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05 Dec 2018
Research & Ideas

Why Managers Should Reveal Their Failures

If you’re a business leader who oozes achievement, sprints up the corporate ladder, and earns big bucks, your co-workers probably resent you to some extent. New research says high-achievers can win over their colleagues with a simple... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

02 Apr 2007
Lessons from the Classroom

Making the Move to General Manager

jobs, who are 'the general manager in the middle' who have the incredibly difficult job of managing up, down, and across the organization. "The cases are designed to get smart people to see different... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

July 2003 (Revised June 2004)
Case

Managing Business Risk of Information Technology

By: Richard L. Nolan and Robert D. Austin

Sets up a situation in which participants must create presentations that assess the IT risk of a large company. View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Information Technology

05 Dec 2012
What Do You Think?

Should Managers Bother Listening to Predictions?

Summing Up Can Managers Afford to Ignore Predictions in Planning? There is a healthy skepticism when it comes to the reliability of predictions as a basis for planning. Donald Kortalon, commenting on this... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

13 Jun 2022
Research & Ideas

Extroverts, Your Colleagues Wish You Would Just Shut Up and Listen

rather than maintaining genuine interest. Unexpected result amplified in pandemic workplaces While extroverted managers and employees may feel discouraged by the results, the research points to practical methods for improving business... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

July 2024
Case

Living up to Purpose and Performance at Parker Hannifin

By: Hubert Joly, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter

In 2019, Parker Hannifin, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of motion and control technologies, did something unusual for an industrial company: it created a purpose statement. Even though it already had a clear business strategy and longstanding culture of... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Health Pandemics; Leadership; Business or Company Management; Organizational Culture; Business Strategy; Communication Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Cleveland; Ohio; United States

17 Apr 2019
Research & Ideas

How Managers Stifle Creativity

constraint. Among destroyers of creativity, or “creativity killers,” as I call them, excessive constraint is probably number one. When people are supposed to be coming up with new ideas or solving complex problems in new ways, they need... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

December 1994 (Revised May 1999)
Case

3M Optical Systems: Managing Corporate Entrepreneurship

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Afroze A Mohammed

A middle-level division manager must decide whether he should support an investment request for a third attempt at launching a new product developed by a struggling business unit. Describes the long, difficult process by which the unit has developed the product--a... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Roles; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Problems and Challenges; Product Development; Consumer Products Industry

26 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

National Health Costs Could Decrease if Managers Reduce Work Stress

pressure, alcoholism, mental illness. Even so, the connections between job pressures and health—and what management can do to address the problem—have been little studied. “We have not placed a lot of emphasis on the role of workplace... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

2010
Simulation

Change Management Simulation: Power and Influence

By: Linda A. Hill and William Q. Judge

In this single-player simulation, students play one of two roles at a sunglass manufacturing firm and face the challenges associated with implementing an organization-wide environmental sustainability initiative. The initiative seeks to change raw material inputs in... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Power and Influence; Problems and Challenges; Environmental Sustainability; Production; Wastes and Waste Processing; Adoption

10 Aug 2009
Research & Ideas

High Commitment, High Performance Management

high commitment, high performance company. Martha Lagace: What differentiates HCHP firms and their leaders? Michael Beer: The leaders manage with a multiple stakeholder perspective. Contrary to many CEOs, HCHP leaders—with support from... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

21 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Are Your Employees Passing Up Incentives? Try Promoting the Programs More

billions of dollars on wellness programs each year, underwriting gym memberships and offering other perks, yet analyses find only a third or so of employees at US companies take advantage of these programs. Over half of American workers don’t sign View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

07 Oct 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

How Companies Can Make Up with (Very) Unhappy Customers

for competitors. Tesco’s Stumble into the US MarketUK retailer Tesco was very successful penetrating foreign markets—until it set its sights on the United States. What Mark Zuckerberg Can Learn About Crisis Leadership from StarbucksWhile Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail; Air Transportation

October 2009
Article

Managing Risk in the New World

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Anette Mikes, Robert Simons, Peter Tufano and Michael Hofmann Jr.

Five experts gathered recently to discuss the future of enterprise risk management: Kaplan, the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, who with his colleague David Norton developed the balanced scorecard; Mikes, an assistant professor at HBS who studies... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Capital Structure; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Risk Management

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December 2004 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Managing a Public Image: Rob Thomas

By: Robin J. Ely and Ingrid Vargas

Rob Thomas describes some of the challenges he has faced as a white, middle-aged man who is managing director of a mid-size consulting firm where he is committed to increasing staff gender and racial diversity. Unwilling to risk the disapproval of any constituency,... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Age; Race; Identity; Failure; Gender; Consulting Industry