Publications

Educators

2010
Chapter

Understanding and Coping with the Increasing Risk of System-Level Accidents

By: Dutch Leonard and Arnold M. Howitt

The world has seen a number of recent events in which major systems came to a standstill, not from one cause alone but from the interaction of a combination of causes. System-level accidents occur when anomalies or errors in different parts of an interconnected system... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Globalization; Risk Management; Boundaries; System Shocks

2007
Working Paper

Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager 'interpersonal authority' over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Employee Relationship Management; Managerial Roles; Motivation and Incentives; Boundaries; Theory

SSRN

July 2011 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Digital Microscopy Is Making Me Crazy!

By: Willy Shih

For Carl Zeiss Microimaging, modular hardware and software enabled customers to tailor Zeiss's broad range of microscopy systems hardware and software to meet a wide range of needs from basic scientific research in the biological and medical sciences to clinical... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Corporate Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Science-Based Business; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Business Conglomerates; Digital Platforms; Opportunities; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Computer Industry

Educators

April 2013
Case

The Walt Disney Company: The Entertainment King (Abridged)

By: Michael G. Rukstad and David J. Collis

The first ten pages of this case are comprised of the company's history, from 1923 to 2001. The Walt years are described, as is the company's decline after his death and its resurgence under Eisner. The last five pages are devoted to Eisner's strategic challenges in... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Vertical Integration; Corporate Strategy; Boundaries; Brands and Branding; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

Educators

29 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 29, 2008

the role of observable (to us) boundaries between individuals in structuring communications inside the firm? We measure three general types of boundaries: organizational boundaries (strategic business unit... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November–December 2015
Article

Active Postmarketing Drug Surveillance for Multiple Adverse Events

By: Joel Goh, Margrét V. Bjarnadóttir, Mohsen Bayati and Stefanos A. Zenios

Postmarketing drug surveillance is the process of monitoring the adverse events of pharmaceutical or medical devices after they are approved by the appropriate regulatory authorities. Historically, such surveillance was based on voluntary reports by medical... View Details

Keywords: Drug Surveillance; Health Care; Stochastic Models; Queueing; Diffusion Approximation; Brownian Motion; Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis

2017
Book

Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

Today's global enterprises increasingly involve collaborative work by teams of experts operating across different professions, organizations, and industries. Extreme Teaming provides new insights into the world of complex, cross-industry projects and the ways... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Complexity

22 Mar 2017
HBS Seminar

Gerald C. Kane, Boston College

2012
Article

Organization Design for Business Ecosystems

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The modern corporation has long been the central focus of the field of organization design. Such firms can be likened to nation-states: they have boundaries that circumscribe citizen-employees, and they engage in production and trade. But individual corporations are... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Business Ecosystems; Distributed Innovation; Problem Solving; Property Rights; Organization Design; Networks; Integration; Competition; Organizational Design; Innovation and Management

Jan W. Rivkin is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Faculty Chair of the MBA Program, Senior Associate Dean for Research, and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on... View Details

Keywords: airline; computer; internet; music; transportation

2021
Working Paper

Changing Ingroup Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the U.S.

By: Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new outgroup change the ingroup's perceptions of other outgroups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of... View Details

Keywords: In-group-out-group Relations; Immigration; Race; Attitudes; Boundaries; Prejudice and Bias

SSRN

2008
Working Paper

Structural Closure and Exposure: Market Reactions to Announcements of Acquisitions and Divestitures

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and Nitin Nohria

This paper develops an exchange-network perspective on corporate diversification and proposes two measures of corporate scope: structural closure and structural exposure. Structural closure focuses on exchanges of goods and services inside the firm... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Market Transactions; Diversification; Boundaries; Valuation

2016
Working Paper

Big History, Global Corporations, Virtual Capitalism

By: Richard L. Nolan

Homo sapiens has mastered its environment so thoroughly that, for the first time in history, a small minority of the population is capable of creating enough food and fuels to support not only itself, but also a growing majority of the 6 billion people now living on... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Internet and the Web; Innovation and Invention; United States

SSRN

2012
Working Paper

With Us or Against Us? Networks, Identity and Order in a Virtual World

By: Magnus Thor Torfason

Social networks and social groups have both been seen as important to discouraging malfeasance and supporting the global pro-social norms that underlie social order, but have typically been treated either as pure substitutes or as having completely independent effects.... View Details

Keywords: Social Norms; Social Networks; Triadic Closure; Social Groups; Group Identity; Groups and Teams; Boundaries; Organizations; Identity; Social and Collaborative Networks; Societal Protocols

December 2010
Article

Organising Response to Extreme Emergencies: The Victorian Bushfires of 2009

By: Dutch Leonard and Arnold M. Howitt

How can people and organisations best respond to emergency events that are significantly beyond the boundaries of what they had generally anticipated, expected, prepared for-or even imagined? What forms of organisations are likely to be best able to cope with such... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Management Practices and Processes; Natural Disasters; Crisis Management; Boundaries; United States

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

"secrets." Instead of invoking secrecy every step of the way, firms may want to ask, "Why are we not more open about this issue?" Finally, it's important to note that external innovation systems do not produce deterministic results: They... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

02 May 2005
What Do You Think?

Where is Consumer Generated Marketing Taking Us?

engineering. The result is a fuzzing of the boundaries between a company and some of the users of its products and services. There is a kind of "always on" communication system shaping up between... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Article

Party-State Capitalism in China

By: Margaret Pearson, Meg Rithmire and Kellee Tsai

The “state capitalism” model, in which the state retains a dominant role as owner or investor-shareholder amidst the presence of markets and private firms, has received increasing attention, with China cited as the main exemplar. Yet as models evolve, so has China’s... View Details

Keywords: Economic Policy; Communism; Capitalism; State Capitalism; Economic Systems; Economics; Policy; China