Boundary Systems - Publications - Faculty & Research

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

explicitly and with intent. The implication for leaders: overcommunicate, and over-reinforce boundaries and expectations. While organizational policies are the infrastructure of meeting employees’ four drives, managers implement those... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

04 Nov 2009
What Do You Think?

What is the Role of Government Vis-à-Vis Capitalism?

doing so, they left us with interesting questions. Fidel Arcenas described one such challenge: "A bureaucratic apparatus that's way off the pace of the market forces is useless." Do you agree? Jacoline Loewen commented, "Government is about setting the... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

Web

Strategy Execution Online Course | HBS Online

Strategic Boundaries Adapting to Change: Interactive Control Systems Reviewing the Levers of Control Implementing the Levers of Control, Part I Implementing the Levers of Control, Part II Featured Exercises... View Details

29 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

A Manager’s Moral Obligation to Preserve Capitalism

through the writings of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek among other foundational thinkers. "Many economists think of it as a positivist system that does not impose morality upon society, but this is not the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

21 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Common Strategy Mistakes

to understanding everything from the free enterprise system to the individual motivations of managers. Why are some companies more profitable than others? In this excerpt from an interview between Porter and Magretta, Porter discusses the... View Details

Keywords: by Joan Magretta

13 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

The Power of Personal Connections: How Shared Experiences Boost Performance

formed a relationship. The authors chose to focus on patient ratings of specialists instead of specific medical outcomes because they assess an “important dimension of quality” that transcends the clinical boundaries of medical... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

29 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 29

superior economic performance. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-110.pdf Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries Authors:Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, and Andrew F. Newman Abstract We study how trade policy... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

19 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Birth of the American Salesman

provided political and religious groups with a way to compete against their rivals for followers. Moreover, with more fluid class boundaries than in European countries, the skills of salesmanship, especially beginning in the late... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard

16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

an entire unit of boundary spanners whose primary role was to interface with their clients and make their experience with JLL seamless. As JLL expanded its client base, the company realized the limitations of trying to connect its... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

02 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Not All M&As Are Alike—and That Matters

competitors in geographically fragmented industries; to extend into new products or markets; as a substitute for R&D; and to exploit eroding industry boundaries by inventing an industry. Despite the massive number of books and... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Bower

14 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: Dec. 14

research on firm entry into new domains by examining heterogeneity in firms' framing and feature-level entry choices. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-007.pdf Modularity for Value Appropriation—How to Draw the View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Top Scholars Say About Leadership

Moss Kanter discussed in a preface to a collection of Follett's works, Follett was way ahead of her time. She was admittedly a utopian and romantic, but she had a profound appreciation for human relations and was one of the earliest View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

08 Feb 2023
Op-Ed

Building an Inclusive Workplace? Prepare to Shield It from Economic Fears

underrepresented communities. As the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on, executives worked to continue these efforts, despite supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and erratic consumer spending. Beyond the moral imperatives of confronting View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and Nicole Gilmore

23 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 23, 2018

formulate strategy in large, evolving technical systems. I argue that the points of value creation and value capture in a technical system are the system’s bottlenecks. Bottlenecks arise first as important technical problems to be solved.... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

20 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 20

fundamental challenges of science-based businesses: 1) managing and rewarding long-term risk, 2) integrating across technical disciplines, and 3) learning. Whereas these challenges were once managed inside the boundaries of corporate... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

June 2012
Article

The Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

Using data from embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the second largest mobile phone factory in the world, located in China, I theorize and test the implications of transparent organizational design on workers' productivity and organizational... View Details

25 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why IT Does Matter

effectiveness has come the ability to do things truly differently. American Hospital Supply's distribution software and American Airlines' SABRE reservation system are examples of victories in past technologies. The firms were the first... View Details

Keywords: by F. Warren McFarlan & Richard L. Nolan

11 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Budgeting Kills Your Company

decoupling of the company's resource allocation process from the highest-value strategic opportunities. The answer, some experts say, is to dispense with budgets entirely. The answer, some experts say, is to dispense with budgets entirely—and replace them with a View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gary

12 Jan 2023
News

‘Debiasing’ Debt with Data

Seke Ballard (MBA 2010) says he owes the inspiration for BetaBank, his small business-focused digital-banking venture, to his father—and not just as a person, but also as an archetype for every minority entrepreneur who has struggled to find capital in a banking View Details

Keywords: Ralph Ranalli

12 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 12

components and subsystems. Yet the well codified interfaces at many module boundaries also opened the system up to outside providers of components, mainly software. This served research scientists who were... View Details