Publications

09 May 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 9

organization during “bad times”? Using two large micro datasets on firm decentralization from U.S. administrative data and 10 OECD countries, we find that firms that delegated more power from the Central Headquarters to local plant... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2000 (Revised April 2004)
Case

TixToGo: Financing a Silicon Valley Start-up

Describes TixToGo, a Silicon Valley start-up company that offers online solutions to individuals and organizations that want to offer activities and/or collect registration fees for events over the Internet. A serial entrepreneur and his partner started the company in... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Technology; Financing and Loans; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; San Francisco

04 Jan 2017
What Do You Think?

How Much Bureaucracy is a Good Thing in Government and Business?

always seems to be accompanied by several similar themes. One theme is change. For some reason, change has an appeal to voters, pretty much regardless of the performance of the incumbent, at least at the level of the presidency. Another common theme is the promise to... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett

03 Jan 2007
First Look

First Look: January 3, 2007

Group plc: May 2006 Harvard Business School Case 807-006 Since 2004, Philip Yea, the first outsider ever to lead 3i Group, one of Europe's largest publicly listed private equity firms, has been trying to help the far-flung organization... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2014 (Revised March 2014)
Case

SAP 2014: Reaching for the Cloud

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Noah Fisher

In May 2014, Bill McDermott will become the sole CEO of SAP AG, the world leader in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) field. The case occurs in January 2014 at SAP's investors meeting, at a time when the company's stock is near record high. A 2010 strategy... View Details

Keywords: Cloud Computing; Platform; Strategy And Execution; Strategy And Leadership; Enterprise Resource Planning; Software; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Applications and Software; Information Technology Industry; Germany

01 Jun 2024
News

Again and Again

Edited by Jen McFarland Flint; Illustrations by Jason Holley Whenever he’s presenting to a large audience, Professor Michael Norton likes to pose this question to the crowd: After you get up in the morning, do you brush your teeth first and then shower, or vice versa?... View Details

Keywords: Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

Web

A New Vision – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

examining the everyday realities of organizational life, Fritz Roethlisberger and his colleagues found that the “person” and the “organization” could not be compartmentalized. Beneath the formalities of the organization chart was not... View Details

January 2025
Article

Communication Within Firms: Evidence from CEO Turnovers

By: Stephen Michael Impink, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

This paper uses novel, firm-level communication measures derived from communications metadata several months before and after a CEO transition for 102 firms to study whether and how this organizational event is reflected in employees’ communication flows. We find that... View Details

Keywords: Information; Communication; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Alignment

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25 Aug 2018
News

Growth of online retail is changing inflation

28 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

Improving Accountability at the World Bank

supporters note a number of reforms over the past two decades, including a current review of the Bank's information disclosure policy, and a series of "safeguards" on sensitive issues such as environmental impacts and effects on... View Details

Keywords: by Alnoor Ebrahim

June 2011 (Revised October 2012)
Case

IBM China Development Lab Shanghai: Capability by Design

By: Willy Shih, Kamen Bliznashki and Fan Zhao

When IBM shifted from a traditional territory-based multinational organization to what it called a globally integrated enterprise, it established its headquarters for "Growth Markets" in Shanghai and "Established Markets" in New York. This positioned its China... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Global Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Research and Development; Emerging Markets; Product Development; Information Technology Industry; China

October 2010
Article

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture-in the sense of shared beliefs and values in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Organizational Culture; Economics; Information Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Values and Beliefs; Mergers and Acquisitions; Framework; Satisfaction; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Communication

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Web

Finance - Faculty & Research

and executive education courses; and c) to mentor future academics through the Business Economics doctoral program. Our applied focus and access to business organizations are major advantages which are reinforced by our students and our... View Details

Article

Corporate Culture and Analyst Catering

By: Joseph Pacelli

This study examines the relation between financial institutions’ corporate culture and the quality of analysts’ research services. Using data collected from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, I measure the weakness of financial institutions’ corporate culture... View Details

Keywords: Analysts; Corporate Culture; Global Settlement; Financial Institutions; Organizational Culture; Conflict of Interests; Performance; Quality

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26 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

High-Stakes Decision Making: The Lessons of Mount Everest

the Everest case provides a framework for understanding, diagnosing, and preventing serious failures in many types of organizations. However, it also has important implications for how leaders can shape and direct the processes through which their View Details

Keywords: by Michael A. Roberto

June 2014 (Revised January 2017)
Supplement

YAAS's Service Center (C)

By: Brian Hall and Sara del Nido

This case is about a compensation change at an automotive service company in the Middle East. The case allows investigation and analysis of many issues related to compensation design and human resource management, and even change management. The focus of the case is... View Details

Keywords: Compensation; Emotions; Values; Human Resources; Labor; Negotiation; Organizations; Social Psychology; Value Creation; Motivation and Incentives; Auto Industry; Service Industry; Kuwait; Middle East

01 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making

category," Sadun says. "The reality is that IT is a huge, heterogeneous set of technologies." Similarly, when examining issues such as organization and productivity, industry and academic studies historically tend to treat... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

November 2005
Case

Marilyn Carlson Nelson and the Carlson Companies Renaissance

By: William W. George and Andrew N. McLean

In 2005, Marilyn Carlson Nelson, CEO and chairman of the Carlson Companies, must decide whether to outsource jobs at the risk of destroying the culture centered on the values of integrity, trustworthiness, and caring that she had painstakingly created since becoming... View Details

Keywords: History; Leadership Development; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Business or Company Management; Organizational Culture; Personal Development and Career; Family Ownership; Leadership Style; Management Teams

February 2016 (Revised September 2020)
Case

T-Mobile in 2013: The Un-Carrier

By: John Beshears, Francesca Gino, Jonathan Lee and Sean (Yixiang) Wang

By 2013, the U.S. wireless industry was in the midst of a costly transition. As consumers began to embrace more sophisticated mobile devices, the industry's four main players spent heavily to improve their infrastructures for providing reliable high-speed data... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Product Positioning; Competition; Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; United States