Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(382)
- Faculty Publications (133)
- May – June 2011
- Article
Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: How High Status Individuals Decrease Group Effectiveness
By: Boris Groysberg, Jeffrey T. Polzer and Hillary Anger Elfenbein
Can groups become effective simply by assembling high status individual performers? Though an affirmative answer may seem straightforward on the surface, this answer becomes more complicated when group members benefit from collaborating on interdependent tasks.... View Details
- March 2011
- Article
The New Path to the C-Suite
By: Boris Groysberg, L. Kevin Kelly and Bryan MacDonald
Job requirements at the top of corporations have changed. Companies have come to expect much more from their C-level executives, who need new and different skills to deal with today's business realities. Exactly what abilities do firms want in their leaders—now and in... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
What Drives Sell-Side Analyst Compensation at High-Status Investment Banks?
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and David A. Maber
We use proprietary data from a major investment bank to investigate factors associated with analysts' annual compensation. We find compensation to be positively related to "All-Star" recognition, investment-banking contributions, the size of analysts' portfolios, and... View Details
- November 2010
- Article
Which of These People Is Your Future CEO?
By: Boris Groysberg, Andrew Hill and Toby Johnson
Americans have long believed that U.S. military officers-trained for high-stakes positions, resilience, and mental agility-make excellent CEOs. That belief is sound, but the authors' analysis of the performance of 45 companies led by CEOs with military experience... View Details
- October 2010 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Building a Developmental Culture: The Birth of Deloitte University
By: Boris Groysberg, Maureen Gibbons and Joshua Bronstein
It is October 2009 and Barry Salzberg, CEO of Deloitte LLP, has just returned from the groundbreaking of Deloitte University. When completed, Deloitte University would be a world class learning and development center owned by, and for the exclusive use by the employees... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
Star Power: Colleague Quality and Turnover
By: Boris Groysberg and Linda Eling-Lee
In this article, we argue that the existence of greater organizational resources, in the form of higher quality colleagues, acts as a retention mechanism. We test our hypotheses using a panel data set of securities analysts in 24 securities firms over a 9-year period.... View Details
- March 2010 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Russia: Revolution and Reform
By: Rawi E. Abdelal and Sogomon Tarontsi
The collapse of central authority in the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a period of revolutionary transformations for the states that emerged in its wake. The leaders of Russia, the USSR's successor, since then have struggled to reestablish central authority while... View Details
- May 2009
- Article
The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad
By: Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Boris Groysberg and Nitin Nohria
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Few companies are thinking about hiring right now, but that's a mistake. If history... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised November 2018)
- Case
Sanctuary Soft: International Expansion Strategies
By: Boris Groysberg, Geoff Marietta, Tim Marshall and Adam Hartley
Sanctuary Soft CEO Elizabeth Smalley faced increasing pressure from her primary investor to expand operations internationally. If successful, the expansion could enlarge Sanctuary’s customer base and enable the firm to better serve existing clients’ overseas offices.... View Details
- March 2009
- Case
Barbara Norris: Leading Change in the General Surgery Unit
By: Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria and Deborah Bell
Barbara Norris struggles to address the many problems facing her as a recently promoted nurse manager in the General Surgery Unit (GSU) at Eastern Massachusetts University Hospital (EMU). She has inherited a unit with the lowest employee satisfaction scores and highest... View Details
- March 2009
- Journal Article
Does Individual Performance Affect Entrepreneurial Mobility? Empirical Evidence from the Financial Analysis Market
By: Boris Groysberg, Ashish Nanda and M. Julia Prats
Our paper contributes to the studies on the relationship between workers' human capital and their decision to become self-employed as well as their probability to survive as entrepreneurs. Analysis from a panel data set of research analysts in investment banks over... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
Big Spaceship: Ready to Go Big?
By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind
Big Spaceship, a digital marketing agency, faced a rather big challenge: How to scale the distinctive culture that was essential to its competitive strategy? Renowned for the cutting-edge websites that it developed to market major Hollywood movies and leading consumer... View Details
- November 2008
- Journal Article
Can Research Committees Add Value for Investors? An Analysis of Lehman Brothers' Ten Uncommon Values® Recommendations
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Yang Gui
Since 1949 Lehman Brothers has used an investment committee to select the top ten recommendations made by its analysts each year. We examine the performance of this committee's recommendations and find that on average its selections generated abnormal returns of 2.7%... View Details
- September 2008
- Case
Israeli Special Forces: Selection Strategy
By: Boris Groysberg, Tal Riesenfeld and Eliot Sherman
Ron Guntz, commander of recruiting for Israel's Special Forces, had been instructed by his superiors to evaluate the process by which he selected solders for a 20-month-long training program. Was the Army conducting this process in an ideal manner? The case examines... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
Marc Abrahams: Annals of an Improbable Entrepreneur
By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind
Marc Abrahams was a media entrepreneur who specialized in science humor. In 2008, he sought to boost the scale and monetization potential of his business. That business, called Improbable Research, encompassed a magazine (Annals of Improbable Research), a high-profile... View Details
- July – August 2008
- Article
Buy-Side vs. Sell-Side Analysts' Earnings Forecasts
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Craig James Chapman
We compare the earnings forecast performance of analysts at a large buy-side firm to that of sell-side analysts. Our tests show that the buy-side firm analysts make more optimistic and less accurate forecasts than their counterparts on the sell-side. These performance... View Details
- December 2007 (Revised July 2011)
- Case
Leadership in Energy: Jim Rogers at Cinergy
By: Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria, Colleen Kaftan and Geoff Eckman Marietta
Jim Rogers, CEO of the energy company Cinergy, has led the company from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the premier energy companies through selecting a focused strategy, aligning the organization to support it, and mobilizing all the employees to implementation. The... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised December 2008)
- Case
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group: The Human Capital Strategy
By: Boris Groysberg and Eliot Sherman
Describes the development and implementation of one of the world's most advanced human resource management support systems. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group is a global banking leader that began implementing a strategy for measuring the impact of human capital on... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Baker & McKenzie (A): A New Framework for Talent Management
By: Boris Groysberg and Eliot Sherman
Describes the process by which the largest law firm in the world developed a unique framework for personnel management. In 2004, John Conroy is about to take the reigns as the leader of Baker and McKenzie, the largest law firm in the world by employees, with offices in... View Details
- August 2006 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm
By: Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams
After nearly 100 years as a mid-size regional law firm, Duane Morris entered a period of spectacular growth led by CEO Sheldon Bonovitz. Originally founded by Quakers, the firm had a distinct organizational culture featuring a number of unique or unusual business... View Details