Publications

04 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

The Business of Life

unusual application of an economic term delighted Christensen, a management professor known around HBS and the globe as both a brilliant business thinker and a deeply religious man. For more than a decade he has been a go-to consultant for several big organizations—his... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2013
Working Paper

Applying Random Coefficient Models to Strategy Research: Testing for Firm Heterogeneity, Predicting Firm-Specific Coefficients, and Estimating Strategy Trade-Offs

By: Juan Alcacer, Wilbur Chung, Ashton Hawk and Goncalo Pacheco-de-Almeida

Although Strategy research aims to understand how firm actions have differential effects on performance, most empirical research estimates the average effects of these actions across firms. This paper promotes Random Coefficients Models (RCMs) as an ideal empirical... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

Research Summary

On-line social networks

Professor Piskorski's current research examines why and how people use on-line social networks, both in the US and abroad. Using extensive fieldwork and large scale empirical analyses, he constructed theories of social failures and networks as covers... View Details

Keywords: Social Networks

2016
Working Paper

Historical Change and the Competitive Advantage of Firms: Explicating the 'Dynamics' in the Dynamic Capabilities Framework

By: Geoffrey Jones and R. Daniel Wadhwani

This working paper aims to deepen the scholarly dialogue between strategy and history. It does so by examining how historical models of change can contribute to theory and research on the competitive advantage of firms during periods of rapid innovation. Focusing on... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Dynamic Capabilities; Innovation; Temporality; Context; Microfoundations; Business History; Competitive Advantage; Change; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

Michael Porter is an economist, researcher, author, advisor, speaker and teacher. Throughout his career at Harvard Business School, he has brought economic theory and strategy concepts to bear on many of the most challenging problems facing corporations, economies... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; e-commerce industry; health care; information; information technology industry; internet; nonprofit industry; service industry; state government

2022
Article

When Regular Meets Remarkable: Awe as a Link between Routine Work and Meaningful Self-narratives

By: Elizabeth Sheprow and Spencer Harrison

Daily narratives of work can include a mix of ordinary actions and awe-inspiring moments that reveal a vaster, more meaningful reality. When awe is experienced in the context of work, it can prompt self-referential sensemaking about what these experiences mean for the... View Details

Keywords: Narratives; Meaning; Qualitative Method; Emotions; Identity; Employment

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March 2022
Article

Contractual Restrictions and Debt Traps

By: Ernest Liu and Benjamin N. Roth

Microcredit and other forms of small-scale ﬁnance have failed to catalyze entrepreneurship in developing countries. In these credit markets, borrowers and lenders often bargain over not only the interest rate but also implicit restrictions on types of investment. We... View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Entrepreneurship; Developing Countries and Economies; Financing and Loans

2012
Working Paper

Learning by Supplying

By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley

Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Supply Chain; Competitive Advantage; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Competency and Skills; Relationships; Telecommunications Industry

Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details

2018
Working Paper

Class Matters: The Role of Social Class and Organizational Sector in High-Achieving Women's Legitimacy Narratives

By: Judith A. Clair, Rachel D. Arnett, Katherine Chen, Beth K. Humberd and Kathleen L. McGinn

While prior research recognizes that women struggle to maintain legitimacy for their successes and that self-narratives play a key role in building such legitimacy, theory provides limited insight into how women build legitimacy through their self-narratives. Our... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Gender; Success; Diversity; Perception; Situation or Environment

Article

How History Shaped the Innovator's Dilemma

By: Tom Nicholas

In 1993, four years prior to the publication of Clayton Christensen’s highly influential book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the Business History Review (BHR) published an article by Christensen titled “The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of... View Details

Keywords: Clayton Christensen; Impact; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Research

Article

Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang and Jone L. Pearce

Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making; Emotions; Performance Effectiveness

21 Feb 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Developing the Guts of a GUT (Grand Unified Theory): Elite Commitment and Inclusive Growth

Keywords: by Lant Pritchett & Eric D. Werker

April 2020
Article

Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015

By: Giovanni Dosi, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano and Federico Tamagni

Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a potential indicator of organizational “fitness” within a competitive environment, firm growth is also a central concern to... View Details

Keywords: Firm Growth; Organizations; Growth and Development; Theory; Analysis; Production; Data and Data Sets

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13 Feb 2020
Book

Open Your Organization to Honest Conversations

conversations are decidedly not the norm. Nor do those who follow and practice strategic management theory recognize that organizations must be disciplined enough to carry out such conversations to avoid the typical gyrations in... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

10 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Top Scholars Say About Leadership

Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, recently published by Harvard Business Press, aims to give the topic its intellectual due. Edited by Khurana and Nitin Nohria, who will become the new Dean of Harvard Business School on July 1,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

06 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

Four Strategies for Making Concessions

Richard E. Walton and Robert B. McKersie's book A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social Interaction System (ILR Press, 1991). The head of a manufacturing firm was preparing to initiate talks with the leadership... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

February 2014
Article

Learning by Supplying

By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley

Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Organizations; Learning