Publications

14 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

The Network Effect: Why Companies Should Care About Employees’ LinkedIn Connections

In today’s high-tech economy, it’s not just quant skills and R&D know-how that confer competitive advantage. Relationships still matter—maybe more than ever, as social media turbocharges old-fashioned networking. A new study mapped... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

June 2016
Article

Corporate Governance and Executive Compensation for Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Bryan Hong, Zhichuan (Frank) Li and Dylan B. Minor

We link the corporate governance literature in financial economics to the agency cost perspective of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to derive theoretical predictions about the relationship between corporate governance and the existence of executive compensation... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Incentives For CSR; Non-financial Performance Measures; Agency Costs; Board Independence; Institutional Holdings; Managerial Power; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Executive Compensation; Corporate Governance

January 2017 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Turkey and Russia: Dangerous Liaisons

By: Rawi Abdelal, Esel Çekin, Eren Kuzucu and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in November 2015, after the Turkish military’s shooting down of a Russian military airplane over the Turkish-Syrian border. The incident threatened to undermine the countries’ political and economic ties, and starting from late 2015, the dialogue between... View Details

Keywords: Business ＆ Government Relations; Politics; Natural Gas; Natural Resources; Nuclear Power; Business and Government Relations; Energy Policy; Infrastructure; Energy; Strategy; International Relations; Russia; Turkey

28 Nov 2023
Book

Economic Growth Draws Companies to Asia. Can They Handle Its Authoritarian Regimes?

safety. In fact, the relationship between business entities and the state in autocracies can involve a delicate dance. While many authoritarian regimes desire capitalists for the growth and legitimacy they can generate, a tension of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2012
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Richard Fahey and Robert Saudek (A): Lighting Liberia

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Anne Arlinghaus

After successful careers as lawyers Richard Fahey and Robert Saudek set out to tackle a large-scale infrastructure challenge in a complex environment by increasing Liberian citizens’ access to lighting solutions. They developed the Liberian Energy Network, which aimed... View Details

2016
Teaching Note

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Richard Fahey and Robert Saudek—Lighting Liberia

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Tessa Natanay Hamilton and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Teaching Note for Case 313-032. After successful careers as lawyers and Fellows in Harvard's Advanced Leadership Initiative, Richard Fahey and Robert Saudek set out to tackle a large-scale infrastructure challenge in a complex environment by ultimately using advanced... View Details

May 2017 (Revised September 2018)
Supplement

Hilti Fleet Management (B): Towards a New Business Model

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Oliver Gassmann and Roman Sauer

The (B) case tackles the implementation and scaling process of fleet management over the years. Finally, the case explores current challenges facing the BMI. View Details

Article

Leadership Is Associated with Lower Levels of Stress

By: Gary D. Sherman, J. J. Lee, A.J.C. Cuddy, Jonathan Renshon, Christopher Oveis, James J. Gross and Jennifer S. Lerner

As leaders ascend to more powerful positions in their groups, they face ever-increasing demands. This has given rise to the common perception that leaders have higher stress levels than non-leaders. But if leaders also experience a heightened sense of control—a... View Details

Keywords: Stress; Cortisol; Control; Leadership; Emotions; Power and Influence

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Research Summary

I give therefore I have: Philanthropy and Prosperity

We suggest and document a surprising means by which people can feel wealthier: giving their money away. We suggest that just as acts of conspicuous generosity signal wealth and power to others, they trigger feelings of subjective wealth and power in the giver--despite... View Details

October 2015 (Revised January 2017)
Case

UPower Technologies Inc.

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Liz Kind

The UPower founders, Jake DeWitte and Caroline Cochran, were recent graduates from MIT's Nuclear Science and Engineering Department. They chose to attend Palo Alto–based Y Combinator's accelerator program to focus on building a "mini" nuclear reactor that would produce... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Power; Energy Markets; New Nuclear; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Marketing; Business ＆ Government Relations; Off-grid; Energy; Renewable Energy; Energy Generation; Energy Sources; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Business and Government Relations; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; United States

February 1994 (Revised May 1994)
Background Note

Exercising Influence

By: Linda A. Hill

Provides a framework for understanding the exercise of interpersonal influence in organizations. Describes some of the "myths and realities" of management that new managers discover--specifically, that managers are dependent on a complex network of relationships to get... View Details

Keywords: Power and Influence

18 May 2020
Working Paper Summaries

No Line Left Behind: Assortative Matching Inside the Firm

Keywords: by Achyuta Adhvaryu, Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo; Fashion

April 1993 (Revised October 1996)
Case

ABB Deutschland (C)

By: Hugo Uyterhoeven

Addresses the results and the lessons from the German restructuring effort by focusing in detail on the relationship with the works council and the actions taken for power plants and power transformers, and the sales organization. Closes with a "second wave" of cost... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Trade; Cost Management; Leadership Style; Management Skills; Time Management; Relationships; Salesforce Management

Research Summary

Current working papers

Organizational restructuring: the influence of formal and informal structure on tie formation. This paper considers how changes in formal structure and a key element of informal structure – the embeddedness of employee... View Details

06 Jun 2011
Research & Ideas

Why Leaders Lose Their Way

forced to resign for trading in Lubrizol stock prior to recommending that Berkshire Hathaway purchase the company. Examples abound of other recent failures: Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd resigned for submitting false expense reports concerning his View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

31 Aug 2021
Book

Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

“Having once been wary of power is no guarantee that you will be immune to abusing it. [It] is another reminder that we are all susceptible to its intoxicating effects. The challenge is finding a balanced View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

31 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

How Ben Franklin’s ‘Way to Wealth’ Introduced American Capitalism to the World

policies” Intrigued by the lasting power of Franklin’s treatise on industry and frugality and its influence on capitalism as we know it today, Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Sophus Reinert delves into the history of the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

07 Jul 2021
Book

Good News for Disgraced Companies: You Can Regain Trust

new book The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It, Sucher and her coauthor, HBS research associate Shalene Gupta, highlight those social media examples along with a global list of companies that have either... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

Article

Creating Value Together

By: Maxim Sytch and Ranjay Gulati

Conventional wisdom suggests that companies should avoid growing dependent on their business partners. If one company, the thinking goes, grows too dependent on a counterpart by getting the entire input for a particular activity from it and is not able to switch... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Performance Improvement; Partners and Partnerships; Power and Influence; Value Creation