Publications

March 2013
Teaching Note

Automating the Paris Subway (TN) (A) & (B)

By: Michel Anteby and Ayn Cavicchi

In 2001, the head of the Paris Subway reflected on how to transform Line 1 into a driverless line without triggering a social conflict. After the shock of the 2000 Notre Dame de Lorette subway accident, in which a train derailed and caused 25 injuries in a Paris subway... View Details

Keywords: Labor Relations; Unions; Organizational Behavior; Change; Information Technology; Rail Transportation; Labor Unions; Infrastructure; Change Management; Employment; Organizations; Labor and Management Relations; Transportation Industry; Rail Industry; Paris

February 2016 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Nuclear Energy: An Answer to Climate Change?

By: Michael W. Toffel, Glen W. S. Dowell and James Weber

Environmental activist groups have traditionally opposed nuclear energy. However, the growing environmental problems associated with global climate change require major changes to reduce the carbon intensity of electricity generation. Should environmental groups... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Power; Climate Change; Safety; Activism; Nonprofit; Environment; Environmental Protection; Social Movements; Energy; Energy Generation; Environmental Sustainability; Non-Governmental Organizations; Non-Renewable Energy; Energy Industry; United States

November 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

BrightStar Care: The Evolution of a Leadership Team

By: Boris Groysberg, Colleen Ammerman and John D. Vaughan

BrightStar Care was a rapidly growing franchise of home health care agencies. Founded by husband and wife team JD and Shelly Sun as a single agency near Chicago in 2002, BrightStar had opened nearly 300 franchises across the United States by 2016, generating over $300... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Services; Entrepreneurs; Board Of Directors; Boards Of Directors; Health Care Industry; Growth Strategy; Organizational Change; Brand Positioning; Entrepreneurial Organizations; Entrepreneurial Management; Franchising; Family-owned Business; Home Health Care; Managing Growth; Management Styles; Organizational Development; Talent Management; Women Executives; Women And Leadership; Business Startups; Family Business; Small Business; Talent and Talent Management; Governing and Advisory Boards; Health Care and Treatment; Human Capital; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Skills; Management Style; Management Succession; Management Systems; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Strategy

2014
Other Article

Communicating Change: When Identity Becomes a Source of Vulnerability for Institutional Challengers

By: Ryann Elizabeth Manning, Julie Battilana and Lakshmi Ramarajan

Social movements challenge institutions through two related communication processes: articulating collective action frames and constructing collective movement identity. We argue that frames not only express movement identity, but also provide openings through which... View Details

Keywords: Identity Threat; Institutional Change; Social Movements; Framing; Social Issues; Identity; Organizational Culture; Change

September 2022
Article

Experimentation and Start-up Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing

By: Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji

Recent scholarship has argued that experimentation should be the organizing principle for entrepreneurial strategy. Experimentation leads to organizational learning, which drives improvements in firm performance. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; A/B Testing; Data-driven Decision-making; Organizational Learning; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Learning; Performance; Decision Making

Read Now

Research Summary

Overview

Prof. Altman's research interests include innovation, strategy, organizational change, platform-based businesses and their related ecosystems. Her work focuses on the impact to incumbent organizations as platform-based highly networked business models become more... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Management; Multi-sided Platforms; Business Ecosystems; Organizational Change; Paradox; Organizational Identity

July 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Shell’s Balancing Act: Resource Allocation and the Green Transition (Abridged)

By: David Collis and Haisley Wert

In mid-2023, amid pressure from climate change activists, shareholder activists, and confronting enormous uncertainty about the future demand for and price of fossil fuels, new Shell CEO Wael Sawan (Harvard MBA 2003) announced a change in strategy for the U.K. oil... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Renewables; Forecasting Demand; Strategy; Energy; Climate Change; Resource Allocation; Corporate Strategy; Investment Activism; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Energy Industry

2012
Book

The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being

By: Scott Snook, Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana

The last 25 years have witnessed an explosion in the field of leadership education. This volume brings together leading international scholars across disciplines to chronicle the current state of leadership education and establish a solid foundation on which to grow... View Details

Keywords: Change; Business Education; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Management Style; Organizational Structure; Perspective; Diversification; Technology

16 May 2023
Blog Post

Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month at HBS (part 2)

May is Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. The Asian Affinity Business Association (AABA), in collaboration with students and organizations across campus, is proud to share View Details

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Understaffed and Overworked: What Now?

by the end of the year." Andrus's experiences and the strategy she employed dovetail nicely with the best advice we heard from a number of self-management experts. Here are their suggestions for overburdened managers. Get Out In... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Michelman

April 2007 (Revised November 2007)
Case

Bankinter: Growing Through Small and Medium Enterprises

Surveys the overall sequence of processes needed for the success of a strategy based on customer analytics. In particular, it charts the formulation and implementation of this strategy by a Spanish bank that decided to expand into the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Data and Data Sets; Knowledge Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Segmentation; Banking Industry; Spain

July 2012
Case

Barclays Capital and the Sale of Del Monte Foods

By: John Coates, Clayton Rose and David Lane

This case explores the reputational and legal issues that arise as Barclays Capital attempted to manage client conflicts by following established industry practice in the face of changing legal norms. In February 2011, Judge Travis Laster granted a preliminary... View Details

Keywords: Client Management; Fiduciary Duty; Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Investment Banking; Private Equity; Ethics; Finance; Reputation; Banking Industry; United States

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Managing Knowledge and Learning at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and David Kiron

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) faces a serious loss of knowledge--both because of the "faster, better, cheaper" mandate for Mars missions and from the retirement of key personnel. An extensive knowledge management system for NASA/JPL includes formal knowledge-capture... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Knowledge Dissemination; Leadership Development; Internet and the Web; Risk and Uncertainty; Organizational Culture; Retirement; Human Resources; Human Capital

05 Jul 2023
Cold Call Podcast

How Unilever Is Preparing for the Future of Work

Keywords: Re: William R. Kerr; Retail; Consumer Products

Open Content, Linus' Law, and Neutral Point of View

The diffusion of the Internet and digital technologies has enabled many organizations to use the open-content production model to produce and disseminate knowledge. While several prior studies have shown that the open-content production model can lead to... View Details

2017
Chapter

Platforms, Open/User Innovation, and Ecosystems: A Strategic Leadership Perspective

By: Elizabeth J. Altman and Michael Tushman

Platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies embrace and enable interactions with external entities. Firms pursuing these approaches conduct business and interact with environments differently than those pursuing traditional closed strategies. This chapter... View Details

Keywords: Platforms; Open/user Innovation; Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Strategic Leadership; Top Management Teams; CEO Role; Business Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Managerial Roles; Digital Platforms

Research Summary

Overview

In industries characterized by extreme dynamism, complexity, and uncertainty, formal structure often “falls behind” actual work processes. The nature of work in these environments evolves continuously while formal structure can only do so at specific times in discrete... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Identity; Identity Work; Strategy; Strategic Change; Collaboration; Cross-functional Integration; Cognition; Organizational Evolution; Organizational Alignment; Social Media

09 May 2023
Blog Post

Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month at HBS (part 1)

May is Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. The Asian Affinity Business Association (AABA), in collaboration with students and organizations across campus, is proud to share View Details

October 8, 2012
Column

Henkel's Culture Shift

By: Robert Simons

This case descriibes a CEO-led organizational transformation driven by stretch goals, performance measurement, and accountability. When Kasper Rorsted became CEO of Henkel, a Germany-based producer of personal care, laundry, and adhesives products, in 2008, he was... View Details

Keywords: Strategy Execution; Culture; New CEO; Change; Performance Measures; Accountability; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Corporate Accountability; Leading Change; Competitive Strategy; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Consumer Products Industry; Germany