Publications

September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Supplement

Hitachi Rail Limited (B)

By: David J. Collis, Akiko Kanno and Nobuo Sato

This supplement describes the strategy and organisation changes made by British executive, Alistair Dormer, after he is made head of Hitachi Rail's global business. The company acquires an Italian company, continues to win contracts in the UK, but struggles to bring... View Details

Keywords: Organization Structure; Leader Selection; Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Strategy; Global Strategy; Organizational Structure; Leadership; Mergers and Acquisitions; Integration; Values and Beliefs; Rail Industry; Japan

30 Apr 2024
Blog Post

IFC India: Urban Adaptation in a Changing World

threats posed by climate change and aims to mitigate future emissions, India must forge a new, sustainable development pathway. This “twin challenge” of developing while decarbonizing was the main topic of our work in India. Throughout... View Details

2003
Working Paper

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Managerial Roles; Jobs and Positions; United States

November 2006
Article

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Change; Business Ventures; Compensation and Benefits; Rank and Position; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Jobs and Positions; United States

Find at Harvard

March 2024 (Revised May 2025)
Case

Governing OpenAI (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan and Will Hurwitz

In late November 2023, OpenAI’s new board of directors took stock of the situation. The company, which sought to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computer systems with capabilities exceeding human abilities—was looking to regain its footing after a chaotic... View Details

September 2011 (Revised October 2014)
Case

Ganesh Natarajan: Leading Innovation and Organizational Change at Zensar (A)

By: Michael Tushman and David Kiron

In 2005, Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar, a Pune, India-based software company, and his senior management team are considering consolidating staff and resources at the firms. Natarajan proposes an additional, possible controversial business unit to the proposed new... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Product Launch; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Information Technology Industry

January 2014 (Revised June 2015)
Teaching Note

Amgen Inc: Pursuing Innovation and Imitation? (A), (B)

By: Ian Mackenzie

Keywords: Strategic Change; Biosimilars; Medical Biotechnology; Emerging Markets; Industry Structure; Uncertainty; Strategy Development; Implementation; Corporate Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States

Web

Systems Change Forum | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

accepted practice in systems change. Existing funding structures needed better alignment with the process-oriented realities of systems work. Furthermore, “attribution” was complicated by the difficulties of measuring how and whether... View Details

18 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

5 Principles for Scaling Change from IBM’s High School Innovation

college system, and then you had the employer connection, with IBM. How did you structure the program and make it appeal to these different parties? Litow: To bring about change, you have to have a conscious View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

Web

Social Entrepreneurship and Systems Change (SESC) - Course Catalog

students to become effective agents of change in their communities and beyond. The faculty are both experienced social entrepreneurs and systems change agents, who bring a wealth of real-world experience and... View Details

March 2016
Case

N12 Technologies: Building an Organization and Building a Business

By: David A. Garvin and Aldo Sesia

N12 Technologies was a startup founded in 2010 that employed nanotechnology to manufacture a patented material to improve the performance of carbon fiber composites, which were used in a wide variety of products, ranging from bicycles to automobiles to aircraft parts.... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Organizational Structure; Nanotechnology; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Management Systems; Commercialization; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Bicycle Industry; Transportation Industry; United States

01 May 1978
Conference Presentation

The Impact of Organizational Structure: Models and Methods for Change

By: R. M. Kanter

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Change

Research Summary

Overview

In industries characterized by extreme dynamism, complexity, and uncertainty, formal structure often “falls behind” actual work processes. The nature of work in these environments evolves continuously while formal structure can only do so at specific times in discrete... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Identity; Identity Work; Strategy; Strategic Change; Collaboration; Cross-functional Integration; Cognition; Organizational Evolution; Organizational Alignment; Social Media

26 Nov 2018
News

New York Alumni Explore Risks and Opportunities in Climate Change

Clubs News Clubs News In partnership with the HBS Business and Environment Initiative (BEI), the HBS Club of New York tackled the issue of climate change from a business perspective in a spirited panel discussion moderated by clean energy... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley; clubs; alumni clubs

January 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Transformation at ING (A): Agile

By: William R. Kerr, Federica Gabrieli and Emer Moloney

In December 2017, Vincent van den Boogert, CEO of ING in the Netherlands, was reflecting upon the company’s “agile” transformation, a reorganization of work that had been critical to respond to and exceed rapidly changing customer expectations. Launched in 2015 at the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change; Organizational Management; Workforce; Agile; Change Management; Leadership; Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Leading Change; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Banking Industry

26 Aug 2020
News

What the Climate Change Movement Can Learn from the Pandemic

current environment. The way that we're seeing it as an opportunity to learn from how to help people make effective changes that align with this new time and how they want to live their lives. For instance, we just did a piece last week... View Details

Other Article

Introduction

By: Stefano Brusoni, Joachim Henkel, Michael G Jacobides, Samina Karim, Alan MacCormack, Phanish Puranam and Melissa Schilling

In 2000, Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark published Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, a book that introduced new ways of understanding and explaining the architecture of complex systems. This Special Issue of Industrial and Corporate Change celebrates... View Details

Keywords: Complex Systems; Industry Structure; Systems Design; Complexity; Organizational Design; Competitive Strategy; Innovation and Management