Layoffs - Publications - Faculty & Research

15 Aug 2023
HBS Case

(Virtual) Reality Check: How Long Before We Live in the 'Metaverse'?

Business School researchers concludes that the decades-old “pendulum of metaverse hype” began to swing toward skepticism in early 2023, as major tech corporations announced massive layoffs and cutbacks in virtual-reality development.... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald; Technology; Computer; Information Technology

28 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

Keep or Cut Workers? How Companies Reacted to the COVID-19 Crisis

conduct an analysis to determine how companies were responding to the crisis. Were they retaining their staff and providing essential workers with extra pay, or were they cutting expenses through layoffs and furloughs? "It gave us a rare... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

Web

General Management - Faculty & Research

Politics? Re: William Kirby 06 Jun 2025 CBS News Experts Offer Advice to New College Grads on Entering the Workforce in the Age of AI Re: Joseph Fuller More Faculty News HBS Working Knowledge 01 Nov 2024 Layoffs Surging in a Strong... View Details

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

less out of their control,” says Whillans. “It can make them feel more safe and secure, and move them out of a threat mindset into more of an opportunity mindset.” And management could have considered more creative solutions to staffing issues—for example, offering... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

18 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Your Best Employees Are Burning Out: A Framework for Retaining Talent

firings and layoffs close to the age of retirement so businesses could avoid paying pensions. Also, instead of staying with one company for a lifetime, it became the norm for employees to change companies and roles during their careers.... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and MaShon Wilson

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

implement the layoffs quickly—in less than a year—to minimize workplace disruptions and gain credibility with the capital market. For some companies, however, strategic and business factors could warrant a more gradual approach to... View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

29 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Is There a Method to Musk’s Madness on Twitter?

traffic for the World Cup and stay operational when the most eyes are on it. On that front, it’s a very dangerous situation because Twitter has lost a lot of people, both through the layoffs as well as a significant amount of people... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Technology

Web

Spreading the Word – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

Mayo’s The Human Problems of Industrial Civilization , in the journal The Human Factor , 1934 The Depression and massive layoff of employees at Western Electric helped bring the Hawthorne experiments to a grinding halt in the early 1930s.... View Details

01 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Good Leadership Is an Act of Kindness

normal times. ""I know you're doing the best you can." This statement is, with few exceptions, true. In scores of first-person accounts and on social media, people are reporting they are working harder than they did pre-COVID. This makes perfect sense; as View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Breaking the Code of Change

tenure of Dunlap's predecessor, Phillip Lippincott, Scott had struggled to improve its operational effectiveness at the plant level by working on process improvement and launching an effort to work cooperatively with its union. In the 1980s the company had also... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer & Nitin Nohria

Web

Faculty & Researchers - Managing the Future of Work

member of the Edelman Trust Institute Advisory Board, advising them on Trust Barometer research and collaborates with Deloitte on TrustIQ , a proprietary tool that measures key elements of trust in major corporations and public sector organizations. Research Workforce... View Details

03 Dec 2020
Research & Ideas

Cut Payroll Costs with Transparency, Fairness, and Compassion

Conduct, your jobs are secure. This decision was made with 100 percent support of the Firm’s Operating Committee. At the end of this year, we will know what we are dealing with, and hopefully, the economy will be on the mend by then.” Brian Moynihan of Bank of America... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott

05 Jul 2012
What Do You Think?

Why Is Trust So Hard to Achieve in Management?

is not rocket science. It should be pretty simple, in fact. Don't create expectations that can't be met; share knowledge; hire, recognize, and fire the right people; be consistent and predictable; and avoid large-scale layoffs as much as... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

26 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Why Japanese Businesses Are So Good at Surviving Crises

says Harvard Business School professor Hirotaka Takeuchi, was their dedication to responding to the needs of employees and the community first, all with the moral purpose of serving the common good. Less important for these companies, he says, was pursuing View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

07 Jul 2021
Book

Good News for Disgraced Companies: You Can Regain Trust

problems start.” Regaining trust While some corporations still aren’t in the clear, Sucher says it’s possible to bounce back and points to Michelin as doing the right things to regain trust. In 1999, the tire manufacturer mishandled a View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

02 Apr 2020
What Do You Think?

What Are Lessons for Leaders from This Black Swan Crisis?

that can be kept fresh for generic, not specific, demands on various functions of the organization (such as 100 percent increases or decreases in short-term demand)? THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS More Business-Related Pandemic Coverage from Around Harvard and Beyond How to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

08 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way To Hire a Sales Team

there were layoffs in sales (and other functions) throughout the recession starting in 2008. As firms seek to grow, putting more "feet on the street" (or in inside sales positions) increases hiring. And the math, as Jim Dickie... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

16 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restaurant Revolution: How the Industry Is Fighting to Stay Alive

this new environment.” At the outset of the crisis, most restaurants had only two to three weeks of operating reserves and those reserves were quickly exhausted. With no end date in sight of mandatory closures, owners moved quickly to furlough or View Details

Keywords: by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery; Food & Beverage

26 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

National Health Costs Could Decrease if Managers Reduce Work Stress

inherently stressful on the body, and also lead to unhealthy behaviors like alcoholism and overeating." Other factors the researchers investigated stretched beyond the workplace, for example, work-family conflict, lack of health insurance, and View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

31 Oct 2023
News

Securing a Resilient Future for Senegal

Sijh Diagne (photo by Michael Bucher) In March 2020, Sijh Diagne (MBA 2017) was asked to serve as an advisor to Senegal’s minister of economy, planning, and cooperation. He was charged with leading the country’s private-sector development; but just as became the case... View Details

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