Publications

June 2010
Article

Change for Change's Sake

By: Freek Vermeulen, Phanish Puranam and Ranjay Gulati

No one disputes that firms have to make organizational changes when the business environment demands them. But the idea that a firm might want change for its own sake often provokes skepticism. Why inflict all that pain if you don't have to? That is a dangerous... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Innovation and Invention; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Creativity; Power and Influence; Adaptation

September 2009
Article

Are You Having Trouble Keeping Your Operations Focused?

By: Robert S. Huckman

As a business broadens over time, it can lose the operational edge that led to its original success. Core strengths atrophy, efficiency or quality suffers, and sharper rivals close in to take advantage of the loss of focus. In his classic article "The Focused Factory"... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business Growth and Maturation; Goals and Objectives; Resource Allocation; Operations; Performance Efficiency

Research Summary

Using IT to Leverage Human Resources in Services

Discussion of the Internet and IT to date concentrates on how they will replace, rather than support, human service providers. While this approach is appropriate for a few firms, it is inadequate for many. The Internet and other information technology... View Details

January 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

School of Rock: Tuning into Structured Empowerment (A)

By: Tatiana Sandino, Jeffrey Rayport, Samuel Grad and Stacy Straaberg

In summer 2021, School of Rock was a youth-oriented music education company with 291 franchise- and company-owned schools globally. Before CEO Rob Price’s hire in 2017, School of Rock’s nonconformist rock ‘n’ roll culture led to variability in teaching styles,... View Details

Educators

May 2023
Article

Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details

Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Corporate Disclosure; Wages; Negotiation

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2010
Chapter

The Peculiar Politics of American Disaster Policy: How Television Has Changed Federal Relief

By: David Moss

Particularly since the 1960s, the federal government has played a significant role in financing disaster losses in the United States. The federal government may thus be thought of as providing an implicit form of public disaster insurance. However, unlike many... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Policy; Government and Politics; Media; Natural Disasters; United States

2007
Working Paper

Recognizing the New: A Multi-Agent Model of Analogy in Strategic Decision-Making

By: Giovanni Gavetti and Massimo Warglien

In novel environments, strategic decision-making is often premised on analogy, and recognition lies at its heart. Recognition refers to a class of cognitive processes through which a problem is interpreted associatively in terms of something that has been experienced... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods; Cognition and Thinking; Power and Influence

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01 Sep 2023
News

That Was Then, This Is Now

It started with a question. But before that, it started in the classroom. Tony Deifell (MBA 2002) loved the discussions in his LEAD course, taught by Professor (and now former Dean) Nitin Nohria; wanting to make them more tangible, Deifell adapted the idea of... View Details

Keywords: Photographed by Tony Deifell (MBA 2002); edited by Julia Hanna. Above: Heidi Brooks, photographed in 2003 and 2023.; life experience; family; leadership

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

entrepreneurial leaders as they collect more data. Differentiating serial founders and first-time founders Not all founders are cut from the same cloth, the study underscores. Analysis of the pilot data also revealed important differences... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

15 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Kids Benefit From Having a Working Mom

and care for family members. Survey respondents included 13,326 women and 18,152 men from 24 developed nations. The researchers based their analyses on responses collected from the 2002 and 2012 surveys. They categorized the countries by... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Web

Bankruptcy | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

Skip to Main Content Lehman Brothers Collection Resources Baker Library Collections Corporate Reports Collection R. G. Dun & Co. Credit Reports HBS Cases Baker Old Class View Details

Web

South Sea Bubble | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

Skip to Main Content South Sea Bubble, 1720 Contact Us Baker Library Special Collections and Archives More Exhibitions Search Contact Us Baker Library Special Collections and Archives More Exhibitions Baker... View Details

Web

Research Resources - Doctoral

region-based field support. And, the collections of Baker Library —one of the world’s largest and most respected business libraries—are available at the center of the campus. Harvard Business School Baker Library The View Details

01 Mar 2019
News

The Burden Legacy

aviation to the HBS curriculum and laid the foundation for the Baker Library Collection on the Business Aspects of Aviation, which includes the William A.M. Burden Papers, aviation investment analyses that Burden prepared in the 1930s. If... View Details

Keywords: Linda Kush

16 Jan 2013
Research & Ideas

The Messy Link Between Slave Owners and Modern Management

critique of capitalism—one that could broaden the understanding of today's business practices. The work is part of her current book project, "From Slavery to Scientific Management: Capitalism and Control in America, 1754-1911," and the forthcoming edited... View Details

Keywords: by Katie Johnston

09 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Performance Pressure as a Double-Edged Sword: Enhancing Team Motivation While Undermining the Use of Team Knowledge

Keywords: by Heidi K. Gardner

Research Summary

Consumer's Relationships with Technologies

Susan M. Fournier is involved with two lines of research investigating consumers' relationships with technological products. The first project (with Professor David Mick of the University of Wisconsin) concerns 'everyday technologies' such as... View Details

September 2019 (Revised May 2021)
Case

pymetrics: International Expansion

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In August 2018, pymetrics, a solution offering neuroscience-based recruiting tests, closed a $40 million funding round that valued the business at $160 million. Over 60 companies around the globe were using pymetrics tests in their recruiting process, including... View Details

Educators