Publications

November 2008 (Revised March 2011)
Case

a-connect: In Search of Talent Partners (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles and Dilyana Karadzhova

a-connect was started in 2002 by three former McKinsey partners who wanted to develop an alternative business model consulting firm, which they have positioned as a high-end staffing company. The company has been very successful, growing to revenues of CHF 30 million... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Initial Public Offering; Selection and Staffing; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketplace Matching; Expansion; Consulting Industry

Article

Resilience vs. Vulnerability: Psychological Safety and Reporting of Near Misses with Varying Proximity to Harm in Radiation Oncology

By: Palak Kundu, Olivia Jung, Amy C. Edmondson, Nzhde Agazaryan, John Hegde, Michael Steinberg and Ann Raldow

Background
Psychological safety, a shared belief that interpersonal risk taking is safe, is an important determinant of incident reporting. However, how psychological safety affects near-miss reporting is unclear, as near misses contain contrasting cues that... View Details

Keywords: Psychological Safety; Near-miss Reporting; Health Care and Treatment; Safety

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March 2008
Article

Is Yours a Learning Organization?

By: David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson and Francesca Gino

This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. An organization with a strong learning culture faces the unpredictable deftly.... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Learning; Surveys; Leading Change; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Organizational Culture

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24 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 24, 2009

suggests that treating planned organizational change as a generic phenomenon might mask important idiosyncrasies associated both with the different activities involved in the change implementation process and with the unique functions... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Web

PhD Programs - Doctoral

study of interpersonal relationships within organizations and the effects that groups have on individuals. Students in the macro track use sociological methods to examine organizations, groups, and markets as a whole, including topics... View Details

07 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 7, 2008

"dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? Two experiments demonstrated conversational blindness—listeners' surprising failure to notice such dodges—and explored the interpersonal... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

05 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

How New BofA Executives Learn its ’Deep Smarts’

thirty to sixty days of entry. The facilitator is a leadership development executive who has a deep understanding of the leader's business issues and is familiar with the specific leadership team's interpersonal dynamics. The facilitator... View Details

Keywords: Re: Dorothy A. Leonard; Banking

Web

Who Are We Looking For? - MBA

Admissions Who Are We Looking For? Connect with Us Sign up College Students Who Are We Looking For? Class Profile Application Process Application Dates Events Direct from the Director Videos and Recorded Webinars The mission of Harvard... View Details

14 Jun 2023
Research & Ideas

Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need

tasks It’s hard to be effective without knowledge-sharing, teamwork, and shared decision-making. These require an element of interpersonal ease. People who feel psychologically safer work better in teams because they can share information... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

October 2001
Supplement

BMW AG: The Digital Auto Project-An Interview With Chris Bangle, Head of Global Design

By: Stefan H. Thomke

Chris Bangle describes how BMW is trying to reduce its development time by half with the aid of computer-aided technologies. To leverage these technologies in the very competitive automotive industry, he talks about how BMW is faced with the challenges of changing its... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Management Practices and Processes; Time Management; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Problems and Challenges; Competition; Information Technology; Auto Industry

2023
Working Paper

Sending Signals: Strategic Displays of Warmth and Competence

By: Bushra S. Guenoun and Julian J. Zlatev

Using a combination of exploratory and confirmatory approaches, this research examines how people signal important information about themselves to others. We first train machine learning models to assess the use of warmth and competence impression management... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Personal Characteristics; Perception; Interpersonal Communication

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21 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Employee Negativity Is Like Wildfire. Manage It Before It Spreads.

spreading, Goldenberg says. Prior research has shown that people tend to express stronger emotions when they know other people are watching. And seeing people express intense emotions also tends to amplify the emotions of the watchers. Emotions also can spread through... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

30 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, May 30

research has focused on understanding when and why people rely on (or ignore) advice and how this impacts judgment accuracy; little is known about the interpersonal consequences of the advice-seeking process. In this paper, we investigate... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2024
Article

What Makes Groups Emotional

By: Amit Goldenberg

When people experience emotions in a group, their emotions tend to have stronger intensity and to last longer. Why is that? This question has occupied thinkers throughout history, and with the use of digital media it is even more pressing today. Historically, attention... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Emotions; Cognition and Thinking; Interpersonal Communication

05 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

changes in the economy than it does about firms allowing themselves to return to days of bloated, ineffective managerial ranks. Managers are handling a more complex set of technologically driven tasks that require substantial skill in directing View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

17 Dec 2012
Research & Ideas

Teaming in the Twenty-First Century

done, we've got to focus on the interpersonal processes and dynamics that occur among people working together for shorter durations." This means that people have to get good at "teaming"—reaching out,... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Comcast New England: A Journey of Organizational Transformation

By: Michael Beer and Anita Arun

This case describes how Kevin Casey, Comcast's New England Region general manager, transformed a low commitment and performance organization. When he took charge of this Comcast region he inherited an organization that was bureaucratic, had low customer satisfaction,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Satisfaction; Employee Relationship Management; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Performance Improvement; Telecommunications Industry; New England

April 2019
Article

Shooting the Messenger

By: Leslie John, Hayley Blunden and Heidi Liu

Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to “shoot the messenger,” deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable. In a preregistered lab experiment, participants rated messengers who delivered bad news from a random drawing as relatively... View Details

Keywords: Judgment; Communication; Sense-making; Attribution; Disclosure; Interpersonal Communication; Perception; Judgments; Motivation and Incentives

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August 2011 (Revised November 2012)
Case

Danielle Marcoux at AdNet2Win Technologies

By: Anthony J. Mayo and Joshua D. Margolis

Danielle Marcoux, Director of Web Design at AdNet2Win Technologies, must decide how best to confront Charles Davide, the Chief Technology Officer and leader of the design team charged with overseeing a major upgrade of the company's proprietary customer loyalty... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Management Teams; Interpersonal Communication; Creativity; Status and Position; Web Services Industry