Publications

02 Apr 2007
Lessons from the Classroom

Making the Move to General Manager

excellence in a single functional area to integrating consistency, cohesion, and alignment across many moving parts in the business unit. "When you're responsible for leading, it's not enough to do what you've done in the past. You... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

10 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

How to Get Companies to Make Investments That Benefit Everyone

good To encourage more companies to develop solutions that benefit communities, Nagle presents four potential strategies policymakers and organizations should consider: Align the incentives, otherwise known as the “win-win solution.” A... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

24 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

Boards and Corporate Governance: A Balanced Scorecard Approach

communicating the strategy, aligning the resources (financial and human) to achieve the strategy, and managing the execution of the strategy. · Board performance of core functions has not been stellar. The performance of many boards has... View Details

Keywords: Re: Robert S. Kaplan & Krishna G. Palepu

June 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Sustainability Reporting at Dollar Tree, Inc.

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

The cases discusses the ESG strategy of Dollar Tree Inc., a U.S. Fortune 500 company in the deep discount retail industry and the and shareholder pressure faced by the company. In 2022, the company faced a shareholder resolution from a renowned shareholder advocacy... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Shareholder Activism; Dollar Tree; Sustainability Reporting; ESG Reporting; Board Of Directors; Shareholder Engagement; GHG; Environmental Accounting; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Trends; Communication; Announcements; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Reports; Business or Company Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Strategic Planning; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Situation or Environment; Opportunities; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Strategy; Adaptation; Alignment; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Value Creation; Retail Industry; United States; Virginia

Research Summary

Research Summary

By: Leslie A. Perlow

There has been tremendous change in the workplace — ubiquitous technology, 24/7 globalization, hyper-efficiency and now significant changes in work location. Professor Perlow’s research explores the implications for the ways we work and live, and what we can do to... View Details

21 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

The Pandemic Conversations That Leaders Need to Have Now

means closeness, and while social distancing remains important to mitigating the spread of COVID-19, psychological proximity—interpersonal trust, alignment on values and strategy, shared understanding of key facts—has never been more... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams, and Katherine Connolly Baden

19 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Company Loyalty

employee-employer relationship pays off for both parties? The most effective executives and managers are applying these strategies: 1. Align career growth with company goals. When a company helps its employees develop expertise that... View Details

Keywords: by Lauren Keller Johnson

09 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Most Accountants Aren’t Crooks—Why Good Audits Go Bad

stronger when people are endorsing others' biased judgments—provided those judgments align with their own biases—than when they are making original judgments themselves. 2 In one series of studies, researchers found that people were more... View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman, George Loewenstein & Don A. Moore; Accounting; Financial Services

30 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

The Upside of Highlighting a Product's Downsides

their offerings are genuinely aligned with the needs and preferences of the customers they’re hoping to serve. If so, informing customers by providing transparency can help deepen the relationship. If not, providing transparency will... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

10 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

The COVID Two-Step for Leaders: Protect and Pivot

things. Companies then compensate for this separation with integration at the senior management level, ensuring alignment at the top. As Charles A. O’Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman explain: “The structure of ambidextrous organizations... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden

19 Aug 2021
Op-Ed

Don't Ignore Your Employees' Misery—TAKE Control

want corporate platitudes and passive social activism after living in pandemic limbo for so long. A = Align your post-COVID employee policies, resources, and timelines, like you would with any other business priority or client project. K... View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and MaShon Wilson

13 Apr 2021
Book

How Inclusive Managers Create Glass-Shattering Organizations

has shown that trying to play down differences actually backfires: it creates a sense of isolation. When team culture focuses on going along to get along, offering a contrary opinion becomes a risky prospect. While it makes sense to align... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

Teaching Interest

Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD)

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

Professor Bernstein taught Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD) from 2013-2016 (7 sections). This course focuses on how managers become effective leaders by addressing the human side of enterprise.

The course is divided into five modules:View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Organizations; Personal Development and Career; Relationships; Communication

Research Summary

Current working papers

Organizational restructuring: the influence of formal and informal structure on tie formation. This paper considers how changes in formal structure and a key element of informal structure – the embeddedness of employee... View Details

17 Sep 2024
Research & Ideas

Advice for the New CEO: Talk to Your Employees Early and Often

about five months after the CEO’s arrival, when the leader set expectations, redefined priorities, and shared a new strategy with the firm, employee uncertainty resolved and the alignment between managers and employees was restored. This... View Details

Keywords: by Ami Albernaz

May 2017
Article

Experimental Evidence of Pooling Outcomes Under Information Asymmetry

By: William Schmidt and Ryan W. Buell

Operational decisions under information asymmetry can signal a firm's prospects to less-informed parties, such as investors, customers, competitors, and regulators. Consequently, managers in these settings often face a tradeoff between making an optimal decision and... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Decision Research; Information Asymmetry; Signaling; Decision Choices and Conditions; Alignment

Find at Harvard

March 2009 (Revised May 2009)
Background Note

Executing Strategy

By: J. Bruce Harreld

This is a note to introduce the principles for effectively implementing a new strategy. It emphasizes the interdependence of strategy and execution in developing and sustaining superior competitive performance. Primarily based on the notion that strategy should be a... View Details

Keywords: Alignment; Competitive Strategy; Management Teams

March 2012
Case

Schuberg Philis

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Daniela Beyersdorfer

The Dutch professional service firm Schuberg Philis has within a few years grown into a well-known player in the Dutch IT outsourcing market and regularly wins high customer- satisfaction marks. The growing workload and 100% promise to customers have increased the... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Management Style; Alignment; Information Technology Industry; Netherlands

Forthcoming
Article

Communication within Firms: Evidence from CEO Turnovers

By: Stephen Michael Impink, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

This paper uses novel, firm-level communication measures derived from communications metadata several months before and after a CEO transition for 102 firms to study whether and how this organizational event is reflected in employees’ communication flows. We find that... View Details

Keywords: Information; Communication; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Alignment