Mission and Purpose - Publications - Faculty & Research

01 Dec 2015
News

Serving with Purpose and Pride

Ashley Garrett and Alan K. Jones (both MBA 1987) As the School’s chief fundraising volunteers for the HBS Fund for Leadership and Innovation, Ashley Garrett and Alan Jones... View Details

28 Jan 2021
Video

Leading with Innovation and Purpose

July 2024
Case

Living up to Purpose and Performance at Parker Hannifin

By: Hubert Joly, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter

In 2019, Parker Hannifin, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of motion and control technologies, did something unusual for an industrial company: it created a purpose statement. Even though it already had a clear business strategy and longstanding culture of... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Health Pandemics; Leadership; Business or Company Management; Organizational Culture; Business Strategy; Communication Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Cleveland; Ohio; United States

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Our Mission | About

virtually none of these problems can be addressed without business leaders playing a vital role. And, of course, the first component of the mission is educating, which we do in many ways—through our educational programs, through the ideas... View Details

31 Jan 2019
News

A Global Mission

the Soviet Union. “I negotiated that when there were still tanks around the Lithuanian parliament,” he recalls. “The university’s mission is to promote democracy and civil society in a challenging part of... View Details

Keywords: April White; human rights

25 Aug 2022
News

On Purpose

“having a purpose can give you clarity and help guide your choices.” It’s a useful tool, he says, in finding a position that will ring true to your stakeholders. View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries

April 2005
Case

FBI: Mission Extended

Following the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, there was consensus that the FBI needed to make organizational changes. The FBI had long distinguished itself as the world's pre-eminent organization for conducting after-the-fact investigations that laid the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Law Enforcement; United States

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March 2021 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Helen Keller: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case describes the rise of Helen Keller who at 19 months became deaf and blind. Refusing to be sidelined from life, Keller showed great determination in learning how to communicate with others, employing tutors and travelling to Boston to enroll in the Perkins... View Details

Keywords: Mission And Purpose; Values And Beliefs; Success; Diversity; Leading Change; Personal Development and Career; Personal Characteristics; Power and Influence

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June 2019 (Revised August 2024)
Module Note

Purpose Brands

By: Rory McDonald, Clayton M. Christensen and Shaye Roseman

Introduces a framework for innovation and brand building that is connected to an understanding of customers' Jobs to Be Done. View Details

Keywords: Brand ＆ Product Management; Brand Architecture; Brand Building; Innovation; Product Development Strategy; Product Differentiation; Brands and Branding; Product Development

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25 May 2020
News

Meaning and Purpose in Life and Work

01 Mar 2003
News

Post-Soviet Purpose

HBS assistant professor Rawi Abdelal’s 2001 book National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective (Cornell University Press) was awarded the 2002 Shulman Prize for Outstanding Book on International... View Details

Keywords: Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

Research Summary

Growing as a Purposeful Leader

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger

Leaders today have to lead in the context of extraordinary changes and challenges. The demands of today's stakeholders have risen significantly, and what is expected of senior leaders is quickly evolving in terms of their mission (more than profit),... View Details

August 2020
Teaching Note

Sesame Workshop (C): Mission Critical Responses to Global and National Crises

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

Teaching Note for Case No. 321-016. Beginning in March 2020, Sesame Workshop navigated a global pandemic, which caused unemployment, businesses shutdowns, school closures, and remote work environments along with a racial justice crisis, with a renewed mission that led... View Details

Keywords: Pandemic; Children; Health Pandemics; Social Issues; Crisis Management; Mission and Purpose; Education; Leadership; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

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2017
Chapter

Corporate Moral Agency, Positive Duties, and Purpose

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

A long-standing question in business ethics is whether business enterprises are themselves moral agents with distinct moral responsibilities. To date, the debate about corporate moral agency has focused on responsibility for past wrongdoing that involves violating... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Moral Sensibility; Mission and Purpose

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15 Nov 2019
News

Purposeful Leadership

January 2014
Supplement

Dana Hall: Funding a Mission (D)

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Kaitlyn Szydlowski

This case is a sequel to Dana Hall: Funding a Mission (A), (B) and (C) cases. It focuses on the causes of recent fund-raising success and the complex resource allocation problems the School faces as it tries to deliver on its mission. In conjunction with the (A), (B) &... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Finance; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

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01 Sep 2024
News

Advancing the Mission

Growing up in India as the children of government workers, Azeez Gupta (MBA 2019) and Namya Mahajan (MBA 2022) had an innate sense of the inequalities and problems facing their country and an optimism to want to do something about them. Together, the siblings cofounded... View Details