best practices - Publications - Faculty & Research

03 Jul 2012
First Look

First Look: July 3

and Michael Slind show how trusted and effective leaders are adapting the principles of face-to-face conversation in order to pursue a new form of organizational conversation. They explore the promise of conversation-powered leadership-from the time-tested View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

09 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Leadership Lessons of the Great Recession: Options for Economic Downturns

it paid off. Three years later, Honeywell had almost doubled the pace of the S&P 500 and had outpaced its nearest competitor by almost 23 points. MAKING THE DECISION FOR FURLOUGHS The practice of furloughs is commonplace in Europe... View Details

Keywords: by Sandra Sucher & Susan Winterberg; Aerospace; Electronics

03 Jul 2008
What Do You Think?

Are Followers About to Get Their Due?

in large organizations. Participants work hard either in support of or against the policies and practices of their leaders. As Kellerman puts it, "they care enough to try to have an impact." Clearly it's in the View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

30 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Are You Supporting Your B Players?

managers, but an "inclusion" issue. People start to feel that they're no longer "in the club." Herb Kelleher, chairman of Southwest, decided to create a club of 114,000 employees, said DeLong. They don't espouse one theory and embrace its opposite.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Aug 2021
Op-Ed

Don't Ignore Your Employees' Misery—TAKE Control

popular sentiment could prove disastrous for employers trying to retain professional and highly skilled talent. And while speed is required, leaders also need a long-term view. They need to envision the practices that will be common View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and MaShon Wilson

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 whether the phenomenon in question is View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

08 Feb 2010
HBS Case

Looking Behind Google’s Stand in China

downside consequences are more certain. Google has some 700 employees in China, the best of whom are already finding alternative employment. So de facto, Google is going to be a much smaller entity in China. It seems unlikely to me that... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

06 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Motivate Your High Performers to Share Their Knowledge

Many employees fall into a rut. They do their jobs and respond to challenges in a set way to deliver stable results. But consistency can give way to performance gaps between a company’s high achievers and its weakest links. Fortunately, seeking help and adopting the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

30 Jul 2013
First Look

First Look: July 30

chlorine tablets to purify their drinking water? Behavioral economics has shown us that we don't always act in our own best interests. This is as true of health decisions as it is of economic ones. An array of biases, limits on cognition,... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

06 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 6

now a dynamic and growing business that attracts the best and the brightest. It is tempting to declare the industry a roaring success. But its purpose is to serve the needs of U.S. households and firms, and by this standard its... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

The COVID Two-Step for Leaders: Protect and Pivot

improvement and innovation. Below are three suggestions for enabling continuous improvement in your company: Call on cross-functional teams to help solve problems In order to achieve greater efficiency, one best View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden

14 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact

multiple actors and causal mechanisms that are still poorly understood. In such cases, it can still be useful to try to measure what an organization is doing and whether its strategies are working to influence societal change. But there's a tradeoff in terms of the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

19 Mar 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Overcoming the Stress of ‘Englishnization’

to workers, who were expected to pay for their own English classes and learn during off-hours. Neeley, who drafted some best practices that the company began to implement, says Rakuten has quickly moved to... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

17 Dec 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

‘Ted Levitt Changed My Life’

"Ted Levitt changed my life," wrote Barry Koh (HBS PMD 30, 1975). "In our very first class he opened my eyes to how people are motivated to make decisions. Before, I thought as an engineer—the best attributes and the View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education; Retail

24 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Vulnerabilities of Open Source Software

million, of secure web servers on the internet and allowed numerous data breaches, including the theft of 4.5 million medical records from a large hospital chain. In response to Heartbleed, the Linux Foundation established CII, a project that helps support View Details

Keywords: by Frank Nagle and Jenny Hoffman; Computer

15 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Remembering Alfred Chandler

linkages he saw and analyzed. “Al Chandler had one of the best darn smiles this side of the Continental Divide." —Nancy F. Koehn Second, he wrote about the past but this work was always anchored by his own eye on the present. Al... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

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

06 Dec 2017
What Do You Think?

Is It Time To Break Up Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Google?

a company for doing the best job they can and succeed?” Others argued that market definition is changing in ways that render United States anti-trust policy outdated in an increasingly global economy. As Craig Parietti & Partners put... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology; Web Services

23 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas and Research: May 23, 2017

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52652 Learning to Manage: A Field Experiment in the Indian Startup Ecosystem By: Chatterji, Aaron, Solene Delecourt, Sharique Hasan, and Rembrand Koning Abstract—Management styles and View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

years after Android. By then, there were already hundreds of thousands of applications written for the other operating systems. Even though Microsoft may have had the best of the three operating systems, it didn’t matter because it was... View Details