Publications

November 2001 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Camp Dresser & McKee: Getting Incentives Right

By: Ashish Nanda

"If you try to use money to motivate behavior, you are in a powerful and dangerous place, especially with engineers and scientists," remarked Tom Furman, CEO of Camp Dresser & McKee, Inc. (CDM), a consulting environmental engineering firm. Historically, CDM had... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Service Industry

Educators

22 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Humans vs. Machines: Untangling the Tasks AI Can (and Can't) Handle

Knowing when to use artificial intelligence and when to rely on the human mind is a shifting fine line, one delineated by new research that shows considerable benefit and speed from generative AI—if it’s applied to the View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

26 May 2022
HBS Case

Apple vs. Feds: Is iPhone Privacy a Basic Human Right?

would embroil the company in an ugly fight—one that risked alienating some shareholders—but he felt strongly that Apple should champion its customers’ basic human right to privacy. “We believe that a company... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

March 2018 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Alaska Airlines: Empowering Frontline Workers to Make It Right

By: Ranjay Gulati, Andrew O'Connell and Caroline de Lacvivier

This case documents the ongoing efforts by Alaska Airlines to enhance its efforts to become more customer centric by empowering its employees using a service framework. It explores how the airline starts with a completely hands-off approach to empowerment in which... View Details

Keywords: Employee Empowerment; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Integration; Air Transportation Industry

Educators

December 2017
Case

Piracy in Somalia (A)

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Alissa Davies

A Somali fisherman stands on a beach in early 2011, considering his options: should he embark in his tiny fishing vessel or join a nearby pirate crew? His war-ravaged country, entering its 20th year of civil war, was in the midst of a famine that had claimed hundreds... View Details

Keywords: Pirates; Foreign Aid; Civil War; Private Property; Human Rights; Economic Development; Globalization; War; Property; Crime and Corruption; Rights; Development Economics; Moral Sensibility; Shipping Industry; Somalia

Educators

07 Feb 2017
Research & Ideas

The Right Way to Cry in Front of Your Boss

frustration or sadness. Wolf differentiates those expressions from anger directed at others. In the paper Managing Perceptions of Distress at Work: Reframing Emotion as Passion, published in the November 2016 issue of Organizational Behavior and View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

April 2017
Article

The Responsibilities and Role of Business in Relation to Society: Back to Basics?

By: Nien-he Hsieh

In this address, I outline a back-to-basics approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm,... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Corporate Responsibility; Harm; Human Rights; Institutions; Pareto Efficiency; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Moral Sensibility; Society; Rights

Find at Harvard

December 2017
Supplement

Piracy in Somalia (B)

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Alissa Davies

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Piracy; Foreign Aid; Civil War; Private Property; Human Rights; Economic Development; Globalization; War; Property; Crime and Corruption; Rights; Development Economics; Moral Sensibility; Somalia

2021
Working Paper

Caccia Selvaggia: Myth, Rites, and the Right in Carlo Ginzburg's Storia notturna

By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

Carlo Ginzburg (b. 1939) is widely considered one of Europe’s leading historians. His masterpiece Storia notturna (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), widely praised for its extraordinary erudition and creativity, is now over three decades old but it continues to inspire... View Details

Keywords: Mythology; Culture; Political Doctrine; History; Government and Politics; Society

13 Aug 1998
Keynote Speech

Ethics, Human Rights, and International Business." Panelist. "World Congress of Philosophy

By: Lynn S. Paine

Keywords: Ethics; Rights; Globalized Firms and Management

04 Apr 2018
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Why Private Investors Must Fund 'New Nuclear' Power Right Now

that want a low-cost, zero fossil carbon alternative for meeting the demand for 24x7x365 power. The ventures that I am watching closely are TerraPower in China, Terrestrial Energy, Moltex Energy and ARC Nuclear in Canada, X-energy, Kairos... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Lassiter; Energy; Green Technology

September 12, 2017
Article

What's the Right Kind of Bonus to Motivate Your Sales Force?

By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas

Companies typically compensate their sales force by using some combination of salary, commission, and bonuses, but executives are often unsure which incentives provide the best motivation. Should bonuses be tied to quotas or should they be given unconditionally? Is it... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Salesforce Management

Register to Read

11 Apr 2023
Op-Ed

The First 90 Hours: What New CEOs Should—and Shouldn't—Do to Set the Right Tone

lab, on the production line, and in the field. And that’s where you will invariably find raw talent that’s been hidden by nervous bosses who haven’t wanted to credit the people who are really doing the work. Work with the human resources... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

February 2014
Article

Governance and CEO Turnover: Do Something or Do the Right Thing?

By: Ray Fisman, Rakesh Khurana, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Soojin Yim

We study how corporate governance affects firm value through the decision of whether to fire or retain the CEO. We present a model in which weak governance—which prevents shareholders from controlling the board—protects inferior CEOs from dismissal, while at the same... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Value; Retention; Resignation and Termination; Corporate Governance; Management Teams; Business and Shareholder Relations

Find at Harvard

01 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

A Penny for Your Thoughts? For Big-Picture Ideas, the Right Pay Structure Matters

Want employees to think outside the box? Start by taking a good, hard look at how you’re paying them. That’s the implication of new research examining the impact of different compensation structures on employee innovation. While there is endless handwringing about what... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

24 Jul 2019
Lessons from the Classroom

Can These Business Students Motivate Londoners to Do the Right Thing?

course? Michael Luca: A deeper appreciation of the ways in which small—and sometimes subtle—changes in the way a process or product is structured can make a difference. Our intuition about these effects can also be off, which is why experimental testing is important as... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

March 2017 (Revised April 2021)
Module Note

Responsibilities to Society

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

This module note for students outlines an approach to help managers deliver on their responsibilities in relation to society. The approach frames these responsibilities in terms of potential harms to third parties beyond investors, customers, and employees. The... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Political Activity; Corporate Social Responsibility; Human Rights; Role Of Business In Society; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Ethics; Business and Community Relations; Rights; Society

October 16, 2024
Article

Physicians Can Help Cut Costs. They Just Need the Right Incentives.

By: Susanna Gallani and Derek A. Haas

Health care organizations have long tried to enlist physicians in their effort to control or reduce costs. One effective means for doing so is to create an incentive system that rewards physicians for their contributions. To design such a system, organizations should... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Health Industry