Publications

01 Aug 2001
News

Richard B. Fisher (MBA '62)

In June, the School conferred its highest honors, the Distinguished Service Award and the Alumni Achievement Award, on four professors emeriti and five alumni, respectively. This is a profile of an Alumni Achievement Award honoree. When Dick Fisher joined Morgan... View Details

Keywords: Richard B. Fisher; Warren A. Law; Alumni Achievement Award; Finance; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

01 Jan 2011
News

Karen Gordon Mills, MBA 1977

Administrator, US Small Business Administration Download Mills profile (pdf) Return to Alumni Achievement Awards main page TIMELINE 1953 Born, Boston, Massachusetts 1977 Joins General Foods 1981 Joins McKinsey & Company 1983 Joins E.S. Jacobs & Co. 1993 Becomes... View Details

August 2020 (Revised February 2021)
Case

Luckin Coffee (A): Caffeine-fueled Growth?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman

This case describes the founding of Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee in 2017 and its path to surpassing Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China (by number of stores) in 2019. Unlike Starbucks stores, which were designed to be welcoming “third places” for... View Details

21 Feb 2005
Op-Ed

Is Business Management a Profession?

Frederick Taylor's application of scientific methods to the study of physical labor had begun to be extended to the organization of industry as well as to spheres such as higher education and government. While Taylorism was quickly... View Details

Keywords: by Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria & Daniel Penrice

January 2021
Article

COVID-19 and the Workplace: Implications, Issues, and Insights for Future Research and Action

By: Kevin M. Kniffin, Jayanth Narayanan, Frederik Anseel, John Antonakis, Susan Ashford, Arnold B. Bakker, Peter Bamberger, Hari Bapuji, Devasheesh P. Bhave, Virginia K. Choi, Stephanie Creary, Evangelia Demerouti, Francis J. Flynn, Michele J. Gelfand, Lindred Greer, Gary Johns, Selin Kesebir, Peter G. Klein, Sun Young Lee, Hakan Ozcelik, Jennifer Louise Petriglieri, Nancy Rothbard, Cort W. Rudolph, Jason D. Shaw, Nina Sirola, Connie R. Wanberg, Ashley V. Whillans, Michael P. Wilmot and Mark van Vugt

The impacts of COVID-19 on workers and workplaces across the globe have been dramatic. This broad review of prior research rooted in work and organizational psychology, and related fields, is intended to make sense of the implications for employees, teams, and work... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Work; Work From Home (WFH); Pandemics; Health Pandemics; Employees; Working Conditions; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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18 Mar 2019
Research & Ideas

Stuck in Commuter Hell? You Can Still Be Productive

Workers commute an average 38 minutes each way between home and work—a trip that can feel like a dreadful chore before the workday even begins. In fact, long commutes lower job satisfaction and increase employee turnover. Now, recent research provides some advice to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

June 2012
Article

The Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

Using data from embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the second largest mobile phone factory in the world, located in China, I theorize and test the implications of transparent organizational design on workers' productivity and organizational... View Details

February 2015
Case

BlackRock: Diversity as a Driver for Success

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly

In July 2014, the Global Executive Committee (GEC) for BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, held a two-day offsite to discuss the state of talent within the firm. A year prior, in 2013, Chairman and CEO Laurence (Larry) Fink had asked Global Head of HR Jeff... View Details

Keywords: Women And Leadership; Diversity; General Management; Leadership; Change Management; Human Capital; Leading Change; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Financial Services Industry; United States

25 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Who is to Blame for 'The Great Training Robbery'?

About $162 billion was spent in 2012 in the United States on corporate training—in what Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer calls the “the great training robbery.” Beer, the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, says money pumped into... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Education

2024
Working Paper

Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups

By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein

How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth? To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Open Source Distribution; Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Human Capital; Valuation; Corporate Strategy

SSRN

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19 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Fed Up Workers and Supply Woes: What's Next for Dollar Stores?

question. You are definitely seeing competition for labor from Amazon, from Walmart. Dollar Tree and Family Dollar are not quite the pure model Dollar General has become, but they’re all at that low end of the market. Their business model... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Retail

February 2022
Case

US Foods: Driving Post-Pandemic Success?

By: David E. Bell, Olivia Hull and Amy Klopfenstein

In November 2021, US Foods CEO Pietro Satriano must decide his company’s trajectory following the COVID-19 pandemic. US Foods suffered due to business closures and social distancing during the height of the pandemic. While the situation improved following the return of... View Details

October 2023
Case

Making Progress at Progress Software (A)

By: Katherine Coffman, Hannah Riley Bowles and Alexis Lefort

In this case, the Human Capital team at Progress Software has identified that some employees have a hard time understanding how to advance within Progress. This realization leads the team to develop several major people-process innovations: the introduction of... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias; Personal Development and Career; Human Capital; Employee Relationship Management; Technology Industry; Bulgaria

April 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Unilever's Response to the Future of Work

By: William R. Kerr, Emilie Billaud and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

In February 2020, Nick Dalton, executive vice president HR business transformation at Unilever, reflected on the changing nature of work marked by rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation. Launched in 2016, Unilever’s Future of Work... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Human Capital; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Structure; Transformation; Human Resources; Consumer Products Industry; Europe

March 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Catalant: The Future of Work?

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Christine Snively

Catalant, founded in 2013 as an online marketplace where MBAs could bid on consulting projects posted by small- to medium-sized businesses, had expanded by 2016 to provide Fortune 1000 companies with access to over 35,000 independent experts. The founders envisioned... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Recruitment; Labor; Market Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Employment Industry; Consulting Industry; United States

22 Feb 2021
Book

Reaching Today's Omnichannel Customer Takes a New Sales Strategy

sales productivity is not only about profit maximization and shareholder value—which, by the way, I don't think a CEO or Harvard Business School needs to apologize for—it also affects growth, civic discourse, and the lives of millions of people. Bureau of View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

NatureSweet

By: Jose Alvarez, Forest Reinhardt and Natalie Kindred

This case describes the business model and workplace philosophy of NatureSweet, a privately owned, vertically integrated greenhouse grower and marketer of fresh tomatoes with sales across the United States and $329 million in 2016 revenues. CEO Bryant Ambelang treated... View Details

Article

Mission-Driven Governance

By: Raymond Fisman, Rakesh Khurana and Edward Martenson

The purpose of this paper is to provide a useful, easily applied theory of governance performance. The existing model is fundamentally adversarial, rooted in the paradigm of principal-agent conflict. At its base is an image of governance as a never-ending struggle... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Knowledge Management; Standards; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation