Publications

October 2004 (Revised November 2004)
Case

Mavens & Moguls: Creating a New Business Model

By: Myra M. Hart, Victoria Winston and Kristin Lieb

Mavens & Moguls is a "virtual" marketing-consulting firm of approximately 40 professionals. Examines the processes by which its founder, Paige Arnof-Fenn, learns the business, builds a power network of industry experts and potential customers, and uses this expertise... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Values and Beliefs; Work-Life Balance; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Operations; Networks; Business Model; Growth Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Consulting Industry

June 2002 (Revised June 2014)
Case

The Netherlands: Is the Polder Model Sinking?

By: Huw Pill, Marie-Laure Y Goepfer, Mathijs Robbens and Ingrid Vogel

The Netherlands suffered economic crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite (or perhaps because of) its access to North Sea gas. In response to mounting inflation and unemployment, a tripartite agreement between employers, unions, and government was reached in... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Labor Unions; Netherlands

March 2025 (Revised May 2025)
Case

ING Türkiye: Flexible Work in a Competitive Banking Environment

By: Ashley Whillans and Nico Schaefer

This case explores ING Türkiye’s journey toward workplace flexibility within the traditionally conservative Turkish banking sector. Beginning with early remote work experiments in 2015 and culminating in the FlexING model, by 2024 ING Türkiye had positioned itself as a... View Details

2009
Working Paper

Integrity: Without It Nothing Works

By: Michael C. Jensen

There is confusion between integrity, morality and ethics. In our much longer paper on the topic (see "Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality" (available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=920625)) my co-authors,... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Moral Sensibility; Legal Liability; Behavior

2023
Working Paper

In-Context Unlearning: Language Models as Few Shot Unlearners

By: Martin Pawelczyk, Seth Neel and Himabindu Lakkaraju

Machine unlearning, the study of efficiently removing the impact of specific training points on the trained model, has garnered increased attention of late, driven by the need to comply with privacy regulations like the Right to be Forgotten. Although unlearning is... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Copyright; Information

Read Now

2007
Book

When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance

By: Thomas J. DeLong, John J. Gabarro and Robert Lees

For too long, professional services firms (PSFs) have relied on the "producer-manager" model, which works well in uncomplicated business environments. However, today's managing directors must balance conflicting roles, more demanding clients, tougher competitors, and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Service Operations; Performance Effectiveness; Strategy

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07 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

The Organizational Model for Open Source

Programmers contribute to free software and open source projects for many reasons—some for the fun of it, some to improve their skills, others for a paycheck. Many people have wondered why these people give their work away. The truth is... View Details

Keywords: by Mallory Stark

September 2013 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Morning Star Company: Self-Management at Work

By: Francesca Gino, Bradley R. Staats, Brian J. Hall and Tiffany Y. Chang

Morning Star, a collection of affiliated companies, had grown steadily since 1970 when Chris Rufer, president and founder, started the business hauling tomatoes to processing plants in a truck. The company's main products continued to be tomato-based, including a... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Motivation and Incentives; Working Conditions; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Food; Management Practices and Processes; Compensation and Benefits; Manufacturing Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

15 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

A Better Business Model for Fighting Cancer

Robert and Myra Kraft Family Foundation, the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator is a partnership between the foundation, Harvard Business School, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The alliance is working to eliminate... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health; Pharmaceutical

Aug 2011 - 2011
Conference Presentation

Combining Social and Economic Objectives: On the Challenges of Sustaining a Hybrid Organizational Form

By: Julie Battilana, A.-C. Pache, M. Sengul and Jacob Model

Keywords: Economics; Problems and Challenges; Organizations; Society

Research Summary

Team-based strategic work among senior executives

My research centers on a study of organizational design for senior-executive work on strategy. I examine the role of small groups that are tasked with resolving strategic issues, and I consider the effects of such team-based organizing models on strategic... View Details

April 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Levels: The Remote, Asynchronous, Deep Work Management System

By: Joseph B. Fuller and George Gonzalez

Levels is a highly innovative startup in the health care space. They intend to revolutionize health by linking behavior—eating, exercise, sleeping, etc.—to changes in metabolism. They believe metabolic health can be managed through careful monitoring of changes in... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Business Startups; Organizational Culture; Management Style; Technology Industry; United States

25 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Could a Business Model Help Big Pharma Save Lives and Profit?

reasonable profits and reduced Hepatitis C, and rates of which are expected to fall by 86 percent between 2020 and 2030, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Health. This real-world example demonstrates how a business model can help Big... View Details

Keywords: by Esther Schrader; Pharmaceutical; Health

Article

Do Supervisors Thrive in Participative Work Systems?

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Richard E. Walton

This article presents the findings regarding the nature of the difficulties surrounding the supervisory role in participative work systems, a conceptualization of the supervisor/work group interface, and some action implications for the management of organizations.... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Roles; Organizational Design; Management Practices and Processes; Innovation and Invention

Find at Harvard

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

assembly plant could change its stamping presses from one model to another in eight minutes, compared with the eight hours GM plants spent to change over the same basic equipment. Clearly a deviation of this magnitude between its current... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

16 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

Kids of Working Moms Grow into Happy Adults

In 2015, preliminary results of a groundbreaking study found that the daughters of employed mothers often perform better in their eventual careers than the daughters of stay-at-home moms. Now the full study has been released, and it brings even more good news for the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2007
Working Paper

Recognizing the New: A Multi-Agent Model of Analogy in Strategic Decision-Making

By: Giovanni Gavetti and Massimo Warglien

In novel environments, strategic decision-making is often premised on analogy, and recognition lies at its heart. Recognition refers to a class of cognitive processes through which a problem is interpreted associatively in terms of something that has been experienced... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods; Cognition and Thinking; Power and Influence