Publications

Read Now

September 2010 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Leadership in Corporate Reporting Policy at Tata Steel

By: Karthik Ramanna and Rachna Tahilyani

The case describes the challenges faced by Tata Steel, India's largest private sector steel company, as it transitions from Indian GAAP to IFRS. It first describes those challenges in the context of the institutional voids that make IFRS adoption difficult in India.... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; International Accounting; Multinational Firms and Management; Policy; Leadership; Emerging Markets; Standards; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Steel Industry; India

15 Jul 2019
Book

Many Executives Are Afraid of Finance. Here's How They Can Gain Confidence

results and interact with shareholders,” says Desai, who is also a Harvard Law School professor. “The problem is that people perceive finance to be this difficult building block. I want executives to have... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

May 1993 (Revised January 1994)
Case

Cummins Engine Company, The: Starting Up "B" Crankshaft Manufacturing at the San Luis Potosi Plant

By: Robert H. Hayes

Cummins Engine Co. is starting up production of diesel engine crankshafts in its plant in central Mexico. This operation requires much tighter tolerances than any product previously produced at the plant, and the young (recent MBA) manager who is in charge of the... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Production; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Emerging Markets; Problems and Challenges; Industrial Products Industry; Mexico; Alabama

Article

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Management Systems; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Motivation and Incentives; Decision Making; Business Model

Find at Harvard

October 2000 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Editora Abril S.A.

By: Michael Y. Yoshino and Perry Fagan

Brazil's media conglomerate Editora Abril S.A. is Latin America's largest publishing and printing company; it publishes books, and comic books, videos, maps, travel guides, music, and textbooks. It also owns Brazil's largest database marketing company, its... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Communications; Market Design; Media; Service Delivery; Private Ownership; Expansion; Web Sites; Publishing Industry; Service Industry; Brazil

15 May 2022
News

Hitting the Books: Why We Need to Treat the Robots of Tomorrow Like Tools

December 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

City of Charlotte (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The city manager's office in Charlotte, North Carolina, is attempting to align and focus the city's programs and operating departments. City managers, working collaboratively with the elected mayor and city council, have identified five strategic themes to make... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Government Administration; City; Growth and Development Strategy; Adoption; Public Sector; Management Teams; Programs; Performance Evaluation; Motivation and Incentives; Public Administration Industry; North Carolina

2009
Working Paper

Specific Knowledge and Divisional Performance Measurement

By: Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling

This paper discusses five common divisional performance measurement methods—cost centers, revenue centers, profit centers, investment centers, and expense centers—providing a theory that explains when each of these methods is likely to be the most efficient. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business Headquarters; Decisions; Cost; Investment; Investment Return; Profit; Revenue; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Managerial Roles; Performance Efficiency; Strategy

SSRN

01 Sep 2017
News

States Focus On Middle-Skills Jobs Gap

Eric J. Van den Steen

Eric Van den Steen is a Professor of Business Administration at HBS, where he teaches strategy. He holds the Roy Little chair, established in honor of the founder of Textron.

Professor Van den Steen's research studies the fundamentals of strategy and... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Myers studies the ways people learn from their own—and others’—experiences at work, with a particular emphasis on learning in health care organizations and emergency medical contexts. Though his interest is in individual-level learning, he focuses in... View Details

Keywords: Learning And Development; Learning Organizations; Learning By Doing; Health Care Industry; Innovation; Identity Construction; Medical Error; Knowledge Development; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Work; Learning; Leadership Development; Knowledge Management; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Health Industry; United States; Singapore; Asia

2015
Working Paper

Corporate Sponsorship in Culture—A Case of Partnership in Relationship Building and Collaborative Marketing by a Global Financial Institution and a Major Art Museum

By: Ragnar Lund and Stephen A. Greyser

Purpose: This paper examines cultural sponsorship from a partnership and relationship marketing perspective. It studies a case of how a partnership between two international institutions, a bank and a museum, adds value to both in terms of interaction with... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Partners and Partnerships; Marketing Strategy; Culture; Banks and Banking

Read Now

February 2009 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Big Spaceship: Ready to Go Big?

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

Big Spaceship, a digital marketing agency, faced a rather big challenge: How to scale the distinctive culture that was essential to its competitive strategy? Renowned for the cutting-edge websites that it developed to market major Hollywood movies and leading consumer... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Human Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Groups and Teams; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation

March 2011
Case

Insight Communications

By: Rajiv Lal and Natalie Kindred

After undertaking a multi-year, metrics-driven operational and cultural overhaul, in April 2010 Insight Communications was planning the next phase of its development. Insight was a New York-based provider of cable, landline phone, and high-speed Internet service to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Competitive Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Improvement; Growth Management; Management Systems; Business Processes; Measurement and Metrics; Employees; Telecommunications Industry; New York (state, US)

March 17, 2021
Other Article

Beyond Pajamas: Sizing Up the Pandemic Shopper

By: Ayelet Israeli, Eva Ascarza and Laura Castrillo

A first look at how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted e-commerce apparel shopping in the US and the UK. Extensive analysis and interactive graphics utilizing millions of transactions.
While the pandemic is still playing out, our preliminary investigations... View Details

Read Now

July 1995
Background Note

Managerial Effectiveness and Diversity: Individual Choices

Provides an introduction to the key concepts and questions individuals encounter in a diverse workplace. These concepts and questions are organized around three critical interactions and experiences in any individual's career: entry into an organization or work group;... View Details

Keywords: Management; Diversity

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

their employees during these difficult times? About the authors Boris Groysberg is the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Robin Abrahams is a research associate at HBS. [Image: RyanJLane]... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

January 2022
Case

Walmart USA—Searching for Growth

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Maria P. Roche

In 2022, Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart, and his team looked back at a difficult but ultimately successful past year. The global pandemic had posed enormous challenges, but the company had weathered the storm successfully, raising same-store sales growth,... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Growth and Development Strategy; Sales; Business Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Retail Industry