Publications

October 8, 2012
Column

Henkel's Culture Shift

By: Robert Simons

This case descriibes a CEO-led organizational transformation driven by stretch goals, performance measurement, and accountability. When Kasper Rorsted became CEO of Henkel, a Germany-based producer of personal care, laundry, and adhesives products, in 2008, he was... View Details

Keywords: Strategy Execution; Culture; New CEO; Change; Performance Measures; Accountability; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Corporate Accountability; Leading Change; Competitive Strategy; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Consumer Products Industry; Germany

19 Apr 2016
Blog Post

First Minutes are Critical in New-Employee Orientation

retention. Lessons For Businesses For employers, the implications of the findings are pretty clear: "Given that the standard, organization-focused approach of employee socialization is so common, it would benefit View Details

Keywords: All Industries

Forthcoming
Article

Should Human Capital Development Programs Be Voluntary or Mandatory? Evidence from a Field Experiment

By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton

In a field experiment, we find large differences in productivity treatment effects between voluntary and mandatory workplace mentorship programs. A significant portion of this difference is due to the best employees opting into the program when it is voluntary and... View Details

Keywords: Mentoring; Mentorship Programs; Randomized Controlled Trial; Performance Productivity; Employees; Talent and Talent Management; Programs

Read Now

July 2008 (Revised October 2012)
Case

Affinity Plus (A)

By: Dennis Campbell and Peter Tufano

The executive team at Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union has pushed the concept of members first deeply throughout the organization, empowering employees to put member-owners' interests ahead of either the organization's interests or their own interests. As a result of... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Financial Institutions; Financing and Loans; Profit; Cooperative Ownership; Conflict of Interests; Strategy

March 2018
Case

GiveDirectly

By: John Beshears, Joshua Schwartzstein, Tiffany Y. Chang and Brian J. Hall

How should nonprofits design compensation systems to attract and retain talent? GiveDirectly is a respected charitable organization with an unconventional approach. Instead of spending on traditional aid programs in areas such as health care and food access in... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofits; Charity; Effective Altruism; International Aid; Compensation; Goals; Bonuses; Incentives; GiveDirectly; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Recruitment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

October 2019
Case

Regtech at HSBC

By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and James Weber

Mark Cooke, Global Head of Operational Risk, needed to decide between a traditional regulatory control system and a new regtech system to manage non-financial risks. Non-financial risks failures such as money laundering and tax evasion had cost HSBC billions of... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Banks and Banking; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Banking Industry; Information Technology Industry; United Kingdom; United States

January 2006
Case

Ron Perez (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine

The division human resources officer must decide whether to discipline a long-time employee for misusing company time and for improperly filling out time cards for his work on government contracts. Intended to focus on the various factors relevant to disciplining... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Employees; Business or Company Management; Management Practices and Processes; Organizations; Crime and Corruption

Find at Harvard

28 Jan 2021
News

'Degree inflation': How the four-year degree became required

August 2014
Case

Opening the Valve: From Software to Hardware (A)

By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats

Valve, one of the world's top video game software companies, has also become an iconic example of an organization with virtually no hierarchy. A 400-person organization, Valve's unique organizational form (described in detail in the case and accompanying employee... View Details

10 Oct 2017
News

Radical Transparency Can Reduce Bias — but Only If It’s Done Right

2014
Article

Notes from the Search for Deep Indicators in Services

By: James L. Heskett

Much of the research in the service sector over the last four decades has concerned itself with the search for deep indicators that explain service performance. This paper provides a brief retrospective of some of this research and illustrates the directions that this... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Performance; Service Industry

25 Jun 2021
News

Wall Street Returns to Business as Usual While New York Struggles with Reopening

March 2001 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Montefiore Medical Center

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Syeda Noorein Inamdar

A large urban medical center implements the Balanced Scorecard management tool. Elaine Brennan, senior VP of operations, has reorganized a highly functional health care organization into decentralized patient care centers and support units. Having recently endured the... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Health Care and Treatment; Management Systems; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; Leadership Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Reporting; Budgets and Budgeting; Cost Accounting; Corporate Accountability; Communication; Health Industry

November 1992
Case

PPG: Developing a Self-Directed Work Force (A)

By: David A. Garvin and Norman Klein

PPG has built a state-of-the-art glass plant in Berea, Kentucky. The plant is pursuing the goal of a "self-directed workforce." The case describes the progress to date and the unresolved issues faced by management. These include questions about shift rotation,... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Culture; Managerial Roles; Management Style

17 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Being the Boss

now-classic book is popular not just among newbies but also among leaders with decades of experience. “Unless you manage the context in which your team resides, there's no way that your team can be successful.” "I've always been... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

The Challenge of Maintaining Passion for Work Over Time

Passion for work is highly coveted, but many employees report struggling to maintain their passion over time. In the current research, we explain the challenge of pursuing passion by conceptualizing passion as an attribute with temporal variation. Viewed through... View Details

06 May 2021
News

"Hybrid" Return-to-Office Models Could Create Subcaste of Workers

2024
Working Paper

Human-Computer Interactions in Demand Forecasting and Labor Scheduling Decisions

By: Caleb Kwon, Ananth Raman and Jorge Tamayo

We investigate whether corporate officers should grant managers discretion to override AI-driven demand forecasts and labor scheduling tools. Analyzing five years of administrative data from a large grocery retailer using such an AI tool, encompassing over 500 stores,... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction; Working Conditions; Performance Productivity