Publications

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Tsedal Neeley is the Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA program at Harvard Business School, where she is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Faculty Chair of the... View Details

October 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Thermax—Changing of the Guard

By: Christina R. Wing and Inakshi Sobti

Thermax is an engineering company in India that provides integrated solutions in energy, environment, and chemicals. The Aga family along with family trusts owns 62% of the company. Post a restructuring exercise in 2000, Thermax transforms itself from a small family... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Transformation; Business Conglomerates; Strategy; Management Succession; Selection and Staffing; Organizational Culture

February 2012
Case

Henkel: Building a Winning Culture

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates a CEO-led organizational transformation driven by stretch goals, performance measurement, and accountability. When Kasper Rorsted became CEO of Henkel, a Germany-based producer of personal care, laundry, and adhesives products, in 2008, he was... View Details

Keywords: Performance Measurement; Performance Appraisals; Human Resource Management; Values; Organizational Transformations; Pay For Performance; Strategy Execution; Values and Beliefs; Work-Life Balance; Organizational Culture; Human Resources; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits

29 May 2001
Research & Ideas

Race Does Matter in Mentoring

In a three-year research project, I studied the career trajectories of minority and white professionals at three major U.S. corporations. The story of one of the participants—Stephen Williams—sheds light on many of the differences in career View Details

Keywords: by David A. Thomas

November 1990 (Revised March 1994)
Case

Digital Equipment Corp.: The Kodak Outsourcing Agreement (A)

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Herminia M. Ibarra

Describes grassroots effort which culminated in Digital's winning a competitive bid for the outsourcing of Kodak's internal telecommunications business. Describes the "Telstar" project, from the initial identification of the business opportunity to the process of... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Partners and Partnerships; Leading Change; Agreements and Arrangements; Business or Company Management; Bids and Bidding; Decision Making; Management Teams; Telecommunications Industry

August 2019
Case

Preserving Trust at Care.com (A)

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Julia Kelley

Care.com was an online platform designed to match caregivers with individuals seeking care for themselves, others, and pets, through job postings, caregiver profiles, and directories of local day care centers. In March 2019, the Wall Street Journal had just published a... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Corporate Governance; Digital Platforms; Market Design; Emerging Markets; Trust; Technology Industry; United States

November 2017
Case

Outrageous Ambition: Duke University

By: William C. Kirby and Yuanzhuo Wang

Duke University had grown from a one room schoolhouse in rural North Carolina in 1859 to one of the leading research universities in the U.S. and the world. Since the late 1950s, Duke’s leaders had consciously used the process of strategic planning to guide the... View Details

August 2004
Case

Microsoft.NET (Abridged)

By: Alan D. MacCormack and Kerry Herman

Set in the summer of 2000, following the unveiling of Microsoft's .NET initiative to the public. Three of the key figures in .NET's development are considering the next steps they would have to take to keep the initiative moving forward. Specifically, the challenges... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Leadership; Management Skills; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms

September 1990 (Revised January 1992)
Case

Procter & Gamble Japan (A)

By: Michael Y. Yoshino

Ten years after entering Japan, P&G had accumulated over $250 million in operating losses on declining annual sales of $120 million by 1983. The decision facing the president of P&G International: exit, retrench or rebuild the operation? Ironically, the initial entry... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Change Management; Profit; Market Entry and Exit; Market Participation; Sales; Competition; Technology; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Japan

January 16, 2020
Article

How Global Leaders Should Think About Solving Our Biggest Problems

By: Mark R. Kramer, Marc W. Pfitzer and Helge Mahne

The corporate social conscience will soon be on full display in Davos, Switzerland, where global leaders from business, government, and civil society will assemble on January 21 for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Global Range; Partners and Partnerships; Strategy

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Ethan Bernstein (@ethanbernstein) is an associate professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School. He has spent his career researching novel talent management practices and their effect on employee behavior, collaboration, and performance.... View Details

December 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Blockbuster Inc. & Technological Substitution (C): The Internet Changes the Game

Investigates how the rise of the Internet as a vehicle for renting and buying movies has disrupted the video rental industry and how market leader Blockbuster Inc. can and should respond to these developments. Explores how the emergence of e-commerce affects the degree... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Risk and Uncertainty; Decisions; Technological Innovation; Competition; Change Management; Service Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

April 2025
Supplement

#FutureFresenius: 'Committed to Life' in 2024 and Beyond (B)

By: David J. Collis, Benjamin C. Esty and Haisley Wert

From February 2024 onward, Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA continued to make progress on the #FutureFresenius transformation that CEO Michael Sen had initiated in October 2022. The company had completed the initial "reset" phase and moved into the "revitalize" portion of the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Finance; Transformation; Leading Change; Health Industry; United States; Germany

2021
Article

Reflections: Voice and Silence in Workplace Conversations

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Tijs Besieux

We highlight conversations at work as an arena of change. Drawing on and extending the psychological safety literature, we offer a new framework to distinguish between productive and unproductive forms of both voice and silence. The framework’s four... View Details

Keywords: Conversation; Silence; Voice; Psychological Safety; Interpersonal Communication; Quality; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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David Thomas is H. Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research addresses issues related to executive development, cultural diversity in organizations, leadership and organizational change. He recently served as a... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; consulting; consumer products; education industry; financial services; media

December 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

In the Eye of a Geopolitical Storm: South Korea's Lotte Group, China and the U.S. THAAD Missile Defense System (A)

By: Andy Zelleke and Brian Tilley

By late 2016 and early 2017, Lotte Group, a South Korean chaebol (large family-controlled business group) had become embroiled not only in the domestic political turmoil surrounding President Park Geun-hye, but also—uncomfortably—in a four-country geopolitical storm. ... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Politics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; National Security; International Relations; Decision Making; Government and Politics; Leadership; South Korea; China; Japan