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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,520)
- News (232)
- Research (1,183)
- Events (2)
- Multimedia (6)
- Faculty Publications (445)
- 02 Jun 2020
- News
Great Leaders Use Tough Love to Improve Performance
- June 4, 2025
- Editorial
Employee Stress Is a Business Risk—Not an HR Problem
By: Marion Chomse, Lydia Roos, Reeva Misra and Ashley Whillans
Workplace stress, on the rise for decades, has been treated by many organizations as a personal issue instead of a business-critical risk that merits executive oversight. This is likely due in part to the fact that companies have not effectively quantified and tracked... View Details
Chomse, Marion, Lydia Roos, Reeva Misra, and Ashley Whillans. "Employee Stress Is a Business Risk—Not an HR Problem." Harvard Business Review (website) (June 4, 2025).
- 01 Feb 2000
- Research & Ideas
Keeping Track: Performance Measurement, Control & Strategy
professor Robert Simons has been adding to that body of knowledge and practice through an extensive research agenda that has resulted in numerous books, articles, and case studies. Working Knowledge editor Jim Aisner sat down recently with Professor Simons to talk... View Details
Keywords: Re: Robert Simons
- 15 Sep 2014
- Research & Ideas
Are the Most Talented Employees the Highest Paid? Yes—If They’re Bankers
Job seekers who want to be paid commensurate with their talent level might want to pursue a career in high finance. Recent research finds that the finance industry compensates employees largely according to how talented they are. Other... View Details
- 28 Aug 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Homesick or Home Run? Distance from Hometown and Employee Performance: A Natural Experiment from India
Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury and Ohchan Kwon
- 30 Mar 2003
- Research & Ideas
How Your Employees and Customers Drive a New Value Profit Chain
It may be time to think about who really creates value in your organization, starting with customers and employees. Harvard Business School professors W. Earl Sasser and James L. Heskett discuss their book, The Value Profit Chain. Mahoney: The premise that happy View Details
Keywords: by Manda Mahoney
- Fall 2023
- Article
Identify Critical Roles to Improve Performance
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin, Abhijit Naik and Sascha L Schmidt
Putting strategy into play requires knowing your organization’s crucial roles and making sure your best talent occupies them. View Details
Groysberg, Boris, Eric Lin, Abhijit Naik, and Sascha L Schmidt. "Identify Critical Roles to Improve Performance." MIT Sloan Management Review 65, no. 1 (Fall 2023): 58–61.
- 2013
- Working Paper
The Dirty Laundry of Employee Award Programs: Evidence from the Field
By: Timothy Gubler, Ian I. Larkin and Lamar Pierce
Many scholars and practitioners have recently argued that corporate awards are a "free" way to motivate employees. We use field data from an attendance award program implemented at one of five industrial laundry plants to show that awards can carry significant... View Details
Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Service Delivery; Performance Productivity; Failure; Service Industry
Gubler, Timothy, Ian I. Larkin, and Lamar Pierce. "The Dirty Laundry of Employee Award Programs: Evidence from the Field." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13-069, February 2013.
- 17 Jan 2018
- Research & Ideas
If the CEO’s High Salary Isn't Justified to Employees, Firm Performance May Suffer
employee pay (such as worker performance and labor market characteristics), as well as the “unexplained pay ratio”—the portion of pay disparity not driven by economic factors. Rouen then studied how these... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- 17 Jan 2019
- Research & Ideas
Why Business Should Support Employees Who Are Caregivers
Companies face a growing yet largely undetected threat to their worker productivity, employee retention and, ultimately, competitive advantage: the needs of employees who are caregivers. The aging... View Details
- 30 Apr 2024
- Book
When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners
failed to meet the quotas could be transferred or have their work hours reduced. The unsurprising result is that when employees found themselves unable to meet the quotas, a significant number of them resorted to exaggeration and... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- 27 Jun 2016
- Research & Ideas
These Management Practices, Like Certain Technologies, Boost Company Performance
captivated Harvard Business School’s Raffaella Sadun for more than a decade. “The question is, Are there certain practices that are beneficial to firm performance regardless of the industry or the country in which you use them?” says... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 03 May 2022
- Research & Ideas
Desperate for Talent? Consider Advancing Your Own Employees First
Job openings in the United States continue to hover at record high levels, exacerbated by the Great Resignation and a sputtering emergence from the pandemic. Competition remains fierce among companies struggling to find qualified workers. Yet many employers,... View Details
Keywords: by Rachel Layne
- January 2020
- Article
Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance
By: Ethan Rouen
I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and... View Details
Keywords: Pay Disparity; Pay Ratio; CEO Pay Ratio; Income Inequality; Executive Compensation; Employees; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Business Ventures; Performance
Rouen, Ethan. "Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance." Accounting Review 95, no. 1 (January 2020): 343–378.
- 29 Nov 2021
- Research & Ideas
How Bonuses Get Employees to Choose Work Over Family
choose to spend time with—work colleagues or family—based on how their pay is structured, in particular whether they get bonuses for a job well done or earn fixed salaries regardless of performance. In fact, employees who received View Details
Keywords: by Rachel Kim Raczka
- 21 Nov 2023
- Research & Ideas
Employee Negativity Is Like Wildfire. Manage It Before It Spreads.
explores how emotions intensify within groups and uncovers ways that leaders can reorient the negative feelings of employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders to help them work toward a positive purpose. For example, if employees are... View Details
Keywords: by Kristen Senz
- July 2022
- Article
The Passionate Pygmalion Effect: Passionate Employees Attain Better Outcomes in Part Because of More Preferential Treatment by Others
By: Ke Wang, Erica R. Bailey and Jon M. Jachimowicz
Employees are increasingly exhorted to “pursue their passion” at work. Inherent in this call is the belief that passion will produce higher performance because it promotes intrapersonal processes that propel employees forward. Here, we suggest that the pervasiveness of... View Details
Keywords: Passion; Self-fufilling Prophecy; Lay Beliefs; Interpersonal Processes; Employees; Performance; Attitudes; Organizational Culture; Social Psychology
Wang, Ke, Erica R. Bailey, and Jon M. Jachimowicz. "The Passionate Pygmalion Effect: Passionate Employees Attain Better Outcomes in Part Because of More Preferential Treatment by Others." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 101 (July 2022).
Time-saving Services Can Reduce Gender Gaps in Business Performance
Worldwide, women business owners earn less than men. Women tend to run businesses in less profitable sectors than men, but even within the same sector, women-owned businesses underperform male-owned businesses. Full-time employed women typically report higher chore... View Details
- March–April 2019
- Article
Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees
By: Ryan W. Buell
Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details
Keywords: Operational Transparency; Customers; Services; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Customer Satisfaction; Behavior; Service Industry
Buell, Ryan W. "Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees." R1902H. Harvard Business Review 97, no. 4 (March–April 2019): 102–113.
- December 2022
- Article
Divergence Between Employer and Employee Understandings of Passion: Theory and Implications for Future Research
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz and Hannah Weisman
There is an increasingly prevalent expectation in contemporary society that employees be passionate for their work. Here, we suggest that employers and employees can have different understandings of passion that potentially conflict. More specifically, we argue that... View Details
Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Human Capital; Performance Effectiveness; Management Style
Jachimowicz, Jon M., and Hannah Weisman. "Divergence Between Employer and Employee Understandings of Passion: Theory and Implications for Future Research." Research in Organizational Behavior 42 (December 2022).