Publications

March 2015
Case

Clifford Chance: Women at Work

By: Boris Groysberg, Katherine Connolly and Stephanie Marton

It was October 2013, and global law firm Clifford Chance was coming under fire for the second time in less than a year for reputedly failing to provide a supportive work environment for its female associates. A memo entitled "Speaking Effectively" was just issued to... View Details

Keywords: Women; Law; Fairness; Employee Relationship Management; Retention; Human Capital; Organizational Culture; Performance Expectations; Work-Life Balance; Public Opinion; Problems and Challenges; Legal Services Industry; United States

10 Nov 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

Research News and Tips: Innovating Across Time Zones

Researchers at Harvard Business School publish hundreds of studies around business management each year, often in collaboration with peers from other institutions. Here are insights collected from papers and journal articles published over the last few months. Overcome... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

16 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

Kids of Working Moms Grow into Happy Adults

on whether they are harming their children—because they are not.” Welcome news Three years ago, McGinn and colleagues got some pushback when preliminary findings were included in a New York Times article. The research found that adult... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

05 Jan 2016
Working Paper Summaries

The Integrity of Private Third-party Compliance Monitoring

Keywords: by Michael W. Toffel & Jodi L. Short; Manufacturing; Public Administration; Accounting; Service

December 10, 2021
Editorial

Go Ahead and Ask for More Time on That Deadline

By: A.V. Whillans and A.V. Whillans

Unrealistic deadlines don’t help anyone—and yet more often than not, employees avoid asking for extensions even when they know more time would help them do a better job. Through a series of studies with more than 4,000 working adults, the author illustrates how despite... View Details

Keywords: Deadlines; Extension Request; Employees; Time Management; Behavior; Perception

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

Benchmarking certainly has its virtues. Comparing production time or the cost of a standard process to that of peer companies can yield important insights about your own efficiencies—and ultimately, competitiveness. But benchmarking also... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

01 Feb 2023
What Do You Think?

Will Hybrid Work Strategies Pull Down Long-Term Performance?

at prescribed times or days of the week. According to Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, who has studied remote work for years, totally remote workers constituted 15 percent of the US workforce as of early... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

31 Aug 2021
Book

Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

Although CEOs hold positions of power, many can feel powerless in certain ways—particularly when it comes to influencing the behaviors and performance of their employees. Yet perhaps they aren’t taking the time to understand what drives... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

15 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Kids Benefit From Having a Working Mom

stayed home full time, according to a new study. Men raised by working mothers are more likely to contribute to household chores and spend more time caring for family members. “There are very few things that... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2013
Working Paper

An Empirical Study of the Spillover Effects of Workload on Patient Length of Stay

By: Jillian Berry Jaeker and Anita Tucker

We use two years of inpatient data from 243 California hospitals to quantify the relationship between hospital-level workload and patient length of stay (LOS), and its "spillover" effects across patient types. Patients are categorized as medical or surgical, and the... View Details

Keywords: Workload; Processing Times; Healthcare; Working Conditions; Performance Productivity; Time Management; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; California

Read Now

February 2004 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Pratt & Whitney: Engineering Standard Work

By: H. Kent Bowen and Courtney Purrington

As the engineering of state-of-the-art jet engines becomes more and more complex, Pratt & Whitney leaders face major competitive problems. Product development projects are not meeting the cost, quality, and lead-time targets. The leadership develops a design,... View Details

Keywords: Design; Engineering; Cost; Knowledge Management; Time Management; Product Launch; Standards; Product Development; Problems and Challenges; Quality; Creativity; Competitive Strategy; Manufacturing Industry

01 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

How Much Time Should CEOs Devote to Customers?

there are two reasons why CEOs should be cautious about overdoing the percentage of time interfacing with customers. First, marketing and selling should be a prime task of the CEO's direct reports, the individual business unit leaders.... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

02 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Casino Payoff: Hands-Off Management Works Best

At the gambling meccas that employ them, they are called "casino hosts"—essentially front-line employees with nevertheless big responsibilities. These staffers work to develop one-on-one relationships with high-rollers to make sure they... View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Entertainment & Recreation

09 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Industry Self-Regulation: What’s Working (and What’s Not)?

level. As Toffel sees it, there are four angles: how the rules are designed, who adopts them, whether and how compliance is monitored, and whether these rules actually achieve what they purport to achieve. Most studies that have examined industry-initiated programs... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

April 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Levels: The Remote, Asynchronous, Deep Work Management System

By: Joseph B. Fuller and George Gonzalez

Levels is a highly innovative startup in the health care space. They intend to revolutionize health by linking behavior—eating, exercise, sleeping, etc.—to changes in metabolism. They believe metabolic health can be managed through careful monitoring of changes in... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Business Startups; Organizational Culture; Management Style; Technology Industry; United States

May 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Managing the Future of Work

By: William R. Kerr, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

By 2019, leaders from the public and private sector had become increasingly anxious about how advanced technologies and aging global populations could affect labor markets, workplaces, and workers’ lives. Some analysts forecasted that hundreds of millions of workers... View Details

Keywords: Labor Markets; Workplace; Employment; Technological Innovation; Demographics; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Problems and Challenges; Opportunities

September 2010 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Assembling Smartphones: Takt Time ≠ Cycle Time?

By: Willy Shih and Ethan Bernstein

The case was prepared to be used as part of a process review in the first year Technology and Operations Management course at HBS. It offers students an opportunity to discuss the context of a manufacturing process choice, and then examine actual production numbers... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Research and Development; Design; Six Sigma; Measurement and Metrics; Production