Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,081)
- Faculty Publications (299)
- 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
- April 2021
- Case
Codecademy: Where to Next?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Max Mailman and Sarah Ascherman
In March 2020, Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of online education platform Codecademy, prepared for a meeting with his Chief of Staff Kunal Ahuja to discuss the company’s goals. Codecademy billed itself as the largest online resource for computer science literacy and... View Details
Keywords: Monetization Strategy; Business Model; Change Management; Venture Capital; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Teams; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Network Effects; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; United States
- April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
Public Equities Impact Investing at BlackRock
By: Shawn A. Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi, Michael Norris and John Masko
In early 2021, BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM)—sought to become a leader in promoting environmental and social sustainability. Over the previous ten years, CEO Larry Fink had written an annual open letter to... View Details
Keywords: Impact Investing; Renewable Energy; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Equity; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Management; Investment Funds; Investment Return; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Financial Services Industry; United States
- March 2021 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Applied: Using Behavioral Science to Debias Hiring
By: Ashley Whillans and Jeff Polzer
The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) needed to hire a new associate and were trying to increase the diversity of their job candidates. This decision was based on academic research showing that recruiters and managers often fell into common traps like... View Details
- March 2021
- Supplement
Applied: Using Behavioral Science to Debias Hiring (B)
By: Ashley Whillans and Jeff Polzer
At the end of 2018, Applied faced questions of stakeholder management and scale. Glazebrook wanted clients to get rid of CVs altogether. To do this, they would have to help hiring managers and recruiters easily build task-based assessments of the skills that their... View Details
- February 2021
- Background Note
Jobs to Be Done: A Toolbox
By: Derek C. M. van Bever, Bob Moesta, Iuliana Mogosanu, Shaye Roseman and Katie Zandbergen
The Jobs to Be Done methodology is both a theory and a practical approach for understanding customer behavior and why people make the choices they make. Many practitioners, whether they work for startups or incumbent businesses, find Jobs to Be Done useful because it... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised July 2022)
- Case
Sarah Breedlove: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case describes the rise of Sarah Breedlove, who later called herself Madam C.J. Walker, from the cotton fields of Louisiana to the head of a successful, nationwide beauty company providing opportunity and hair care products to Black women. The case describes how... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Kerry Group: Inspiring Food, Nourishing Life
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, José B. Alvarez, Damien McLoughlin, Tonia Labruyere and Tonia Junker
The Irish company Kerry Group, one of the leading global players in the taste and nutrition industry, wants to ensure its future growth in developing and developed markets. Founded in 1972 as a dairy cooperative, it had grown into a provider of taste and nutrition... View Details
- November 2020
- Case
Truebird—An AlleyCorp Venture
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In December 2018, Kevin Ryan and Wendy Tsu faced an important decision – to finalize the CEO candidate for Truebird, an innovative, automated coffee café concept. Like many of AlleyCorp and Ryan’s companies, Truebird started with the observation of an unmet need – an... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial... View Details
- 2020
- White Paper
Building the On-Demand Workforce
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, James Palano, Allison Bailey, Nithya Vaduganathan, Elizabeth Kaufman, Renée Laverdière and Sibley Lovett
The right talent, in the right place, at the
right time, is the equation for success in
today’s world. In an era of technological
change, demographic shifts, and economic
uncertainty, companies can enhance their
ability to compete by building a flexible... View Details
- November–December 2020
- Article
Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey and Nithya Vaduganathan
As companies struggle with chronic skills shortages and changing labor demographics, a new generation of talent platforms, offering on-demand access to highly trained workers, has begun to help. These platforms include marketplaces for premium expertise (such as Toptal... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations During COVID-19 (C)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in August 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are navigating Migros through COVID-19 and the unprecedented... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Crisis Management; Health Pandemics; Strategic Planning; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey
- July 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
The Honor Foundation: Accessing Special Operations Talent
By: Boris Groysberg and John Masko
In 2020, The Honor Foundation (THF), a nonprofit dedicated to helping U.S. military special operators to transition into civilian careers, was facing a series of strategic challenges. THF had been founded in 2013 by former Navy SEAL trainee Joe Musselman, who observed... View Details
Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Curriculum and Courses; Executive Education; Social Entrepreneurship; National Security; Recruitment; Retention; Job Interviews; Job Search; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Mission and Purpose; Retirement; Nonprofit Organizations; War; Education Industry; San Diego; Virginia
- 2021
- Working Paper
Hunting for Talent: Firm-Driven Labor Market Search in the United States
By: Ines Black, Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
This article analyzes the phenomenon of firm-driven labor market search—or outbound recruiting—where recruiters are increasingly “hunting for talent” rather than passively relying on workers to search for and apply to job vacancies. Our research methodology leverages... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Last Mile Health (A)
By: Brian Trelstad and V. Kasturi Rangan
As the Ebola outbreak threatens the fragile health system of Liberia, Raj Panjabi, the founder of Last Mile Health, faces a dilemma: should he expand beyond the organizaton's core mission to help the country build emergency health care capacity, or should he stick to... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Culture at Google
By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Amy Klopfenstein and Sarah Mehta
Beginning in 2017, technology (tech) company Google faced a series of employee-relations issues that threatened its unique culture of innovation and open communication. Issues included protests surrounding Google’s contracts with the U.S. government, restrictions of... View Details
Keywords: Human Resources; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Retention; Resignation and Termination; Labor; Working Conditions; Employment; Labor Unions; Wages; Law; Lawsuits and Litigation; Rights; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Fairness; Organizations; Organizational Culture; Mission and Purpose; Social Psychology; Attitudes; Behavior; Conflict Management; Trust; Motivation and Incentives; Prejudice and Bias; Power and Influence; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure; Society; Social Issues; Culture; Civil Society or Community; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Gender; Race; Technology Industry; North and Central America; United States; California
- March 2020
- Supplement
People Analytics at Teach For America (B)
By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Julia Kelley
This is a supplement to the People Analytics at Teach For America (A) case. In this supplement, situated one year after the A case, Managing Director Michael Metzger must decide how to apply his team's predictive models generated from the previous year’s data. View Details
- February 2020 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Wellthy: The Economics of Caring
By: Brian L. Trelstad and Joseph B. Fuller
In 2014, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner (MBA ’09) founded Wellthy, a B2C business that coordinates care for working professionals seeking help to support loved ones with chronic diseases or aging parents. With personal experience as a young professional providing care for her... View Details