching Interest

Overview

Sujin has developed and led courses on Leadership and Organizational Behavior as an invited lecturer in the International Spark Program (Republic of Georgia) and Dubrovnik International University (Croatia). She has also served as a Teaching Fellow for the Social... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Leadership; Teams; Decision Making; Negotiation

2008
Working Paper

Workplace Peers and Entrepreneurship

By: Ramana Nanda and Jesper B. Sorensen

We examine whether the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity is related to the prior career experiences of an individual's co-workers, using a unique matched employer-employee panel dataset. We argue that coworkers can increase the likelihood that an individual... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Power and Influence