Commitment - Publications - Faculty & Research

Research Summary

The Institutional Foundations of Lending: Indirect Regulation and State-Building

The Institutional Foundations of Lending: Indirect Regulation and State-Building makes two main theoretical contributions to the scholarship on credit markets and institutional development. First, the book demonstrates that opportunistic lenders can take... View Details

Research Summary

Leadership and Leadership Development: An Ontological Approach

This summarizes my research program over the last twelve years (with my co-investigators Werner Erhard, Steve Zaffron, and more recently Kari Granger) in which the objective has been to rigorously distinguish leader and leadership and to create a technology for... View Details

Research Summary

Mastering Strategy Execution

By: Robert Simons

Professor Robert Simons’ research encompasses three areas of management accountability that are the foundation for successful strategy execution: organization design, performance measurement and control, and risk management. In addition, Simons is interested in the... View Details

15 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

We Have Better Ways to Break Habits Than Willpower. Why Don't We Use Them?

way through that critical project. But first, just one more cat video Research has shown that people are more likely to follow through on their goals, whether it’s boosting productivity at work, improving grades at school, losing weight, or smoking less, when they use... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

28 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: The Good Struggle: Responsible Leadership in an Unforgiving World

unconventional way. We typically think of commitments as deep, abiding pledges that individuals and organizations will do absolutely all they can to make good on. In contrast, the kind of commitments that... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Badaracco

13 Dec 2004
Research & Ideas

Sharing News That Might Be Bad

be settled for months. How Do You Deal With It? Like so many executives over the past few years, you have made a commitment to internal "transparency"—where not only the numbers but also the big picture is discussed candidly... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Michelman

02 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Stuck in Gear: Why Managers Don’t Act

help the organization," he writes in his new book, Revival of the Fittest: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them. These actions or commitments behave as double-edged swords, Sull says. They have a lifecycle, he... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

02 Aug 2024
HBS Case

How a Mission to Cut Food Waste Launched a Multimillion-Dollar Venture

items from being thrown into landfills, and 130 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from that food out of the atmosphere. “Josh made the decision to commit to an idea that is not proprietary at all in a competitive space with... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Technology; Information Technology

03 Mar 2010
What Do You Think?

To What Degree Does “Identity” Affect Economic Performance?

Summing Up Is "identity" a victim of competitiveness? A recent study of organizational behavior published by Timothy Kieningham and Lerzan Toksoy shows that employees' perceptions of their employers' levels of commitment to them... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

28 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Responsible Leadership in an Unforgiving World

making leadership both more difficult and more rewarding than it was a generation ago. If critical decisions in the last century were typified by an all-or-nothing gamble on a new big new factory or business arm, then decisions in this century are characterized by a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

20 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

How CEOs Sustain Higher-Ambition Goals

At a recent Harvard Business School conference, dozens of CEOs committed to the idea of working toward "higher-ambition" goals that go beyond just short-term shareholder value. Inspired by the book Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

13 Sep 2004
Research & Ideas

Cash and the Woman-Owned Business

rather than problems with women's capabilities and commitment. The following sections explore these widely held beliefs about women's investment in, commitment to, and capability to run substantial businesses of their own. Do Women... View Details

Keywords: by Candida Brush, Nancy M. Carter, Elizabeth Gatewood, Patricia G. Greene & Myra M. Hart

18 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

New at the Helm: A Talk with HBS Dean Light

support I received, after the announcement, from former students and faculty. People really care deeply about HBS and are committed to its ongoing excellence. The good news is, the School is in great shape. Q: Looking ahead, what are some... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Education

18 Nov 2013
Op-Ed

Twitter IPO: Overvalued or the Start of Something Big?

not clear, investors represent good money if they're impatient for confidence in the emerging idea's profit model and patient for growth while that's being figured out. Scaling before having a viable profit formula commits resources to a... View Details

Keywords: by Chet Huber; Technology

28 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

Earth Day Reflections

downloaded from the company's Web site. Unfortunately, the two reports rarely add up to something greater than the sum of their parts. This is a huge problem. A sustainable society requires that all companies be committed to sustainable... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

26 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

A Better Way to Negotiate: Backward

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom on proper sequencing: "Get your own house in order first." Yet this was not the path that President George H. W. Bush followed in preparing for the first Gulf War. Instead of approaching Congress first, Bush View Details

Keywords: by James K. Sebenius

17 Sep 2024
HBS Case

The Climate Targets Leaders Need to Know as Regulations Loom

Michael Toffel, the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management at Harvard Business School. Roughly 42 percent of Fortune 500 companies said they’d reached an environmental target or committed to reaching one by 2030, an 11... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

27 Jun 2007
Lessons from the Classroom

Learning to Make the Move to CEO

time left, and that if they want to do something, they've got to move." Launched in 1945, AMP is the longest-running executive education program in the world. And at 8 weeks, it demands a serious time commitment that may at first... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

24 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 24

performance on immaterial issues perform the best. These results speak to the efficiency of firms' sustainability investments, and also have implications for asset managers who have committed to the integration of sustainability factors... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

One Report: Better Strategy through Integrated Reporting

trust. Why is One Report important now? "The capital markets and our planet have simultaneously reached a fork in the road. One path continues the status quo. The other and new path is a commitment to a better society, stronger financial... View Details