Publications

SSRN

June 1999
Case

NovaCare, Inc. - Helping Make Life a Little Better

NovaCare, a rehabilitation and employee-services comapny, has evolved over a 15-year period. Senior management believes that its success is largely due to its core values, which are shared on a daily basis and drive decisions. Operational and structural changes have... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Service Industry

25 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

happiness that money can bring, I think we are missing something,” says Jachimowicz, an assistant professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at HBS. “We also need to think about all of the worries that it can... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2014
Working Paper

The Organizational and Geographic Drivers of Absorptive Capacity: An Empirical Analysis of Pharmaceutical R&D Laboratories

By: Francesca Lazzeri and Gary P. Pisano

Scholars and practitioners alike now recognize that a firm's capacity to assimilate and use know-how from external sources—what Cohen and Levinthal (1990) called "absorptive capacity"—plays a central role in innovation performance. In recent years, a common strategy... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Industry Clusters; Knowledge Acquisition; Pharmaceutical Industry; San Francisco; San Diego; Massachusetts

SSRN

April 2008
Teaching Note

A Day in the Life of Alex Sander: Driving in the Fast Lane at Landon Care Products (Brief Case)

Teaching Note for 2177 View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Leadership, Personal Strategy ＆ Style; Human Resource Management; Career Advancement; Product Management; 360-degree Feedback; Relationship Management; Managing Difficult Interactions; Top Performers; Conflict Management; Leadership; Organizations; Personal Development and Career; Human Resources; Product Marketing

October 1998 (Revised December 1999)
Case

Gene Research, the Mapping of Life and the Global Economy

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Juan Enriquez-Cabot

A new firm is being created to speed up the process of mapping humans, animals, and plants by combining gene technology with rapid gene identification to improve the health and well being of the human population and the productivity of crops and animals. How does one... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Technological Innovation; Business Processes; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Productivity; Welfare; Agribusiness; Genetics; Science-Based Business; Biotechnology Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

Educators

Article

Multivoxel Patterns in Face-sensitive Temporal Regions Reveal an Encoding Schema Based on Detecting Life in a Face

By: Christine E. Looser, J. Swaroop Guntupalli and Thalia Wheatley

More than a decade of research has demonstrated that faces evoke prioritized processing in a 'core face network' of three brain regions. However, whether these regions prioritize the detection of global facial form (shared by humans and mannequins) or the detection of... View Details

Keywords: Brain Imaging; Social Psychology; Mind Perception; Identity; Science; Cognition and Thinking

2012
Working Paper

An Outside-Inside Evolution in Gender and Professional Work

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Kathleen McGinn and Deborah Kolb

We study the process by which a professional service firm reshaped its activities and beliefs over nearly two decades as it adapted to shifts in the social discourse regarding gender and work. Analyzing archival data from the firm over eighteen years and... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Social Institutions; Organizational Learning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employment; Gender; Society; Service Industry

SSRN

February 2014
Article

Toward a Model of Work Redesign for Better Work and Better Life

By: Leslie A. Perlow and Erin L. Kelly

Flexible work accommodations provided by employers purport to help individuals struggling to manage work and family demands. The underlying model for change is accommodation—helping individuals accommodate their work demands with no changes in the structure of work or... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance

July 2021
Article

Structuring Local Environments to Avoid Diversity: Anxiety Drives Whites' Geographical and Institutional Self-Segregation Preferences

By: Eric Anicich, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Merrick Osborne and L. Taylor Phillips

The current research explores how local racial diversity affects Whites’ efforts to structure their local communities to avoid incidental intergroup contact. In two experimental studies (N=509; Studies 1a-b), we consider Whites’ choices to structure a fictional,... View Details

Keywords: Segregration; Structural/institutional Racism; Organizational Exclusion; Diversity; Race; Organizations; Local Range; Prejudice and Bias

01 Jun 2023
HBS Case

A Nike Executive Hid His Criminal Past to Turn His Life Around. What If He Didn't Have To?

what he had done. “I tried to put it out of my mind, even though I thought about it every day,” Miller says. “I never talked about the details to anyone. As I evolved, I realized what a horrible thing I had done.” The street-to-jail cycle... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Apparel & Accessories

September 2019
Article

Technology Reemergence: Creating New Value for Old Technologies in Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970-2008

By: Ryan Raffaelli

In 1983, 14 years after the introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch, mechanical watches and the Swiss watchmakers who built them were predicted to be obsolete (Landes, 1983). Unexpectedly, however, by 2008 the Swiss mechanical watchmaking industry had... View Details

Keywords: Technology Reemergence; Technology Cycles; Cognition And Market Redefinition; Legacy Technology Trajectories; Information Technology; Demand and Consumers; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity; Change; Consumer Products Industry; Switzerland

2014
Other Teaching and Training Material

Marketing Reading: Sales Force Design and Management

By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas

This Core Curriculum Reading introduces students to (1) the importance of sales force design in implementing organizational strategy, and (2) the role of sales force management in linking structures and processes to behaviors. The material combines theoretical... View Details

Keywords: Sales Budget; Sales Compensation; Sales Cycle; Sales Force Management; Sales Forces; Sales Management; Sales Operations; Sales Organization; Sales Planning; Sales Strategy

January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Royal DSM: From Continuous Transformation to Organic Growth

By: William W. George, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Amram Migdal

Royal DSM CEO Feike Sijbesma was pondering the challenges of shifting DSM’s global organization from the constant transformations of the past 100 years to creating organic growth. When Sijbesma took the helm as CEO in 2007, he further pushed and completed the company’s... View Details

Keywords: Organic Growth; Organizational Change; M＆A; Mergers And Acquisitions; Divestment; Business Ventures; Business Divisions; Business Growth and Maturation; Restructuring; Change; Change Management; Transformation; Transition; Engineering; Chemicals; Mining; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Capital Markets; Financial Markets; Food; Globalization; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Health; Nutrition; History; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Practices and Processes; Management Style; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Ownership; Public Ownership; Performance; Strategy; Adaptation; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Value; Value Creation; Biotechnology Industry; Chemical Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Mining Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Europe; Netherlands

Educators

01 Sep 2023
News

That Was Then, This Is Now

It started with a question. But before that, it started in the classroom. Tony Deifell (MBA 2002) loved the discussions in his LEAD course, taught by Professor (and now former Dean) Nitin Nohria; wanting to make them more tangible, Deifell adapted the idea of... View Details

Keywords: Photographed by Tony Deifell (MBA 2002); edited by Julia Hanna. Above: Heidi Brooks, photographed in 2003 and 2023.; life experience; family; leadership

January 2017
Case

Danaher Corporation, 2007–2017

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

On July 2, 2016, Danaher Corporation completed the spinoff of Fortive Corporation. The previous day, Danaher’s stock price had reached an all-time high. In 2015, Danaher had decided to split off its test and measurement, fuel and fleet management, and automation... View Details

Keywords: Danaher; Fortive; Larry Culp; Beckman Coulter; Pall; Life Sciences; Diagnostics; Environmental Operations; Water Management; Dental; Testing; Measurement; Fuel; Fleet Management; Automation; Toolmaking; Tools; Disease Management; Continuous Improvement; Toyota Production System; Divestiture; Spinoffs; Spin-off; Networks; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Business Divisions; Business Subsidiaries; Business Units; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Joint Ventures; Restructuring; Engineering; Chemicals; Construction; Machinery and Machining; Profit; Revenue; Globalized Firms and Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Medical Specialties; Business History; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Practices and Processes; Management Succession; Management Systems; Resource Allocation; Market Entry and Exit; Measurement and Metrics; Logistics; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Wastes and Waste Processing; Science-Based Business; Opportunities; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Expansion; Technology; Software; Technology Networks; Technology Platform; Value; Valuation; Aerospace Industry; Auto Industry; Biotechnology Industry; Chemical Industry; Computer Industry; Construction Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Distribution Industry; Electronics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Health Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Information Technology Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Retail Industry; Rubber Industry; Semiconductor Industry; Shipping Industry; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Utilities Industry; United States; District of Columbia

Educators

2004
Working Paper

Thinking About Technology: Applying a Cognitive Lens to Technical Change

We apply a cognitive lens to understanding technology trajectories across the life cycle by developing a coevolutionary model of technological frames and technology. Applying that model to each stage of the technology life cycle, we identify conditions under which a... View Details

Keywords: Design; Fluctuation; Technology; Perception