Publications

March 2010 (Revised February 2014)
Case

Community Health Workers in Zambia: Incentive Design and Management

By: Nava Ashraf and Natalie Kindred

This case examines the various considerations relevant to selecting and compensating workers in a context where their work involves a pro-social component. This is relevant to not only health care in Zambia, but to NGO and public sector workers who are both motivated... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Training; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Mission and Purpose; Non-Governmental Organizations; Motivation and Incentives; Health Industry; Zambia

14 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: February 14

Publication:Psychological Science (forthcoming) Abstract Five studies investigate whether the practice of "regifting"-a social taboo-is as offensive to givers as regifters assume. Participants who imagined regifting thought that... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Article

Exploring the Duality Between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the 'Mirroring' Hypothesis

By: Alan MacCormack, Carliss Y. Baldwin and John Rusnak

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that the organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are... View Details

Keywords: Organization Design; Architecture; Modularity; Open Source Software; Communication; Design; Governance; Management Practices and Processes; Open Source Distribution; Product Design; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Structure; Performance; Problems and Challenges; Behavior; Software

28 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 28, 2008

instruments (including price-setting) to implement desired outcomes. Non-price instruments were very much at the core of MSP strategies. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-061.pdf Platform Competition, Compatibility, and View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

08 Nov 2024
HBS Case

What Wartime Service Taught These Historic Leaders

serve, so he joined the Red Cross and went overseas as an ambulance driver. In Paris, he found purpose in chauffeuring military command officers around the city to meetings. Disney brought to this endeavor a keen sense of fun and theater:... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Entertainment & Recreation

06 Mar 2013
What Do You Think?

Who Should Manage Our Work Time?

laid the blame at the foot of "an engineer who had difficulty forecasting simple activities and (the) time to accomplish them." Joseph Mello commented that " part of the problem comes from the view of an organization as a machine as opposed to a View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

October 2022
Case

Ceibal: Sustaining and Scaling Educational Innovation in Uruguay

By: John J-H Kim, Michael Chu and Mariana Cal

Ceibal was founded in 2007 in Uruguay, as an initiative to reduce the digital gap in the country. After playing an important role providing a smooth transition to remote learning during COVID, Ceibal in 2022 must now determine the best way to fulfill its mission to "be... View Details

Keywords: Digital Gap; COVID-19 Pandemic; Education; Teaching; Digital Platforms; Technology Adoption; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Transformation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Education Industry; Latin America; South America; Uruguay

16 Jul 2024
Op-Ed

Corporate Boards Are Failing in Their No. 1 Duty

the enterprise and repeatedly tried short-term fixes, all while depending too heavily on financial earnings, rather than innovation. Boeing: The world leader in aviation for 100 years, Boeing lost sight of its purpose to produce safe,... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

26 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 26, 2019

compatibility can thus increase asymmetry between the platform owners’ profit foci and, given a sufficiently large difference in the standalone utilities, yields greater profits for both platform owners. We further show that social... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

September 2021
Case

Worldreader: Helping Readers Build a Better World

By: Marco Bertini, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2010, Worldreader was an international nonprofit organization that promoted reading to children around the world. For many years, Worldreader distributed e-readers to under-resourced communities and funded its operations primarily through philanthropic... View Details

March 2021 (Revised June 2022)
Case

James Bryant Conant: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case traces the rise of James Conant from a working-class neighborhood in Boston to president of Harvard University. The case describes how Conant, as a young man interested in chemistry and physics, embarks on studies to build his academic credentials and the... View Details

Keywords: Education; Science; Higher Education; Mission and Purpose; Research; Values and Beliefs; Personal Characteristics; Work-Life Balance; Personal Development and Career; Education Industry; Boston

28 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: The Good Struggle: Responsible Leadership in an Unforgiving World

prepare a force for the first engagement with the enemy and little more. It is no coincidence that some entrepreneurs today echo Clausewitz's observation and say the purpose of a business plan is to prepare a new organization for its... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Badaracco

20 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: Jan. 20

research suggests that the random coefficients logit is a highly flexible model that overcomes the problems of the homogeneous logit by allowing for differences in tastes across individuals. The purpose of this paper is to show that this... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 Jun 2019
Book

Are You a Digital Manager?

to thrive today, managers need to make sure team members can have an impact on an organization whose purpose they deeply care about. Lagace: You’ve spoken recently about the importance of building ecosystems. What do you mean? Hill: For... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Peeling Back the Global Brand

served no purpose at all beyond cosmetic appeal. Yet, silly as it seemed, the effect was real in terms of consumer preferences, he said. We talked about brand more and more as a hierarchy of persuasive elements.— Hans-Willi Schroiff... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; Retail

07 Jun 2011
First Look

First Look: June 7

managing the operations of companies whose activities stretch across national boundaries. The purpose of this book is to provide a conceptual framework showing the interplay between the multinational corporation, the countries in which it... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2024
Case

Pioneering Pain Management: CWC Alliance Combats the Opioid Epidemic

By: Susanna Gallani, Karen L. Sedatole and Sarah Mehta

Set in March 2024, this case is about CWC Alliance (CWC), a nonprofit working to prevent opioid addiction in the U.S. Founder Cammie Wolf Rice launched CWC in 2018 after her son, Christopher Wolf, died of a heroin overdose. Wolf’s dependence on opioids stemmed from a... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Jobs and Positions; Nonprofit Organizations; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Delivery; Mission and Purpose; Health Industry; United States; Georgia (state, US); Atlanta

June 2008 (Revised July 2008)
Case

The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis

By: Robert Steven Kaplan, Christopher Marquis and Brent Kazan

Marc Buoniconti is the co-founder of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, a nonprofit medical research organization. The project was founded in 1985 by Marc and his father Nick, a former Hall of Fame football player, when Marc suffered a spinal cord injury. In 2007,... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Health Testing and Trials; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Research and Development; Nonprofit Organizations; Health Industry; Miami

June 2010 (Revised September 2013)
Case

IDFC India: Infrastructure Investment Intermediaries

By: John D. Macomber and Viraal Balsari

Indian financial intermediary matching international capital to local infrastructure decides how to balance range of services, risk-adjusted return, margin pressure, and nation building. IDFC was chartered with partial ownership from the Indian government to help... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Infrastructure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; State Ownership; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Financial Services Industry; India