Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,098)
- Faculty Publications (156)
- Article
Why Grit Requires Perseverance and Passion to Positively Predict Performance
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Andreas Wihler, Erica R. Bailey and Adam D. Galinsky
Prior studies linking grit—defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals—to performance are beset by contradictory evidence. As a result, commentators have increasingly declared that grit has limited effects. We propose that this inconsistent evidence has... View Details
- July 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Teaching Note
MC Tool
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Sean Witty and Jason Premo acquired MC Tool, a machine shop located in South Carolina in 2007 with the intent to transform it into a precision manufacturer. Witty and Premo were able to more than double revenue to $6 million in their first year of managing MC by... View Details
- June 2018 (Revised February 2019)
- Teaching Note
Home Nursing of North Carolina
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
In 2011, immediately after graduating HBS, Ari Medoff began a self-funded search for a small firm to buy and run as its CEO. After just three month of searching, he identified Home Nursing of North Carolina (HNNC), a home care agency based in Greensboro, NC, as a... View Details
- June 2018
- Teaching Note
Difficult Conversations and Dealing with Challenging Situations at Work
By: Boris Groysberg and Amram Migdal
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 416-031, 416-032, 416-033, 416-034, 416-035, and 416-036. View Details
Keywords: Communication; Communication Intention and Meaning; Human Resources; Employee Relationship Management; Management Skills; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Personal Development and Career; Relationships; Groups and Teams; Social Psychology; Attitudes; Behavior; Conflict and Resolution; Conflict Management; Emotions; Perception; Personal Characteristics; Perspective; Power and Influence; Prejudice and Bias; Reputation; Satisfaction; Trust
- June 2018
- Article
Firm Turnover and the Return of Racial Establishment Segregation
By: John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning
Racial segregation between American workplaces is greater today than it was a generation ago. This increase has happened alongside the declines in within-establishment occupational segregation on which most prior research has focused. We examine more than 40 years of... View Details
- Editorial
Elon Musk's Unusual Compensation Plan Isn't Really About Compensation at All
By: George Serafeim
Earlier this year, Tesla shareholders approved likely the largest compensation package ever awarded to a CEO—for a CEO who clearly doesn’t need the money. Elon Musk is already incredibly rich and also doesn’t seem particularly motivated by further wealth. So why do it?... View Details
- April 2018
- Article
Consumers Avoid Buying from Firms with Higher CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios
By: Bhavya Mohan, Tobias Schlager, Rohit Deshpandé and Michael I. Norton
We document a novel driver of consumer behavior: pay ratio disclosure. Swiss corporation performance data gathered during a legally mandated pay ratio referendum reveals that salient high pay ratios are associated with decreased firm sales (Pilot Study). An... View Details
Keywords: Pay Ratio; Wage Fairness; Purchase Intention; Customers; Wages; Fairness; Consumer Behavior
- Article
If You're Going to Do Wrong, at Least Do It Right: Considering Two Moral Dilemmas at the Same Time Promotes Moral Consistency
By: Netta Barak-Corren, Chia-Jung Tsay, Fiery Cushman and Max Bazerman
We study how people reconcile conflicting moral intuitions by juxtaposing two versions of classic moral problems: the trolley problem and the footbridge problem. When viewed separately, most people favor action in the former and disapprove of action in the latter,... View Details
- January–February 2018
- Article
The New CEO Activists
By: Aaron K Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
Though corporations have been lobbying the government and making campaign donations for a long time now, in recent years a dramatic new trend has emerged in U.S. politics: CEOs are taking very public stands on thorny political issues that have nothing to do with their... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
Will Urbanization Save the Chinese Economy or Destroy it?
By: Meg Rithmire
The Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping has announced its intentions to transition the economy from one driven by investment and exports to one driven by domestic demand. The main strategy to achieve this transformation involves massive state-led urbanization. This... View Details
- August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
Accounting for Political Risk at AES
By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Suraj Srinivasan
As a global energy generating company, AES frequently faces challenges from political changes and instability. This is exacerbated by the fact that in many instances AES' primary customer is the government, which is also in charge of law-making. For example, AES'... View Details
- 2017
- Article
Affective, Cognitive and Behavioral Trajectories of Change Recipients in Global Organizations
By: B. S. Reiche, T. B. Neeley and N. Overmeyer
Research rarely addresses how change recipients respond to radical change across affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions over time. We examined a radical change in a recently acquired subsidiary of a U.S.-based global organization over a two-year period. With... View Details
- May 2017
- Case
Promontory, Inc.
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Handlin
Promontory, Inc. is a small, privately owned firm in the promotional products (specialty advertising) industry. After starting the firm two years ago with the intention of pursuing a high-quality/high-price strategy, the CEO is seeking methods of increasing sales... View Details
- January 2017 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
Mexico's Energy Reform
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason
Energy—both petroleum and electricity—had been terribly managed for decades in Mexico. The two national monopolies—PEMEX and CFE—were inefficient, overstaffed, corrupt, rife with subsidies, and losing money. Finally, in 2012, President Enrique Peña Nieto announced his... View Details
- Article
Overcoming the Outcome Bias: Making Intentions Matter
People often make the well-documented mistake of paying too much attention to the outcomes of others’ actions while neglecting information about the original intentions leading to those outcomes. In five experiments, we examine interventions aimed at reducing this... View Details
- October 2016
- Case
Elon Musk: Balancing Purpose and Risk
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Sarah Mehta
The case is used to illustrate the place of ‘Purpose’ versus financial risk and returns in a founder’s objectives. It also addresses personal risk profile of different founders, and when paired with the Risk Tolerance Exercise, it enables evaluating one’s own appetite... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Decision-Making by Precedent and the Founding of American Honda (1948 – 1974)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and John Heilbron
American Honda was founded in 1959 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Honda Motor Company to facilitate sales and distribution in the United States. The details of American Honda’s early history have long served as evidence in debates among scholars and practitioners... View Details
- March 2016
- Technical Note
Lighting the Fire: Crafting and Delivering Broadly Inspiring Messages
By: Tsedal Neeley and Tom Ryder
Communicating persuasively is a critical skill for leaders of any team or organization. Yet, connecting and resonating with an audience can nevertheless be a challenging task. We outline how to effectively mobilize groups through the power of communication. This note... View Details
- February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
- Case
Blue Origin, NASA, and New Space (A)
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Angela Acocella
Jeff Bezos, six years after starting a revolution in retailing with Amazon.com, turned his life-long passion for space into a start-up, Blue Origin. Blue (as it was called) was a part of the New Space industry, a collection of startup aerospace engineering companies... View Details
- 2016
- Article
Does volunteering improve well-being?
By: A.V. Whillans, Scott C. Seider, Lihan Chen, Ryan J. Dwyer, Sarah Novick, Kathryn J. Gramigna, Brittany A. Mitchell, Victoria Savalei, Sally S. Dickerson and Elizabeth W. Dunn
Does volunteering causally improve well-being? To empirically test this question, we examined one instantiation of volunteering that is common at post-secondary institutions across North America: community service learning (CSL). CSL is a form of experiential learning... View Details