Publications

Research Summary

American Secretaries of State Project: Negotiation, Diplomacy, and Statecraft

By: James K. Sebenius

With Nicholas Burns and Robert Mnookin, I co-lead a project to do background research on all living former American Secretaries of State, interview them extensively on video at Harvard (if possible) about their most challenging negotiations, and analyze this... View Details

Web

Bankers, Financiers, and Statesmen - Coin and Conscience

Engraving by Wolfgang Kilian (1581–1662). [Augsburg, ca. 1620]. 15 x 11 cm F g2 A member of the powerful German family of merchant princes descended from Hans Fugger, a fourteenth century weaver. The Fugger dynasty acquired its fortune... View Details

2020
Book

Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity

By: Joseph Allen and John D. Macomber

By the time you reach 80, you will have spent 72 years of your life indoors. Like it or not, humans have become an indoor species. This means that the people who design, build, and maintain our buildings can have a major impact on our health.
Ever feel tired... View Details

Keywords: Architecture; Real Estate Development; Air Pollution; Air Quality; Public Health; Productivity Gains; Buildings and Facilities; Health; Pollutants; Performance Productivity; Construction Industry

June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Mobility; Strategy; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; XPRIZE; Space Industry; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

28 Mar 2023
Blog Post

Meet Professor Elisabeth Paulson: A Conversation on Life, Research, and Teaching

Data-driven decision-making is a powerful tool. A first step to successfully deploying such tools is to have clear (measurable) objectives and think through tradeoffs. Ask yourself: what is the metric that I... View Details

March – April 2008
Article

Interorganizational Trust, Governance Choice, and Exchange Performance

By: Ranjay Gulati and Jackson Nickerson

This paper looks at when and how preexisting interorganizational trust influences the choice of governance and in turn the performance of exchange relationships. We theorize that preexisting interorganizational trust complements the choice of governance mode (make,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Organizational Culture; Performance Improvement; Conflict and Resolution; Trust

2016
Book

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services that customers want to buy and are willing to purchase at a premium price.... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Consumer Behavior

January 2011
Article

Good Intentions, Optimistic Self-Predictions, and Missed Opportunities

By: Derek Koehler, Rebecca White and Leslie K. John

Self-predictions are highly sensitive to current intentions but often largely insensitive to factors influencing the readiness with which those intentions are translated into future behavior. When such factors are under a person's control, they could be used to... View Details

Keywords: Planning; Saving; Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction

01 Mar 2018
News

Leadership books for volatile and uncertain times

2013
Book

Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed and How We Can Stick to the Plan

By: Francesca Gino

You may not realize it but simple, irrelevant factors can have profound consequences on your decisions and behavior, often diverting you from your original plans and desires. Sidetracked will help you identify and avoid these influences so the decisions you make do... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Decision-making; Judgment; Decisions; Strategy; Behavior; Ethics; Attitudes

August 2000 (Revised January 2006)
Case

Sears, Roebuck and Co. vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

This case is designed to familiarize students with the use of financial ratios. Two retailers, Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., have a very similar value for return on equity (ROE) in the 1997 fiscal year. Students use the information in the case and... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Financial Statements; Retail Industry; United States

March 2017
Article

Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status

By: T. B. Bitterly, A.W. Brooks and M. E. Schweitzer

Across eight experiments, we demonstrate that humor can influence status, but attempting to use humor is risky. The successful use of humor can increase status in both new and existing relationships, but unsuccessful humor attempts (e.g., inappropriate jokes) can harm... View Details

Keywords: Status and Position; Behavior; Groups and Teams; Perception

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September 2024
Case

InfraCredit and the Project Inception Facility

By: John Macomber, Namrata Arora and Maagatha Kalavadakken

Around the world, large infrastructure projects are frequently stymied by the high cost and high uncertainty of the project inception phase: the research and engineering and planning prior to financial close and start of construction. Could there be a new kind of... View Details

Research Summary

Network Resources and the Performance of Interorganizational Exchange

By: Ranjay Gulati

My recent book (Managing Network Resources, Oxford University Press) introduced the idea of "network resources," valuable assets that accrue to a firm not from within its boundaries but from its ties to key external constituents including but not... View Details

2009
Working Paper

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture—in the sense of shared beliefs and values—in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Cost vs Benefits; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Theory