Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,764)
- Faculty Publications (497)
- April 2021 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
The Turnaround at Ford Motor Company
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Olivia Jung
This case describes the corporate turnaround of the Ford Motor Company under the charismatic leadership of Alan Mulally. Ford was in deep trouble in the early 2000s as its prices and debt ratings plummeted and employee morale suffered. In 2006, the company anticipated... View Details
- Article
Dynamic Silos: Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic
By: Jonathan Larson, Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Neha Parikh Shah, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Fereshteh Amini, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Jeffrey Weston, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe
Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by Covid-19, work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. We analyze aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within over 4000 organizations worldwide to examine changes in... View Details
- April 2021
- Case
Zeynep Ton: The Good Jobs Strategy
By: Francesca Gino and Frances X. Frei
The link to this multimedia case should be provided to students in advance as preparation for classroom case discussion.
In Zeynop Ton’s 2014 book The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost... View Details
In Zeynop Ton’s 2014 book The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal
In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and... View Details
Keywords: SaaS; Customer Journey; Business Model; Business Organization; Change Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; United States
- February 2021
- Case
A Cultural Transformation at Southeastern Grocers
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Jonah S. Goldberg and Joseph A. Paul
When Anthony Hucker, the CEO of Southeastern Grocers (SEG), took over in that role in July 2017, the company was in dire financial and operational condition and was headed towards bankruptcy. SEG, the fifth largest grocery chain in the U.S. in early 2021, operated... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
iOpenEye: Theater and #MeToo in Nigeria
By: Caroline Elkins, Tarun Khanna and Joyce J. Kim
In 2014, Ifeoma Fafunwa, an award-winning playwright and director, founded iOpenEye, a commercial production company dedicated to driving social change through performance art. iOpenEye’s flagship theatrical production was called “Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True,”... View Details
- 1 Jan 2021
- Interview
Encore Teams That Succeed with Amy Edmondson
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Wanda Wallace
Teams in which people are not afraid to speak up, to challenge, to risk saying a wild idea are teams with the best performance. Google has found that psychological safety is a key component of their best teams. Yet, people are afraid of causing trouble, looking... View Details
- January 2021
- Article
Turbulence, Firm Decentralization and Growth in Bad Times
By: Philippe Aghion, Nicholas Bloom, Brian Lucking, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
What is the optimal form of firm organization during “bad times”? We present a model of delegation within the firm to show that the effect is ambiguous. The greater turbulence following macro shocks may benefit decentralized firms because the value of local information... View Details
- Article
Making a Difference: Developing Actionable Knowledge for Practice and Theory
By: Michael Beer
There is a widely acknowledged gap between academic research and practice. While the field of organizational studies and development has had an impact on management practice in some organizations, it has had only a modest impact on widely accepted management practice... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Worry at Work: How Organizational Culture Promotes Anxiety
By: Jeremy A. Yip, Emma E. Levine, Alison Wood Brooks and Maurice E. Schweitzer
Organizational culture profoundly influences how employees think and behave. Established research suggests that the content, intensity, consensus, and fit of cultural norms act as a social control system for attitudes and behavior. We adopt the norms model of... View Details
Keywords: Anxiety; Norms; Stress; Culture; Tightness-looseness; Curvilinear; Organizational Culture; Emotions; Performance
- October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Investing at Pivotal Ventures
By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Emily R. McComb and Eren Kuzucu
Launched in 2015 by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company. The company aims to support and promote transformational ideas, people and organizations, and advance social progress for women... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Pete Carroll: Building a Winning Organization through Purpose, Caring, and Inclusion
By: Ranjay Gulati, Matthew Breitfelder and Monte Burke
Competing at the highest levels of the National Football League (NFL) requires tremendous skill, dedication and persistence. The most successful coaches in the NFL know how to draw out a higher level of performance and consistency from their players. This is typically... View Details
- September 2020 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Student Success at Georgia State University (A)
By: Michael W. Toffel, Robin Mendelson and Julia Kelley
Georgia State University had developed a reputation for driving student success by nearly doubling its graduation rate for students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. It did so while growing its student body and the proportion of Black/African... View Details
Keywords: Education; Higher Education; Learning; Curriculum and Courses; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Income; Race; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Operations; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Outcome or Result; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation; Service Operations; Performance Improvement; Planning; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Education Industry; Atlanta
- September 2020 (Revised September 2021)
- Supplement
Student Success at Georgia State University (B)
By: Michael W. Toffel, Robin Mendelson and Julia Kelley
This is a supplement to the Student Success at Georgia State University (A) case. The (B) case includes the results of a randomized control trial that Georgia State conducted to test education technology start-up AdmitHub’s chatbot solution as a strategy for improving... View Details
Keywords: Education; Higher Education; Learning; Curriculum and Courses; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Income; Race; Values and Beliefs; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Operations; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Outcome or Result; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; Planning; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Education Industry; Atlanta
- 2020
- Working Paper
Performance Hacking: The Contagious Business Practice that Corrodes Corporate Culture, Undermines Core Values, and Damages Great Companies
By: Robert D. Austin and Richard L. Nolan
August 7, 1955 is an important date in commercial aviation history. You could say it began the jet airliner age, though other dates might also qualify. Jet engines had proven successful in military aircraft. But no one knew then whether members of the general public... View Details
- July 2020
- Case
Karen Bruck: Growing Managers at MercadoLibre
By: Joshua D. Margolis, Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal
Karen Bruck, Corporate Sales Director at MercadoLibre, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, needs to make a decision about one of her managers, who, while analytically savvy, has an approach that does not fit in with the company's culture. View Details
- July 2020
- Case
Kathy Fish at Procter & Gamble: Navigating Industry Disruption by Disrupting from Within
When Kathy Fish, Procter & Gamble’s Chief Research, Development & Innovation Officer, and a 40-year company veteran, stepped into her role in 2014, she was concerned that the world’s leading consumer packaged goods company had lost its capability to produce a steady... View Details
Keywords: Female Protagonist; Organizational Change; Organizational Behavior; Culture Change; Digital; Innovation; Lean Startup; Experimentation; Metrics; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG); Leadership; Leading Change; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Disruption; Innovation and Invention; Digital Transformation
- July 2020
- Case
Driving Transformation at the Majid Al Futtaim Group
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Esel Çekin
The case opens with Alain Bejjani, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) Holding, anticipating on the Group’s next phase in the multi-year transformation journey and reflecting on the initiatives he implemented to create the Group’s growth-oriented culture. Founded in 1995,... View Details
- June 2020
- Case
Recovering Trust After Corporate Misconduct at Wells Fargo
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Jonah S. Goldberg
The case describes widespread misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank in the period leading up to 2017 and the company’s subsequent attempts to improve internal controls, company culture, and corporate governance. The case examines the potential causes of large scale... View Details
- June 2, 2020
- Article
How to 'Re-engineer' Your Business for Safety
By: Hubert Joly
Process reengineering was a massive trend in the 1990s. By focusing on improving either cost, quality, or service, a company could gain benefits in all three categories. Today, the principles that underpin process reengineering can be applied anew, with safety as a... View Details