Publications

March 2025
Case

Taylor Guitars: Making Employee Ownership Work the Taylor Way

By: Dennis Campbell, Petros Kusmu and Stacy Straaberg

In 2013, guitar manufacturer Taylor Guitars’ co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug were considering several exit options including selling to a competitor or to a private equity firm. The co-founders decided, instead, to embark on a seven-year process to transfer 100%... View Details

Educators

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

you can be with proper information, by changing your life and sharing it with others, you can be, you can be happier. That's the goal. You know. I I've always talked about this, and Oprah and I were talking about this when we were View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

December 2012
Article

Reflected Knowledge and Trust in Global Collaboration

By: Mark Mortensen and Tsedal Neeley

Scholars argue that direct knowledge about distant colleagues is crucial for fostering trust in global collaboration. However, their arguments focus mainly on how trust accrues from knowledge about distant collaborators' personal characteristics, relationships, and... View Details

Keywords: Global Work; Organizational Studies; Knowledge; Trust; Cooperation; Global Range; Relationships; Behavior; Personal Characteristics

1997
Book

Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices

By: Leslie Perlow

Why do Americans work so hard? Are the long hours spent at work really necessary to increase organizational productivity? Perlow documents the work life of employees who assume that for their own success and the success of their organization they must put in extended... View Details

Keywords: Time Management; Working Conditions; Work-Life Balance; Performance Productivity

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

that has been suggested is to increase the firm's financial leverage (so it has less of a cushion when the business begins to suffer); another is to increase senior managers' equity stake so they are directly rewarded for restructuring that View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

April 2006
Article

Competitive Advantage and the Value Network Configuration: Making Decisions at a Swedish Life Insurance Company

By: Øystein D. Fjeldstad and Christian H.M. Ketels

When the Swedish Life Insurers Förenade Liv found themselves in difficulties in a rapidly changing market, their response was to call in the consultants. And one of the consultant's first suggestions was to use the Value Network, not the Value Chain, as a new... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Fluctuation; Networks; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Value; Quality; Decision Making; Market Transactions; Performance Effectiveness; Customers; Insurance Industry; Sweden

21 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

You Don’t Have to Quit Your Job to Find More Meaning in Life

though one is leading a meaningful life is a bellwether for broader emotional wellbeing, with those who feel they are leading meaningful lives displaying superior mental and physical health. Making work... View Details

Keywords: by Shalene Gupta

09 Apr 2024
Book

Why Work Rituals Bring Teams Together and Create More Meaning

them to change our emotional states in many different ways.” With a 2023 Gallup survey showing that US employees are less satisfied with their jobs and less likely to feel that someone at work cares about them than four years ago, Norton... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2023
Working Paper

Life After Death: A Field Experiment with Small Businesses on Information Frictions, Stigma, and Bankruptcy

By: Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Mitchell Hoffman and Benjamin Iverson

In a randomized control trial (RCT) with U.S. small businesses, we document that a large share of firms are not well-informed about bankruptcy. Many assume that bankruptcy necessarily entails the death of a business and do not know about Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Knowledge Dissemination; Outcome or Result

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

What makes a successful entrepreneurial leader? Is it the technical brilliance of Bill Gates? The obsessive focus on user experience of Steve Jobs? The vision, passion, and strong execution of Care.com’s Sheila Lirio Marcelo? Or maybe it’s about previous experience,... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

Article

Neither a Bazaar nor a Cathedral: The Interplay between Structure and Agency in Wikipedia's Role System.

By: Ofer Arazy, Hila Lifshitz - Assaf and Adam Balila

Roles provide a key coordination mechanism in peer-production. Whereas one stream in the literature has focused on the structural responsibilities associated with roles, the another has stressed the emergent nature of work. To date, these streams have proceeded largely... View Details

Keywords: Wikipedia; Knowledge Work; Organizational Structure; Knowledge; Information Publishing

22 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Want Hybrid Work to Succeed? Trust, Don’t Track, Employees

Neeley says. “It became really important for managers to ask, ‘How’s it going? How are you doing? How can I help?’” As life begins to normalize, Neeley urges managers to retain that emphasis on employee well-being. “When people are View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

23 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn’t)

concept of "Enterprise 2.0"—a term coined by McAfee on the general idea of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used in business—popped up on Wikipedia, McAfee beamed. "I was bizarrely proud when my work rose to the level of inclusion in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

14 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

You're Right! You Are Working Longer and Attending More Meetings

between your life and your work, it's almost inevitable that we see these blurring lines,” she says. The research team detailed their findings in the working paper Collaborating During Coronavirus: The... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

2020
White Paper

Building the On-Demand Workforce

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, James Palano, Allison Bailey, Nithya Vaduganathan, Elizabeth Kaufman, Renée Laverdière and Sibley Lovett

The right talent, in the right place, at the right time, is the equation for success in today’s world. In an era of technological change, demographic shifts, and economic uncertainty, companies can enhance their ability to compete by building a flexible... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; On-demand Economy; Workforce; On-demand Workforce; Competitive Advantage; Human Capital; Talent and Talent Management; Recruitment

April 2008
Case

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

By: Larry E. Greiner and Elizabeth Collins

Alex Sander is a new product manager whose drive and talents are attractive to management, but whose intolerant style has alienated employees. This tension is presented against the backdrop of a 360° performance review process. Sander works in the Toiletries Division... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Conflict Management; Behavior; Management Practices and Processes; Talent and Talent Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Problems and Challenges; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Europe

Educators

18 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

What Your Non-Binary Employees Need to Do Their Best Work

their life and career aspirations. Coffman presents her findings in a new working paper that explores the experiences, goals, and preferences of non-binary people and how these compare with those of men and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

December 2015
Article

Harnessing Productive Tensions in Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Work Integration Social Enterprises

By: Julie Battilana, Metin Sengul, Anne-Claire Pache and Jacob Model

We examine the factors that influence the social performance of hybrid organizations that pursue a social mission, and sustain their operations through commercial activities, by studying work integration social enterprises (WISEs). We argue that social imprinting and... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Organizations; Performance Productivity

December 2010
Article

Life in the Fast Lane: Origins of Competitive Interaction in New vs. Established Markets

By: Eric L. Chen, Riitta Katila, Rory McDonald and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Prior work examines competitive moves in relatively stable markets. In contrast, we focus on less stable markets where competitive advantages are temporary and R&D moves are essential. Using evolutionary search theory and an experiential simulation with in-depth... View Details

Keywords: Balance and Stability; Competitive Advantage; Supply and Industry