Publications

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January 2025
Teaching Plan

Knowledge Transfer: Toyota, NUMMI, and GM

By: Willy Shih

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 625-003. New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. It was an opportunity for GM to learn about the Toyota Production System, which was quite different from the mass production... View Details

Keywords: Culture Change; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Joint Ventures; Transformation; Selection and Staffing; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Labor Unions; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Production; Labor and Management Relations; Auto Industry; Japan; United States

Knowledge management has been a high priority for Cognizant Technology Solutions since its inception since its global delivery model requires the global sharing of knowledge. Its first major tool was called the Knowledge Management Appliance but as Web 2.0 tools came... View Details

December 2021
Article

Seeing Oneself as a Valued Contributor: Social Worth Affirmation Improves Team Information Sharing

By: Julia Lee Cunningham, Francesca Gino, Dan Cable and Bradley Staats

Teams often fail to reach their potential because members’ concerns about being socially accepted prevent them from offering their unique perspectives to the team. Drawing on relational self and self-affirmation theory, we argue that affirmation of team members’ social... View Details

Keywords: Social Worth Affirmation; Relational Identity; Self-affirmation; Information Sharing In Teams; Concerns About Social Acceptance; Groups and Teams; Identity; Relationships; Knowledge Sharing

July 2024 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Knowledge Transfer: Toyota, NUMMI, and GM

By: Willy Shih

New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. It was an opportunity for GM to learn about the Toyota Production System, which was quite different from the mass production processes American automakers used at the... View Details

Keywords: Culture Change; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Joint Ventures; Transformation; Selection and Staffing; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Labor Unions; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Production; Labor and Management Relations; Auto Industry; Japan; United States

Educators

25 Mar 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Incompatible Assumptions: Barriers to Producing Multidisciplinary Knowledge in Communities of Scholarship

Keywords: by Corinne Bendersky & Kathleen L. McGinn; Education

31 Jul 2014
News

Making Private Equity Public Knowledge

facts of the deal and that you have an opinion on the upside and the downside. To the relief of all private equity hopefuls, Sheyner has now shared those lessons. His exhaustive guide to breaking into the industry, "Private Equity... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell

2017
Working Paper

Business and Green Knowledge Production in Sweden 1960s–1980s

By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Kristina Söderholm

This working paper contributes to the burgeoning historical literature that has transformed our understanding about the relationship between big business and the environmental regulation. Previously, it was believed that corporate managers resisted the extra costs... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; Research and Development; History; Sweden

SSRN

2010
Working Paper

Dynamically Integrating Knowledge in Teams: Transforming Resources into Performance

By: Heidi K. Gardner, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats

In knowledge-based environments, teams must develop a systematic approach to integrating knowledge resources throughout the course of projects in order to perform effectively. Yet, many teams fail to do so. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we examine how... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Performance Effectiveness; Quality; Groups and Teams; Risk and Uncertainty; Familiarity

June 2022
Article

Conservatism Gets Funded? A Field Experiment on the Role of Negative Information in Novel Project Evaluation

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani

The evaluation and selection of novel projects lies at the heart of scientific and technological innovation, and yet there are persistent concerns about bias, such as conservatism. This paper investigates the role that the format of evaluation, specifically information... View Details

Keywords: Project Evaluation; Innovation; Knowledge Frontier; Information Sharing; Negativity Bias; Projects; Innovation and Invention; Information; Knowledge Sharing

March 2018
Article

Enacting Knowledge Strategy Through Social Media: Passable Trust and the Paradox of Non-work Interactions

By: Tsedal Neeley and Paul Leonardi

Despite the recognition that knowledge sharing among employees is necessary to enact knowledge strategy, little is known about how to enable such sharing. Recent research suggests that social media may promote knowledge sharing because they allow social lubrication and... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Strategy; Social and Collaborative Networks; Employees; Interactive Communication; Trust

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2007
Working Paper

Incompatible Assumptions: Barriers to Producing Multidisciplinary Knowledge in Communities of Scholarship

By: Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn

Co-locating knowledge workers from different disciplines may be a necessary but insufficient step to generating multidisciplinary knowledge. We explore the role of assumptions underlying knowledge creation within the field of organizational studies, and investigate how... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Business Processes; Groups and Teams

22 Oct 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Variation in Experience and Team Familiarity: Addressing the Knowledge Acquisition-Application Problem

Keywords: by Robert S. Huckman & Bradley R. Staats; Video Game; Web Services

September 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

Transferring Knowledge Between Projects at NASA JPL (A)

By: Dorothy Leonard and Christopher Myers

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research institution within NASA, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has played a large role in many space and planetary explorations, particularly to the planet Mars. As a project-based... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Employees; Experience and Expertise; Aerospace Industry; United States

Educators

Web

HBS Working Knowledge – Harvard Business School Faculty Research

companies are wary of sharing proprietary information with suppliers and partners. However, Shane Greenstein and colleagues show in a study of wireless routers that being more open about technology can lead to new opportunities. Why... View Details

2018
Article

Knowledge about Tuberculosis and Infection Prevention Behavior: A Nine City Longitudinal Study from India

By: Sophie Huddart, Thomas Bossuroy, Vincent Pons, Siddhartha Baral, Madhukar Pai and Clara Delavallade

Background
Improving patients’ tuberculosis (TB) knowledge is a salient component of TB control strategies. Patient knowledge of TB may encourage infection prevention behaviors and improve treatment adherence. The purpose of this study is to examine how... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Knowledge Dissemination; Behavior; India

2009
Article

Expertise Utilization in Accounting & Consulting Teams: The Effects of Shared Representations

By: Heidi K. Gardner

Why are some teams more effective than others in using their members' knowledge? This paper identifies shared representations as a critical moderator of effective knowledge utilization in teams, revealing how and when teams appropriately draw on their members'... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Groups and Teams; Performance Effectiveness

Forthcoming
Article

The Effect of a System for Sharing Best Practices Within Pre-existing Peer Networks

By: Shelley Xin Li and Tatiana Sandino

Peer networks, such as enterprise social networks (ESNs), can facilitate knowledge transfer across employees. However, such systems can also lead to information overload or difficulty in finding useful information. We examine data from a natural field experiment where... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Best Practices; Enterprise Social Media; Management Accounting And Control Systems; Social and Collaborative Networks; Communication Technology; Knowledge Sharing; Sales; Social Media; Retail Industry

26 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Corporate Field Researchers Share Tricks of the Trade

intense research with individual employees, try to make them partners in the research," she said. (HBS professor Nava Ashraf discussed this idea of co-producing knowledge in the Working Knowledge article,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

September 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Supplement

Transferring Knowledge Between Projects at NASA JPL (B)

By: Dorothy Leonard and Christopher Myers

At the conclusion of the (A) case, Jennifer Trosper needed to decide whether or not to throw her support behind the training and outreach represented by the ROV-E program to build small rovers like the ones used on the surface of Mars by NASA JPL. The (B) case... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Employees; Experience and Expertise; Decision Making; Aerospace Industry; United States