Publications

21 May 2020
Blog Post

Creating a World with Trusted Leaders: An Open Letter from MBA Students

born just three weeks earlier on a Zoom call with their Public Entrepreneurship professor Mitch Weiss. Along with about 15 fellow classmates, they expressed feelings of helplessness for the world around them. On the call, I recounted a story I heard about a bank... View Details

December 2011 (Revised April 2012)
Case

Pierre Frankel in Moscow (A): Unfreezing Change

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Matthew Bird

A young and upcoming French executive in a global technology company is sent to Moscow as deputy managing director to turn around the Russia subsidiary. He must report to the subsidiary's managing director (a large reason for the organization's underperformance) and to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Selection and Staffing; Change Management; Restructuring; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Moscow

13 Oct 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Shopping for Confirmation: How Disconfirming Feedback Shapes Social Networks

Keywords: by Paul Green, Jr., Francesca Gino, and Bradley Staats

10 Dec 2021
Research & Ideas

Truth Be Told: Unpacking the Risks of Whistleblowing

incentivizes employees to report issues where the penalty is high." Dey: There are a lot of issues that well-meaning managers and boards may not know about. There may be something bad going on in one... View Details

Keywords: by April White

07 Dec 2017
News

Does Time Pressure Help or Hinder Creativity at Work?

July 2011 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Foxconn Technology Group (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles, George Serafeim and Beiting Cheng

In 2010, Foxconn Technology Group, the largest and fastest growing multinational company in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry, came under public scrutiny after a string of employee suicides reached the international press. Although the company was... View Details

23 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Partnering and the Balanced Scorecard

diverse units, employees, and constituencies. In this chapter, we describe how effective leaders customize their organization's measurement and management system to partner with their employees for strategy... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

April 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Dansko, Inc.

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Victoria Winston

For the past 18 months, Mandy Cabot had worried that the shoe business she had built into a thriving operation with $90 million in annual revenue and over 110 employees might instead be a "house of cards." The management philosophy that had guided Dansko's growth,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Revenue; Experience and Expertise; Employee Relationship Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Management Teams; Apparel and Accessories Industry

March 2011 (Revised March 2012)
Case

Arck Systems

By: Ian Larkin

The Arck Systems series of cases describes the dilemmas faced by a senior sales manager in determining a sales compensation plan at an enterprise software company. The existing compensation plan is aggressive and highly rewards "star" performers. The cases track a... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Performance Effectiveness; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives; Software; Information Technology Industry

March 2018
Case

TrustSphere: Building a Market for Relationship Analytics

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden

Manish Goel was the CEO of TrustSphere, a seven-year-old company in the data analytics industry that focused squarely on relationship analytics, a space in which TrustSphere was pioneering a unique technology and solutions in the areas of sales, risk, and people... View Details

Keywords: Data Analytics; People Analytics; Talent Management; Human Resources; Networks; Relationships; Analysis; Employee Relationship Management; Core Relationships; Applications and Software; Communication; Technology Industry; Singapore

24 Jul 2014
Blog Post

Create a Content Marketing Strategy for your Talent Acquisitions Team

As a talent acquisitions manager or a marketing manager within a human resources team, you’ve probably asked yourself how to reach large quantities of high quality candidates in a thoughtful and meaningful... View Details

01 Mar 2023
What Do You Think?

How Much Does 'Deep Purpose' Matter to the Bottom Line?

mission is the starting point for its culture. The nature of a mission statement matters only if leaders and their employees believe in it and live it. In my research, too often I’ve found that leaders are content to check the box on... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Paige Tsai

Paige Tsai is PhD candidate in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. Her research broadly examines the effects of job design on employees. Her current projects explore the financial and well-being effects of holding multiple jobs,... View Details

Keywords: service industry; restaurant; retailing; hotels ＆ motels

22 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

How to Learn from the Big Mistake You Almost Make

on high-quality care. "When people don't recognize near-misses as this goldmine, then they're not going to take advantage of them." In other settings, it may be up to managers to communicate a clear and compelling purpose, and to make... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Health

January–February 2014
Article

Can a Strong Culture Be Too Strong?

By: David A. Garvin

The article presents a case study of a business enterprise with high employee turnover that is considering adopting a personnel management innovation, referred to as People Support, involving a group of managers whose role is to listen to and help resolve employees'... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Retention; Organizational Culture

Find at Harvard

Read Now

May 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

Diamond in the Rough (A)

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Catherine M. Conneely

Diamond Technology Partners, a consulting firm based in Chicago, was founded in 1994 by Mel Bergstein and Chris Moffitt, with investment from founding partners and Safeguard Scientifics. In April 1996, just after fiscal year-end, the two largest clients withdrew from... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Going Public; Crisis Management; Finance; Consulting Industry; Chicago

April 2012 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Dovernet

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates the implications of using stringent performance measurement systems to create performance pressure, motivate employee achievement, and sharpen a firm's competitiveness. It opens by describing the downsides of the ruthlessly competitive culture at... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Information Technology; Competitive Advantage; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; Vancouver

August 2019
Background Note

Note on Shared Ownership

By: Ethan Bernstein and Nick Rekenthaler

While several tactics can drive company performance by instilling a sense of shared ownership among employees, perhaps the most direct is to actually share ownership with employees. Many public and private companies across industries have done just that, and studies... View Details

Keywords: Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Human Resources; Employees; Human Capital; Ownership; Cooperative Ownership; Employee Ownership; Customer Ownership; Governance

2025
Working Paper

The Impact of Input Inaccuracy on Leveraging AI Tools: Evidence from Algorithmic Labor Scheduling

By: Caleb Kwon, Antonio Moreno and Ananth Raman

Problem Definition: Considerable academic and practitioner attention is placed on the value of ex-post interactions (i.e., overrides) in the human-AI interface. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to ex-ante human-AI interactions (e.g., the... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Employees; Performance Effectiveness