Publications

Educators

2012
Chapter

When Identities, Interests, and Information Collide: How Subgroups Create Hidden Profiles in Teams

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer, Lisa Kwan and Lisa B. Kwan

Purpose—We review how team members' identities and interests affect team functioning, paying special attention to subgroup dynamics triggered by fault lines and coalitions. This review sets the stage for describing novel pathways through which identities and... View Details

Keywords: Information; Conflict of Interests; Interests; Groups and Teams; Identity; Performance

28 Jun 2021
Blog Post

7 Things HBS Taught Me the Last 2 Years

hours. This is only possible because the community –including professors, alumni, and classmates – is mission-driven, selfless, and deeply believes in paying it forward. #5 Friendships make HBS one of a... View Details

22 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

Pulling Campbell’s Out of the Soup

thinking. But people aren't mind readers," Conant told a roomful of CEOs during the second Higher-Ambition CEO Leadership Conference, held at Harvard Business School in January. "I had to go out on a limb and talk about my vision for going View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

December 2014
Article

No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Public Services Delivery

By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and B. Kelsey Jack

A substantial body of research investigates the effect of pay for performance in firms, yet less is known about the effect of non-financial rewards, especially in organizations that hire individuals to perform tasks with positive social spillovers. We conduct a field... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Non-monetary Rewards; Intrinsic Motivation; Motivation and Incentives; Employees; Service Industry; Health Industry

Read Now

January 2009
Supplement

KPMG (B): Risk and Reform

By: Robert G. Eccles and Eliot Sherman

Under the leadership of Tim Flynn, Chairman and CEO of KPMG, the firm made a number of changes in compensation, governance, and culture in order to address the underlying reasons for actions that occurred prior to him becoming CEO that led to the accounting giant... View Details

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Ethics; Corporate Governance; Governance Compliance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation

2006
Working Paper

Too Motivated?

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

I show that an agent's motivation to do well (objectively) may be unambiguously bad in a world with differing priors, i.e., when people openly disagree on the optimal course of action. The reason is that an agent who is strongly motivated is more likely to follow... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Employees; Wages; Measurement and Metrics; Outcome or Result; Performance; Agency Theory; Motivation and Incentives

SSRN

01 Jul 2020
Blog Post

How SVMP Helped Me Take My Next Steps (2+2) and Find Myself

I am becoming. The power of that memoir title never really hit me until I sat to write this blog post. I don’t mean to quote Michelle Obama in making that statement (I mean there are definitely worse people to quote), but it’s a powerful statement and View Details

08 Nov 2021
Blog Post

4 Ways the MS/MBA is Preparing Me for a Career in Health Care and the Life Sciences

business development at Genentech. An HBS alumna helped me narrow down what I wanted to do and made sure I understood how to best prepare myself for the recruiting process. I am now following the same process as I think through my short- and mid-term path for full-time... View Details

02 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 2

disclosures, performance evaluations, self-regulation, participation, and adaptive learning. Nonprofit leaders must adapt any such mechanisms to suit their organization-be it a membership-based organization, a service-delivery nonprofit,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Web

Help - Alumni

email online at https://outlook.hbs.edu , receive their email in their own email clients, or continue to forward their HBS email to their personal account. Due to current email provider protocols, forwarding... View Details

William A. Sahlman

William Sahlman is a Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Mr. Sahlman received an A.B. degree in Economics from Princeton University (1972), an M.B.A. from Harvard University (1975), and a Ph.D. in Business... View Details

2013
Working Paper

International Health Economics

By: Mark Egan and Tomas J. Philipson

Perhaps because health care is a local service sector, health economists have paid little attention to international linkages between domestic health care economies. However, the growth in domestic health care sectors is often attributed to medical innovations whose... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Global Range; Economics

Read Now

July 2013 (Revised October 2013)
Supplement

United Rentals (B)

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Kathleen Durante

In April 2012, Jenne Britell, the Chairman of the board of directors of United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE: URI) was preparing her notes for an upcoming stockholders' meeting. It was a meeting unlike most other meetings she had chaired. Stockholders were about to vote on a... View Details

Keywords: Boards Of Directors; Board Committees; Chairman; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Construction Industry; North America

08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

2017
Chapter

Institutional Theory and the Natural Environment: Building Research Through Tensions and Paradox

By: P. Devereaux Jennings and Andrew J. Hoffman

The focus of institutional theory is directed towards an understanding of situations where context is strong and binding, yet subtly experienced; where agency is often diffuse, embodied in an arrangement or system of actors rather than in an individual; and where... View Details

Keywords: Institutional Theory; Natural Environment; Research