Publications

Find at Harvard

June 2018
Case

Candor at Clever

By: Ethan Bernstein and Om Lala

Clever, a high-growth EdTech company based in San Francisco, had grown quickly in market share and headcount. As with many high-growth companies, however, early employees (many of whom had never managed people before) had been given the opportunity to manage teams, and... View Details

September 2020
Case

Uber at a Crossroads (2017)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman

This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its... View Details

10 Jul 2023
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2023

destiny of the universe. This book continues to inspire me in ways I can't even put into words. Shunyuan Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Marketing Unit at HBS. You Might Also Like: The Vinyl Renaissance: Take Those Old Records Off the Shelf The Hard Truth About... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

March 2016 (Revised January 2023)
Teaching Note

Carla Ann Harris at Morgan Stanley

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan

This case follows Carla Ann Harris, an African-American executive on Wall Street, from her childhood to the eve of her 20th year at Morgan Stanley. In addition to her professional identity as an investment banker, Harris is also an accomplished gospel singer, an... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Identity; Personal Development and Career; Success; Values and Beliefs; Social Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry

May–June 2025
Article

What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Michaela J. Kerrissey

Psychological safety—a shared belief among team members that it’s OK to speak up with candor—has become a popular concept. However, as its popularity has grown, so too have misconceptions about it. Such misunderstandings can lead to frustration among leaders and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Organizational Culture; Employees; Interpersonal Communication

October 2010 (Revised August 2016)
Case

On Weldon's Watch: Recalls at Johnson & Johnson from 2009 to 2010

By: Clayton S. Rose, Sandra J. Sucher, Rachel Gordon and Matthew Preble

In October of 2010, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was unable to extricate itself from a year long recall crisis that had subjected the firm to criticism from Congress and regulators, resulted in the resignation of one of the firm's most senior officers, and cost hundreds of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Values and Beliefs; Leadership; Crisis Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Quality; Pharmaceutical Industry

11 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Employers Favor Men

gender divide, so they used online experiments to probe two types of gender discrimination: Statistical discrimination, which is rooted in beliefs about average gender differences in abilities or skills. Taste-based discrimination, which... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

June 2011
Article

Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-granted Rules of Self-censorship at Work

By: J. R. Detert and Amy C. Edmondson

This article examines, in a series of four studies, the nature and impact of implicit voice theories-largely taken-for-granted beliefs about when and why speaking up at work is risky or inappropriate. In Study 1, qualitative data from 190 interviews conducted in a... View Details

Keywords: Spoken Communication; Interpersonal Communication; Employees; Managerial Roles; Organizational Culture; Risk and Uncertainty; Behavior

Find at Harvard

27 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Manly Men, Oil Platforms, and Breaking Stereotypes

stereotypes and does not address why, then these differences—in temperament, values, attitudes, and behaviors—take on a determinative quality. In a culture that readily promotes gender essentialism—the View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

2005
Working Paper

Silent Saboteurs: How Implicit Theories of Voice Inhibit the Upward Flow of Knowledge in Organizations

By: James R. Detert and Amy C. Edmondson

This article examines, in a series of three studies, how people working in organizational hierarchies wrestle with the challenge of upward voice. We first undertook in-depth exploratory research in a knowledge-intensive multinational corporation in which employee input... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Working Conditions; Knowledge Management; Attitudes; Organizational Culture

Read Now

15 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 15

Working Papers Decision Making Under Information Asymmetry: Experimental Evidence on Belief Refinements By: Schmidt, William, and Ryan W. Buell Abstract—We examine how people make decisions when the value they derive from those decisions... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

March 2022 (Revised March 2024)
Case

DaVita Responds to COVID

By: Susanna Gallani and David Lane

Early in August 2021, DaVita CEO Javier Rodriguez was assessing the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on his firm, which provided life-sustaining kidney dialysis to roughly 240,000 people. Effective infection control practices and information sharing had ensured... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Change Management; Communication; Talent and Talent Management; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Accountability; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Human Resources; Employee Relationship Management; Retention; Wages; Working Conditions; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; United States

12 Sep 2023
Book

Successful, But Still Feel Empty? A Happiness Scholar and Oprah Have Advice for You

career” allows you to change paths every now and then while applying the skills you have to a next step. Big idea 2: Beware work addiction Many successful people lean in to extra time at the office to mask emotional pain, the authors write, a problem that our View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

12 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 12, 2019

events, messenger dislike is correlated with the belief that the messenger had malevolent motives (Studies 5A, 5B, & 5C). Studies 6A & 6B go further, manipulating messenger motives independently from news valence to suggest its... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

October 1999
Case

Royal Dutch/Shell in Transition (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine

After the Brent Spar episode and the 1995 events in Nigeria, Shell undertakes an intensive review of its values and business principles. At the same time, it conducts the largest multi-stakeholder consultation in its history in an effort to better understand society's... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Transformation; Environmental Accounting; Energy Industry

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

politics is downstream from culture. And culture is downstream from psychiatry and theology and all kinds of things. But what what do you think is going on in in America right now to cause this this level of dissatisfaction or... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

30 Apr 2024
Book

When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners

ethically lax cultures are another feature of the more recent cases as well as the earlier ones. Perhaps the most striking recent example is Odebrecht, the Brazilian conglomerate caught up in Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato in Portuguese),... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Article

Unconventional Insights for Managing Stakeholder Trust

By: Michael Pirson and Deepak Malhotra

Initiatives to build and maintain trust with various stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers and investors, are at the top of the executive agenda at many organizations. But most companies don't really understand how to manage stakeholder trust... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizational Culture; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Perspective; Trust; Cooperation