Publications

April 2011
Article

Strategies for Learning from Failure

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Many executives believe that all failure is bad (although it usually provides lessons)--and that learning from it is pretty straightforward. The author, a professor at Harvard Business School, thinks both beliefs are misguided. In organizational life, she says, some... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Leadership; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Failure; Opportunities

Article

Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We present a survey of recent contributions in empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Geographic Location; Motivation and Incentives; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Competition; Human Capital; Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Multinational Firms and Management; India; Brazil; United States

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2017
Book

Geography, Location, and Strategy

By: Juan Alcácer, Bruce Kogut, Catherine Thomas and Bernard Yin Yeung

Changes in both technology and global political economy have vastly accelerated the pace of globalization in the last 40 years, eroding barriers that limited firms' geographic scope and unleashing a seemingly unlimited set of new threats, challenges, and opportunities... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Global Strategy; Value Creation

October 24, 2023
Article

10 Beliefs That Get in the Way of Organizational Change

By: Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss

In their new book, Move Fast and Fix Things, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss outline five strategies to help leaders tackle their hardest problems and quickly make change. Their final strategy is to execute your plan with a sense of urgency. They argue that most... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business or Company Management

April 2002
Background Note

Local Institutions and Global Strategy

By: Tarun Khanna

Explores how location affects a firm's strategy and identifies the different ways location affects industry structure, choice of a firm's position, and the sustainability of that position. The intellectual foundations lie in an appreciation of institutional economics.... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Global Strategy; Product Positioning; Market Transactions; Industry Structures; Negotiation Deal; Organizational Design; Outcome or Result; Strategic Planning

Educators

October 20, 2020
Article

Expanding AI's Impact with Organizational Learning

By: Sam Ransbotham, Shervin Khodabandeh, David Kiron, François Candelon, Michael Chu and Burt LaFountain

Most companies developing AI capabilities have yet to gain significant financial benefits from their efforts. Only when organizations add the ability to learn with AI do significant benefits become likely. View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Learning; Adoption

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2003
Class Lecture

Creating Competitive Advantage Through Organizational Learning

By: David A. Garvin

Keywords: Organizations; Competitive Advantage; Knowledge Use and Leverage

May 2020
Article

Tackling Climate Change Requires Organizational Purpose

By: Rebecca Henderson and George Serafeim

Unchecked climate change presents a profound threat to economic growth and political stability but despite widespread public concern about the issue, global emissions of greenhouse gases have not declined. Indeed current “business as usual” predictions imply that... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Purpose; Purpose; Sustainability; Environment; Climate Change; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Leadership

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March–April 2012
Article

The Genesis and Dynamics of Organizational Networks

By: Gautam Ahuja, Guiseppe Soda and Akbar Zaheer

An extensive body of knowledge exists on network outcomes and on how network structures may contribute to the creation of outcomes at different levels of analysis, but less attention has been paid to understanding how and why organizational networks emerge, evolve, and... View Details

Keywords: Economic Sociology; Economics And Organization; Social Networks; Organization And Management Theory; Interorganizatonal Relationships; Networks; Strategy; Change

2014
Other Teaching and Training Material

Strategy Reading: Setting Aspirations—Mission, Vision, and Values

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

"Setting Aspirations-Mission, Vision, and Values" introduces students to the concepts of organizational aspirations and the link to strategy. The Reading presents a framework for analyzing aspirations, discusses the differences between mission and vision, and uses... View Details

18 Sep 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Institutional Strategies in Emerging Markets

Keywords: by Christopher Marquis & Mia Raynard

July – August 2009
Article

Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance

By: Sebastian Raisch, Julian Birkinshaw, Gilbert Probst and Michael Tushman

Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a new research paradigm in organization theory, yet several issues that are fundamental to this debate remain controversial. We explore four central tensions here: Should organizations achieve ambidexterity through... View Details

Keywords: Change; Innovation and Invention; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Research; Integration

2018
Chapter

The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Paul Verdin

Despite discussion in the management literature about agile organizations or learning organizations, many large organizations are top-down, slow to change, and fraught with obstacles to learning. We describe “strategy-as-learning” to contrast with the traditional... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Learning; Safety; Organizational Culture; Performance Consistency

2011
Working Paper

The Importance of Work Context in Organizational Learning from Error

By: Lucy H. MacPhail and Amy C. Edmondson

This paper examines the implications of work context for learning from errors in organizations. Prior research has shown that attitudes and behaviors related to error vary between groups within organizations but has not investigated or theorized the ways in which... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Learning; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Failure; Performance Improvement; Opportunities; Complexity

December 2015
Background Note

Incentive Systems

By: Brian J. Hall

This note serves as a supplement to any course on incentive design within organizations. The note focuses on the principal difficulties in designing incentive systems, including the tradeoff between objective and subjective performance metrics, how to design incentive... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Strategy; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Performance Evaluation; Strategy

Educators

February 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Organization and Strategy at Millennium (A)

By: Julie M. Wulf and Scott Waggoner

This case examines Millennium's strategic and organizational responses to the rapid evolution of the biopharmaceutical industry. In the early 2000s, as Millennium's competitive advantage in early-stage research slipped away and its losses mounted, founder and CEO Mark... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Leading Change; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

Educators

November 1995 (Revised August 1996)
Case

Colliers International Property Consultants, Inc.: Organizational Integration

By: Michael Y. Yoshino and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Keywords: Organizational Design; Integration; Real Estate Industry; Consulting Industry