Publications

February 2023 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Twitter Turnaround and Elon Musk

By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic

Late afternoon on Friday, October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk was the center of attention at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The night before, Musk officially took the company private and became Twitter’s majority shareholder, finally ending a months-long acquisition... View Details

Keywords: Elon Musk; Twitter; Acquisition; Revenue; Advertising; Social Media; Business or Company Management; Public Opinion; Job Cuts and Outsourcing

January 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

AT&T Managing Technological Change and the Future of Telephone Operators in the 20th Century

By: Daniel P. Gross and William R. Kerr

By the 1930s, AT&T dominated the American phone industry, serving 10 million telephones and employing over 100,000 switchboard operators. But beginning in the mid-1910s, the company began changing from manually operated switchboards to mechanical switching systems that... View Details

Keywords: AT＆T; Bell Telephone; Phone Lines; Phone Operators; Mechanical Switching; Layoffs; Technological Change; Transition; History; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Disruption; Change Management; Communications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

February 2015 (Revised May 2015)
Supplement

Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Susan J. Winterberg

Nokia's leaders reflect on the Bridge program, lessons learned during its implementation, and the business benefits it brought to the company. Nokia's Bridge program resulted in 60% of employees knowing their next step the day they exited the firm. It also helped... View Details

Keywords: Layoffs; Plant Closure; Outplacement; Shared Value; Business or Company Management; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Restructuring; Employee Relationship Management; Telecommunications Industry

15 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 15, 2018

Layoffs That Don't Break Your Company: Better Approaches to Workforce Transition By: Sucher, Sandra J., and Shalene Gupta Abstract—Today layoffs have become companies’ default response to the challenges created by advances in technology... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

24 Apr 2020
Op-Ed

Lessons from the NFL: Virtual Hiring, Leadership, Building Teams and COVID-19

found no takers given injury concerns, their high asking price, and the supply of quality quarterbacks on the market. Given that cutting Newton would free up $19 million in space in salary cap terms View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Abbott , Boris Groysberg, Tali Groysberg, and Abhijit Naik; Sports

1995
Article

Dignity and Downsizing

By: Joshua D. Margolis

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing

November 2008
Case

Malaysia Airlines (A)

In the first six weeks on the job, the new CEO of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has developed an ambitious turnaround plan, including aggressive job cuts and route eliminations, but MAS's largest shareholder, Khazanah Nacional, the sovereign wealth fund, is tasked with... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Economic Growth; Investment Funds; Sovereign Finance; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Air Transportation Industry; Malaysia

October 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Jamcracker: Pivot Path

A medium-size company considers entering into a high-tech "over-the-Net" outsourcing arrangement that hinges on buying an integration platform from Jamcracker. Introduces students to the many options available in modern IT outsourcing and challenges them to develop a... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Information Technology; Decision Making

14 Aug 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 14, 2018

forthcoming Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth By: Edmondson, Amy C. Abstract—The Fearless Organization offers practical... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

December 2010 (Revised March 2011)
Background Note

Layoffs: Management Implications and Best Practices

By: Sandra J. Sucher, Elana Sara Green and David Alberto Rosales

This note reviews decision criteria for carrying out a layoff, best practices for implementation, and ways that managers can prepare themselves to conduct a layoff. View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

entrepreneurial leaders as they collect more data. Differentiating serial founders and first-time founders Not all founders are cut from the same cloth, the study underscores. Analysis of the pilot data also... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

January 2005 (Revised November 2009)
Case

Tata Consultancy Services

By: Rohit Deshpande and Seth Schulman

As CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), S. "Ram" Ramadorai had grown the company into an emerging IT services powerhouse, with marquee clients such as General Electric, offices in 32 countries, and revenues of nearly $2 billion dollars. Now, he was about to steer... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Labor; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology; Consulting Industry; India; United States

October 2020
Case

Israelis, Palestinians and the Technology Bridge Between Them: A Work in Progress

By: Elie Ofek and Lia Weiner

In Israel of 2020 the demand for software engineers was endless. Meanwhile just miles away, Palestinian universities were graduating 3,000 engineers a year, and many of them could not find jobs in the still nascent Palestinian tech sector. Could these dots be... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitics; Technology Ecosystem; Software Engineers; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Business Startups; International Relations; Cooperation; Opportunities; Problems and Challenges; Technology Industry; Israel; Palestinian state

February 2008 (Revised January 2009)
Background Note

Offshoring Day in BGIE and Strategy

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Troy Smith

Describes a set of activities in which students will participate before and during a day of classes on offshoring. The day's classes will examine the implications of offshoring for policy makers, business leaders, and workers. View Details

Keywords: Policy; Employees; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Labor; Management; Strategy

15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

history of this American corporate icon. The U.S. cannot afford to lose the thousands of middle-class jobs of GM workers and management, nor the cutting edge R&D that GM... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

03 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 3, 2018

basis of systematic performance. Focusing on relative total shareholder returns (rTSR), the predominant metric specified in these contracts and used by market participants to evaluate managers, we document that 60% of firms—those that... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

17 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees

Those might be the very parts of the job that your workers find most enjoyable, and loving their work is an important motivational factor for many workers. “The way that AI will change View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

18 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Your Best Employees Are Burning Out: A Framework for Retaining Talent

people leaving my organization or refusing to return to the office in such high numbers? What is my response, and how are my employees receiving it? At a time when people are getting choosier about where they work View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and MaShon Wilson

December 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Balancing Returns and Responsibilities at Raya Partners

By: Arthur Segel, Ephraim Mernick, Derek C. M. van Bever and Olivia Barba

Raya Partners, a private equity firm, faces a crucial decision regarding Asa Specialty Coatings Company (ASCC). The dilemma involves shifting ASCC's manufacturing operations to Mexico, a move that would boost profitability and reduce emissions but result in significant... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Communication Strategy; Private Equity; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mexico; Vermont