Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,918)
- Faculty Publications (164)
- March 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Social Salary Setting at Spiber
By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears
Can a “set your own salary” system boost employee happiness and motivation? Spiber made synthetic silk built from proteins mimicking the proteins found in spider silk, the world’s toughest known material by weight. Kazuhide Sekiyama and Junichi Sugahara established... View Details
- March 2020
- Article
Is This My Group or Not? The Role of Ensemble Coding of Emotional Expressions in Group Categorization
By: Amit Goldenberg, Timothy D. Sweeny, Emmanuel Shpigel and James J. Gross
When exposed to others’ emotional responses, people often make rapid decisions as to whether these others are members of their group or not. These group categorization decisions have been shown to be extremely important to understanding group behavior. Yet, despite... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
ZEISS Group: Organize by Customer Culture?
By: Willy C. Shih
How should ZEISS, the German manufacturer of precision optical and optoelectronic systems manage two historic businesses that operated fairly autonomously? The Industrial Quality Solutions (IQS) business sold measurement equipment to manufacturing companies in sectors... View Details
- January 2020
- Supplement
Chemours (B)
By: David G. Fubini and David Lane
Supplement to the (A) case, describing actions taken by Chemours CEO Mark Vergnano and members of his executive team to execute a successful turnaround of the company. View Details
- January–February 2020
- Article
Give Your Colleague the Rating He Deserves—or the One He Wants?
By: Anthony J. Mayo, Joshua D. Margolis and Amy Gallo
The article presents a case study on business friendship and its possible effect on employee ratings. It mentions a hypothetical case where one member of a team didn't meet his deadlines on the development of a new product, the use of a peer-to-peer employee rating... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Negotiating for Equal Pay: The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (A)
By: Christine Exley, John Beshears, Manuela Collis and Davis Heniford
In 2019, members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (WNT) filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The case describes the history of the WNT's quest for equal pay leading up to this event. View Details
- October 2019
- Case
GRIT Fitness
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Olivia Hull
In December 2018, GRIT Fitness was a growing chain of boutique fitness studios offering a variety of workout classes, including weightlifting, high intensity interval training, and cardio dance. With 400 members and three Dallas studios, CEO Brittani Rettig believed... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Plan; Trends; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Training; Health; Selection and Staffing; Leadership Style; Leadership Development; Management Style; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Motivation and Incentives; Sports; Competition; Diversification; Expansion; Value Creation; Health Industry; Sports Industry; Texas
- September 2019
- Exercise
Difficult Conversations (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details
- September 2019
- Exercise
Difficult Conversations (B)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 9 Organizing to Rationalize
The purpose of this chapter is to explain what the technologies of flow production with stochastic bottlenecks require and reward in organizations. I argue that organizations successfully implementing these technologies are likely to have unified governance and... View Details
- September 2019
- Case
Teaming Up to Win the Rail Deal at GE (A)
By: Amy Edmondson, Ranjay Gulati and Rachna Tahilyani
In 2012, Nalin Jain, then head of GE aviation for South Asia, was given the added responsibility for GE’s transportation business in India, including bidding for a $2.5 billion contract to manufacture, service and maintain 1,000 diesel locomotives for state owned... View Details
- Article
Risk Attitudes and Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs and Venture Team Members
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and Margaret Dalton
Personality distinctions between entrepreneurs, nonfounder CEOs/leaders, and inventor employees have received limited attention, especially in innovative settings where they are working together. We surveyed these groups, along with other employees of innovative firms,... View Details
- 2018
- Article
Prior Ties and the Limits of Peer Effects on Startup Team Performance
By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
We conduct a field experiment at an entrepreneurship bootcamp to investigate whether interaction with proximate peers shapes a nascent startup team's performance. We find that teams whose members lack prior ties to others at the bootcamp experience peer effects that... View Details
- Article
Diversity Thresholds: How Social Norms, Visibility, and Scrutiny Relate to Group Composition
By: Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman, Dolly Chugh and Modupe Akinola
Across a field study and four experiments, we examine how social norms and scrutiny affect decisions about adding members of underrepresented populations (e.g., women, racial minorities) to groups. When groups are scrutinized, we theorize that decision makers strive to... View Details
- Article
From Orientation to Behavior: The Interplay Between Learning Orientation, Open-mindedness, and Psychological Safety in Team Learning
By: Jean-François Harvey, Kevin J. Johnson, Kathryn S. Roloff and Amy C. Edmondson
Do teams with motivation to learn actually engage in the behaviors that produce learning? Though team learning orientation has been found to be positively related to team learning, we know little about how and when it actually fosters team learning. It is obviously not... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Shield AI
By: Mitchell Weiss and A.J. Steinlage
Shield AI’s quadcopter – with no pilot and no flight plan – could clear a building and outpace human warfighters by almost five minutes. This was not to say that it was better than the warfighters or would replace their jobs, but it was evidence that autonomous robots... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Artificial Intelligence; AI; Entrepreneurial Sales; Government; Defense; Shield AI; Brandon Tseng; Ryan Tseng; Andrew Reiter; Robots; Robotics; UAV; UAVs; Government Sales; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Sales; Government Administration; National Security; Business and Government Relations; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; United States
- August 2018
- Article
Deep Help in Complex Project Work: Guiding and Path-Clearing Across Difficult Terrain
By: Colin M. Fisher, Julianna Pillemer and Teresa M. Amabile
How do teams working on complex projects get the help they need? Our qualitative investigation of the help provided to project teams at a prominent design firm revealed two distinct helping processes, both characterized by deep, sustained engagement that far exceeds... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions
By: Anita Elberse
In March 2017, Jason Blum, the founder and chief executive officer of film and television production company Blumhouse Productions, has another blockbuster on his hands with the movie Get Out, produced for just $4.5 million. Remarkable returns for its micro-budget... View Details
Keywords: Entertainment; Media; Film; Movies; Creative Industries; Product-portfolio Management; Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Talent; General Management; Strategy; Marketing; Blockbusters; Film Entertainment; Innovation and Management; Talent and Talent Management; Competitive Strategy; Management Style; Marketing Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry
- March 2018 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and James Weber
In 2018, City Year was a 30-year-old nonprofit that recruited and organized teams of young-adult “volunteers” (corps teams) to provide a year of citizen service. It had 3,100 corps members serving in 327 schools located in 28 U.S. cities. In its early decades, City... View Details
Keywords: Education; Service Operations; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Resource Allocation; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Human Capital; Growth Management; Service Delivery; Organizational Design; Social Enterprise; Poverty; United States
- February 2018 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
People Analytics at Teach For America (A)
By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Julia Kelley
As of mid-2016, national nonprofit Teach For America (TFA) had struggled with three consecutive years of declining application totals, and senior management was re-examining the organization's strategy, including recruitment and selection. A few months earlier, former... View Details