Publications

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April 2010 (Revised May 2010)
Supplement

George Martin at The Boston Consulting Group (C)

By: Leslie A. Perlow and Kerry Herman

George Martin, managing partner at The Boston Consulting Group, is worried as some of his best performers have recently pulled him aside to discuss the challenges they face managing the demands of their work lives with their desire for more predictable time with their... View Details

Keywords: Work-Life Balance; Problems and Challenges; Employees

Article

On the Origin of Shared Beliefs (and Corporate Culture)

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This article shows how corporate culture, in the sense of shared beliefs and values, originates (often unintentionally) through screening, self-sorting, and manager-directed joint learning. It shows that such culture will be stronger among more important employees and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Learning; Values and Beliefs; Employees; Decisions; Power and Influence; Performance; Perspective

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31 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Powerful Workplace Motivator

Any parent can tell you that a surefire way to turn joy into rage is to offer your child a big candy bar—and then turn around and offer an even bigger one to his sister. Suddenly, a special treat turns into a great injustice. "Hey! How come she got more? That's not... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

12 PM – 1 PM EDT, 17 Oct 2017
Webinars: Career

Attract & Retain Top Talent to Create an Engaged and Productive Team

To become the best in the business, it is essential to employ the best people. But how do managers build a culture where employees are ready and able to take their team to the next level? This keynote focuses on how to attract talented team members, empower them, and... View Details

May 2013
Case

Wendy Peterson

By: Linda A. Hill and Alisa Zalosh

Wendy Peterson was recently promoted to Vice President of Sales at the Plano, Texas, office of AccountBack, an accounting software and services company. To penetrate a perceived market niche, Peterson hires Fred (Xing) Wu, whose familiarity with and access to Chinese... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Conflict Management; Salesforce Management; Rank and Position; Performance Evaluation; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Accounting Industry; Texas

Educators

19 Aug 2019
News

Is Your Collaboration Software Productive, or Just Chatter?

05 Mar 2009
What Do You Think?

How Frank or Deceptive Should Leaders Be?

all organizations in all cultures, in times of success as opposed to decline, when talking about the past as opposed to the future, or in dealing with employees of all generations. As many respondents to this month's column pointed out,... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

03 Dec 2013
News

Does watching workers increase or decrease productivity?

May 2007 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Bankinter: Deploying the Mortgage Simulator to the Branches

Describes how Bankinter, a mid-sized Spanish bank, altered the information set available to its customer-facing employees. In the spring of 2003, Bankinter introduced an Excel-based program called the Mortgage Simulator that helped branch managers calculate the price... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Banks and Banking; Mortgages; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Spain

Educators

February 2024
Supplement

JTC: Stronger Together with Shared Ownership: What JTC Did and Its Impact

By: Ethan Bernstein

Nigel Le Quesne, CEO of Jersey-based financial services firm JTC, firmly believed that "shared ownership" was at the heart of his company’s successful track record. The firm had seen its revenues, profits, and number of clients and staff grow steadily throughout its... View Details

Keywords: Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Leadership Style; Organizational Culture; Going Public; Employee Ownership; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

17 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

How ‘Hybrid’ Nonprofits Can Stay on Mission

From Bolivia In a recent Academy of Management Journal article, Battilana and Silvia Dorado from the University of Rhode Island tell the true tale of two Bolivian microfinancing organizations, Banco Solidario and Caja de Ahorro y Préstamo... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

June 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

Driving Towards a Disruption?

By: Willy Shih and William Noble

As Clayton Christensen drove to the studio to deliver an online executive education class, he pondered the future of management education. How big a threat did online degree programs, corporate universities, and other innovations in the delivery of management training... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Technology; Performance Trajectories; Disruptive Innovations; Business Education; Business School; Internet And Online Services Industries; Disruptive Innovation; Higher Education; Corporate Strategy; Internet; Performance; Education Industry; Boston

Educators

11 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 11

Rockman, Sven Beckert, and David Waldstreicher. University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming Abstract The traditional story of modern management begins in the factories of England and New England, extending only much later to the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

16 Jan 2019
News

Apple in China, and Payday Lending

04 Feb 2020
Video

Ranjan Kapur

Ranjan Kapur, the India country manager of the WPP advertising agency, describes his human resources philosophy: empowering employees (which he describes as "letting the tiger out of the cage"), using... View Details

Article

Organizational Beliefs and Managerial Vision

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

Can managers have an impact on their firm that goes beyond their direct actions and decisions? This article shows that a manager with strong beliefs about the right course of action will attract, through sorting in the labor market, employees with similar beliefs. This... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Goals and Objectives; Decisions; Labor; Markets; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Recruitment; Risk and Uncertainty; Values and Beliefs

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August 2011
Supplement

Interview with Raj Datta, Former Chief Knowledge Officer of MindTree

By: David A. Garvin

MindTree is a mid-sized Indian IT services company known for its knowledge management practices, its collborative communities, and its strong culture and values. The CEO has a set a goal of becoming a $1 billion company by 2014; to reach that goal, employees must... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Social and Collaborative Networks; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Culture; Learning; Values and Beliefs; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry; India

Article

How to Bounce Back from Adversity

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Paul G. Stoltz

The article focuses on how companies can be managed to overcome adversity with resilience. The characteristics of resilient managers who provide leadership for their teams and can build resilience in their employees are discussed. The manager's ability to shift... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Leadership; Crisis Management; Managerial Roles; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking