Publications

Register to Read

November 2016 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Lynda Bussgang's Stages

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Lynda Bussgang is getting ready for her 25th Harvard College reunion and for the first time she is actually looking forward to it. Unlike some of her classmates she has charted her own course to happiness. This path took her from musical theater, to non-profit work to... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Success

July 2024
Article

A (Dynamic) Investigation of Stereotypes, Belief-Updating, and Behavior

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Paola Ugalde Araya and Basit Zafar

Many decisions—such as what educational or career path to pursue—are dynamic in nature, with individuals receiving feedback at one point in time and making decisions later. Using a controlled experiment, with two sessions one week apart, we analyze the dynamic effects... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Beliefs; Stereotypes; Self-assessment; Gender Gap; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Perception; Decision Choices and Conditions

December 2023
Case

Gabriela Santana Goldstein

By: Leslie Perlow and Hannah Weisman

Gabriela Santana Goldstein was pursuing her passion, working as the Head of Business for a telehealth startup, when her father went into sudden cardiac arrest and family duty called. The case discusses Goldstein’s difficult decision to leave her dream job, and her path... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Well-being; Work-Life Balance; Family and Family Relationships; Decisions; Health Industry; United States; Boston; New York (city, NY)

2013
Working Paper

Imprinting: Toward A Multilevel Theory

By: Christopher Marquis and Andras Tilcsik

The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields—including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research—and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual. This... View Details

Keywords: History; Situation or Environment; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure

SSRN

Article

Imprinting: Toward A Multilevel Theory

By: Christopher Marquis and Andras Tilcsik

The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields—including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research—and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual. This... View Details

Keywords: History; Situation or Environment; Research; Organizations; Power and Influence

Find at Harvard

January 2021
Article

The Pursuit of Success in Academia: Plato’s ghost asks ‘What then?’

By: A.R. Elangovan and Andrew J. Hoffman

What do we pursue as we seek success in academia? For most, the path to academic success focuses narrowly on A-level journal publications, which has caused a stealthy but steady erosion in the very essence of academia. In this essay, we explore that erosion by drawing... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Research; Identity; Education Industry

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

How Relationships are Building Biotech

on the individual level, or on tracing a line from the macro to the micro level, Higgins is taking a separate yet complementary path for exploration: examining large-scale organizational dynamics from the direction of individuals'... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace & Mallory Stark

January 2014
Teaching Note

Dr. Benjamin Hooks and Children's Health Forum

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Ai-Ling Malone

The case includes law, business, and public health perspectives on an African American leader's social entrepreneurship and leadership in other social movements. Later in his life, Dr. Benjamin Hooks championed the eradication of lead poisoning. Prior to that Hooks... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Health Disorders; Social Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Social Issues; United States

25 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse

Director of Career Development Programs at Harvard Business School. "Without it we cannot grow, change, and—eventually—live more fully in a larger world," Butler writes in his new book, Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

13 Oct 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Building a Business in the Context of a Life

students to clarify their personal and professional goals while looking at their strengths and weaknesses. They are asked to reflect on their experiences and then explore one or more visions for where they see their lives going, taking into account not only View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education

Research Summary

Changing the World: Life Choices of Influential Leaders

By: Robert Simons

This project studies the life choices made by a variety of people who have left a lasting legacy. Using biographical data, we are examining the choices that high-impact individuals faced in their lives and the paths they chose to follow. The leaders we study come... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Personal Characteristics; Work-life Balance; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Success

March 2020 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Hannah Riley-Bowles and Michael Norris

In 2019, Nadine Vogel, founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, a firm that worked with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and their workforce, faced the decision of the best path forward to grow her small company. Should she build more and better... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Decision Choices and Conditions; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Market Entry and Exit; Consulting Industry; United States; Florida; New York (state, US)

16 Apr 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Chris Christensen: Legend of the Classroom

discussion from one point to the next—are remembered often by the legions of MBA students, doctoral candidates, and faculty members Christensen taught during an HBS career that spanned half a century, from the 1940s until his death in... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Education

Research Summary

Firm Performance, Senior Management, and Managerial Representation

While my work on strategic human capital studies how the characteristics of management shape performance, this work in effect focuses on the reverse: how performance shapes a key characteristic of the firm's management

Working with Professor David Thomas,... View Details

February 20, 2014
Article

How to Thrive While Leading a Family Business

By: Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer

This article explores the differences between family business executives who thrive and those who struggle. It discusses how family business environments are inherently complex due to the intertwinement of work and life. Thriving leaders exhibit four key behaviors:... View Details

Keywords: Family and Family Relationships; Work-Life Balance; Family Ownership; Outcome or Result; Leadership Style

Register to Read

Article

Done but Not Published: The Dissertation Journeys of Roy J. Lewicki and J. Keith Murnighan

By: Shirli Kopelman, Anne L. Lytle, Cynthia S. Wang, Roy J. Lewicki, J. Keith Murnighan and Max Bazerman

This article explores the tumultuous path to publication that begins for many of us with trying to publish our dissertation. We invited Roy J. Lewicki and J. Keith Murnighan—the 2013 and 2015 recipients of the International Association for Conflict Management (IACM)... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Research; Personal Development and Career; Business Education; Education Industry; Publishing Industry

Find at Harvard

January 2025 (Revised February 2025)
Technical Note

Skills-First Talent Management Onboarding, Development, and Performance Management

By: Boris Groysberg, James Barnett, Robin Abrahams and Katherine Connolly Baden

The second in a series of notes on how organizations manage skills-first talent-management chains, covering onboarding, development, and performance management. Onboarding included the practices, programs, and policies used by an organization to facilitate new employee... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employee Relationship Management; Management Systems; Performance; Personal Development and Career

August 2008
Case

Sloan & Harrison: Non-Equity Partner Discontent

By: Boris Groysberg and Eliot Sherman

The law firm, Sloan & Harrison, was dealing with some discontent among its junior non-equity partners. These partners were concerned with the transparency of the advancement process, their ability to position themselves as both leaders within the firm and rainmakers,... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Human Resources; Leadership Development; Management Style; Performance; Work-Life Balance; Legal Services Industry