Publications

Research Summary

The Architecture of the Integrated Organization

By: Ranjay Gulati

In this research I explore how organizations balance pressures for efficiency with the need to be responsive at the same time. Operating in turbulent global markets it is increasingly important for firms to embrace both global efficiency and also local responsiveness.... View Details

January 2007 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Procter & Gamble: Organization 2005 (A)

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and Alessandro L. Spadini

In response to a huge crisis in 2000, the new CEO of Procter & Gamble has to decide whether to continue with an unusual organizational design or to revert to the old matrix organization. Describes all the organizational designs used by Procter & Gamble from the 1920s... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure

2025
Working Paper

How Firms Respond to Worker Activism: Evidence from Global Supply Chains

By: Yanhua Bird, Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel

Social movement pressures can lead organizations to concede and improve social performance to avoid disruption costs, but we theorize that such responses evoke concession costs that prompt organizations to shift resources and attention from other social domains whose... View Details

Keywords: Worker Activism; Labor Standards; Tradeoffs; Global Supply Chains; Internal Governance Structure; Public Opinion; Supply Chain; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Working Conditions

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February 2012
Case

Kent Chemical: Organizing for International Growth

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Laura Winig

In July 2008, Luis Morales, president of Kent Chemical International, is proposing a third reorganization effort after two failed attempts to better align his business with its U.S.-based parent company. With a global expansion strategy placing increasing demands on... View Details

Keywords: International Business; Organizational Change; Multinational Corporations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Multinational Firms and Management; Organizational Design; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Global Strategy; Chemical Industry; United States

2017
Chapter

Globalization in Historical Perspective

By: Pankaj Ghemawat and Geoffrey Jones

This chapter explores the role that firms have played over time in promoting international trade and investment. It takes a chronological perspective and is organized around a first wave of globalization from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1920s and a second wave... View Details

Keywords: International Business; International Marketing; History; Marketing; Investment; Trade; Globalization

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21 Sep 2016
Blog Post

Meet the Global Business Club

The Global Business Club is a student-run organization at the Harvard Business School. We provide services to support students interested in growing their global intelligence,... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

March 2019 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Global Sourcing at Nike

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Michael W. Toffel and Olivia Hull

This case explores the evolution of Nike’s global product sourcing strategy, in particular ongoing efforts to improve working conditions at its suppliers’ factories. When the case opens in July 2018, Vice President of Sourcing Amanda Tucker and her colleagues in Nike’s... View Details

August 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Global Business School Network

By: Christopher Marquis and Rwitwika Bhattacharya

The mission of the Global Business School Network (GBSN) is to strengthen business education for the developing world. The organization was transitioning out of its startup phase and wants to shift its focus from capacity building activities driven by the organization... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Business Education; Development Economics; Globalization; Global Strategy; Education Industry

April 1985 (Revised March 1987)
Background Note

Organizing and Controlling MNCs

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management

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Web

Global - Global Activities 2020

Global Outposts Expand HBS’s Intellectual Footprint HBS’s research outposts play a critical role in the School’s efforts to build deep expertise in business practices around the world, and to enhance the View Details

Research Summary

Governance and Accountability in Social Sector Organizations

This research examines governance in two types of organizations: international NGOs and socioeconomic hybrids.

First, over the past decade, many of the world's most prominent international nongovernmental organizations and networks (INGOs) ... View Details

20 May 2013
News

HBS Hosts Global Health Competition

2013
Book

Entrepreneurship and Multinationals: Global Business and the Making of the Modern World

By: Geoffrey Jones

This book examines the history of entrepreneurship and multinationals in the making of the modern world. In recent years economists, historians, and political scientists have written extensively on the history of globalization and patterns of global wealth and poverty,... View Details

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2010
Chapter

Leadership in a Globalizing World

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

In this chapter, world-renowned business expert, author, and Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter asks the question, "Is leadership different in a globalizing world--one of broadening horizons and burgeoning sources of ideas and supplies--than in... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Globalized Firms and Management; Leadership; Research; Complexity; Diversity

March 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

P&G Japan: The SK-II Globalization Project

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Traces changes in P&G's international strategy and structure, culminating in Organization 2005, a reorganization that places strategic emphasis on product innovation rather than geographic expansion and shifts power from local subsidiary to global business management.... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Trade; Globalization; Global Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Business or Company Management; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Hong Kong; Japan; Taiwan; Europe

20 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

Language Wars Divide Global Companies

As global companies increasingly adopt a dominant language, usually English, which all employees must use to simplify communications and increase collaboration, many are dismayed to find an unexpected outcome. Results are exactly opposite... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

Program

Leading Global Businesses

authentic global leader who can step up to more challenging roles. You'll develop global acumen in realms as diverse as purposeful leadership in a multi-stakeholder world, strategy, customer-centric... View Details

June 2004 (Revised July 2005)
Case

Procter & Gamble: Global Business Services

By: Thomas J. DeLong, Warren Brackin, Alex Cabanas, Phil Shellhammer and David L. Ager

Dave Walker, vice-president of business service opportunities and chairman of the governance team at Procter & Gamble, must decide what to do with P&G's 5,700 employee Global Business Services (GBS) group. GBS brought together internal services such as finance,... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Change Management; Decision Making; Globalized Firms and Management; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Organizational Design