Publications

December 2014 (Revised February 2023)
Module Note

Legal Analysis: Customers

By: Lena G. Goldberg

This Note introduces the Module on Responsibilities to Customers taught in Leadership and Corporate Accountability, a required course in the Harvard Business School MBA program. The Note outlines the asymmetries inherent in the company-customer relationship and... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Corporate Accountability; Ethics; Legal Liability; Customer Relationship Management

06 Jan 2016
What Do You Think?

Why Do Leaders Get Their Timing Wrong?

Summing Up Is Good Timing in Management Primarily a Function of Strategy or Culture? Timing in executing change is an important responsibility of leadership. Responses to this month’s column suggest that if timing is the result of one... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Auto; Fashion

03 Oct 2017
Sharpening Your Skills

7 Effective Ways to Lead Teams

Source: rawpixel Very few businesses today can exist today without effective team work. So it's surprising that while many managers are regularly coached on how to lead individuals, training in team leadership is much more rare.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2018
Chapter

The Trust Imperative

By: Richard Edelman, Stephen A. Greyser, E. Bruce Harrison and Tom Martin

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Successful relationships depend on trust—trust between spouses, trust between parent and child, trust between enterprises and their stakeholders. This chapter focuses on the factors that build trust in organizations, as well as the forces that can... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Communication

June 2007 (Revised July 2007)
Case

Leslie Brinkman at Versutia Capital

By: Julie Battilana and Robert Steven Kaplan

Leslie Brinkman is the founder and CEO of a hedge fund, Genuity Capital. Leslie spent late 2002 and early 2003 assembling her team and launched the fund in early 2003. While the firm performed well during 2003 and 2004 (both in terms of returns and new assets), in 2005... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Organizational Design; Performance Improvement; Groups and Teams

January 2023 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Veeva Systems and the Transformation to a Public Benefit Corporation

By: Ranjay Gulati and Allison M. Ciechanover

Peter Gassner, the co-founder and CEO of Veeva Systems, steered the company through rapid scaling from its launch in 2007 to 2022. Year after year, the company had exceeded expectations, with its market capitalization reaching $50 billion at its peak. By 2022, the... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Corporate Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California

2008
Working Paper

The Effect of Labor on Profitability: The Role of Quality

By: Zeynep Ton

Determining staffing levels is an important decision in retail operations. While the costs of increasing labor are obvious and easy to measure, the benefits are often indirect and not immediately felt. One benefit of increased labor is improved quality. The objective... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Selection and Staffing; Service Delivery; Business Processes; Quality; Retail Industry

Read Now

November 2000 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Bush Boake Allen

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Bush Boake Allen, a flavor and fragrance firm, is considering strategic options that would integrate customers into its innovation process via a potentially disruptive Internet-based technology. As this approach could result in dramatic changes to the firm's business... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Management Teams; Product Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Conflict Management; Internet; Chemical Industry

February 2007 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Bancaja: Developing Customer Intelligence (A)

In 1996, CEO Fernando Garcia Checa wanted to make customer analytics a part of Bancaja's new strategy. Bancaja, a savings bank based in Valencia, Spain, was expanding and wanted to exploit customer information to increase commercial effectiveness. At the same time, it... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Banking Industry; Spain

Ta-Wei (David) Huang is a PhD candidate in Quantitative Marketing at Harvard Business School. His research integrates causal inference and machine learning to address methodological challenges and unintended consequences in targeting, personalization, and online... View Details

09 Sep 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Perspectives from the Boardroom--2009

Keywords: by Jay W. Lorsch, Joseph L. Bower, Clayton S. Rose & Suraj Srinivasan

Forthcoming
Article

No Line Left Behind: Assortative Matching Inside the Firm

By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo

How do firms pair workers with managers, and which constraints affect the allocation of labor within the firm? We characterize the sorting pattern of managers to workers in a large readymade garment manufacturer in India and then explore potential drivers of the... View Details

Keywords: Assortative Matching; Productivity; Global Buyers; Readymade Garments; Labor; Organizational Design; Performance Productivity; Fashion Industry

December 2011 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Aviva Investors

By: George Serafeim

The Aviva Investors case describes the challenge of integrating sustainability considerations into the strategy and business practices of companies and into the decision making process of the investment community. Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer at... View Details

Keywords: Investing; Investment Management; Shareholder Activism; Disclosure; Stock Exchanges; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Sustainability Reporting; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Social Impact; Activism; Investment; Management; Business and Shareholder Relations; Environmental Sustainability; United Kingdom

May 2011
Article

The Power of Small Wins

By: Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer

What is the best way to motivate employees to do creative work? Help them take a step forward every day. In an analysis of knowledge workers' diaries, the authors found that nothing contributed more to a positive inner work life (the mix of emotions, motivations, and... View Details

27 Mar 2019
HBS Seminar

Caitlin Rosenthal, UC Berkeley, Department of History

Article

Real Effects of Relational Contracts

By: Steven Blader, Claudine Gartenberg, Rebecca Henderson and Andrea Pratt

How important are factors such as "firm culture" and "employee engagement" in driving firm performance? Increasing evidence from a wide range of fields suggests that productivity differs widely across firms, even after the inclusion of careful controls for factors such... View Details

19 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Company Loyalty

employee-employer relationship pays off for both parties? The most effective executives and managers are applying these strategies: 1. Align career growth with company goals. When a company helps its... View Details

Keywords: by Lauren Keller Johnson

October 1997
Case

John A. McCarthy, Jr.

By: Hugo Uyterhoeven, Todd M. Harris, A. Lanham Napier and John Sisson

Seven years after graduation, an MBA grad accepts the COO position in a company he's never heard of in an industry he knows nothing about. Moving up a vertical learning curve, he is involved in a crisis, and exposed to change and people management. He also must develop... View Details

Keywords: Management; Business or Company Management; Crisis Management; Leadership Development; Labor and Management Relations; Business Strategy; Management Teams