Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,581)
- Faculty Publications (620)
- Article
New Sales Realities
Business leaders need to understand that it’s the fit of People, Process, Pricing, and Partners that drives sales effectiveness. As firms confront new buying processes, required sales competencies affect hiring, training, and development (People). Without a coherent... View Details
- February 2021
- Case
Measuring Impact at JUST Capital
By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Ethan Rouen
JUST Capital is a nonprofit organization that seeks to make public companies more "just" by measuring and ranking their overall impact on society, based on the priorities most important to the average American. This case examines JUST's strategy for influencing... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Barbarians at the Gate or Turnaround Gurus? Private Equity and the Rise of the LBO
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the private equity (PE) firms responsible for carrying them out revolutionized both investment and management in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1989, buyout activity in the U.S. surged from $1 billion per year to $60 billion.... View Details
Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Restructuring; Borrowing and Debt; Private Equity; Bonds; Investment Return; Institutional Investing; Profit Sharing; Business History; Management Style; Private Ownership; Performance Effectiveness; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry; United States
- 18 Feb 2021
- Interview
Amy Edmondson: Are You Missing One of Your Most Important Jobs as a Manager?
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Chris Clearfield
During our conversation, we talked about:
• The renewed interest in the concept of psychological safety
• J.D. Thompson’s notion of “reciprocal coordination needs”
• How knowledge work does not produce objective or mechanical... View Details
• The renewed interest in the concept of psychological safety
• J.D. Thompson’s notion of “reciprocal coordination needs”
• How knowledge work does not produce objective or mechanical... View Details
- Article
How Real Sales Learning Happens: In the Flow of Work
By: Yuchun Lee, Mark Magnacca and Frank V. Cespedes
Most learning in sales is through peer learning in task-specific contexts, and the effects are cumulative because modeling behavior is a big driver of how salespeople develop. This is very different from the experience in most training seminars, especially if the... View Details
- February 2021
- Article
Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession
By: S. Bernstein, T. McQuade and R. Townsend
We investigate how the deterioration of household balance sheets affects worker productivity, and, in turn, economic downturns. Specifically, we compare the output of innovative workers who experienced differential declines in housing wealth during the financial crisis... View Details
- February 2021
- Article
The Department of Justice as a Gatekeeper in Whistleblower-Initiated Corporate Fraud Enforcement: Drivers and Consequences
By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Hari Ramasubramanian
We examine drivers and consequences of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) oversight of whistleblower cases of corporate fraud against the government. We find that the DOJ is more likely to intervene in and conduct longer investigations of cases that have a higher chance... View Details
- 2021
- Article
The Virtues and Limitations of Dynamic Capabilities
By: Bharat Anand and David J. Collis
Dynamic capabilities have been identified as a key determinant of competitive advantage. This paper explores the foundations of dynamic capabilities, and the limits to their effectiveness, first theoretically and then through the case of Danaher, the most successful... View Details
- 1 Jan 2021
- Interview
Encore Teams That Succeed with Amy Edmondson
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Wanda Wallace
Teams in which people are not afraid to speak up, to challenge, to risk saying a wild idea are teams with the best performance. Google has found that psychological safety is a key component of their best teams. Yet, people are afraid of causing trouble, looking... View Details
- January 2021
- Article
Turbulence, Firm Decentralization and Growth in Bad Times
By: Philippe Aghion, Nicholas Bloom, Brian Lucking, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
What is the optimal form of firm organization during “bad times”? We present a model of delegation within the firm to show that the effect is ambiguous. The greater turbulence following macro shocks may benefit decentralized firms because the value of local information... View Details
- Article
Credit and Punishment: Are Corporate Bankers Disciplined for Risk-Taking?
By: Janet Gao, Kristoph Kleiner and Joseph Pacelli
We examine whether bankers face disciplining consequences for structuring poorly performing corporate loans. We construct a novel data set containing the employment histories and loan portfolios of a large sample of corporate bankers and find that corporate credit... View Details
- Article
Making a Difference: Developing Actionable Knowledge for Practice and Theory
By: Michael Beer
There is a widely acknowledged gap between academic research and practice. While the field of organizational studies and development has had an impact on management practice in some organizations, it has had only a modest impact on widely accepted management practice... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Value of Descriptive Analytics: Evidence from Online Retailers
By: Ron Berman and Ayelet Israeli
Does the adoption of descriptive analytics impact online retailer performance, and if so, how? We use the synthetic difference-in-differences method to analyze the staggered adoption of a retail analytics dashboard by more than 1,500 e-commerce websites, and we find an... View Details
- Article
Value of New Performance Information in Healthcare: Evidence from Japan
By: Susanna Gallani, Takehisa Kajiwara and Ranjani Krishnan
Mandatory measurement and disclosure of outcome measures are commonly used policy tools in
healthcare. The effectiveness of such disclosures relies on the extent to which the new information produced by the mandatory system is internalized by the healthcare... View Details
- Article
GitLab: Work Where You Want, When You Want
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Kevin Crowston, Linus Dahlander, Marco S. Minervini and Sumita Raghuram
GitLab is a software company that works “all remote” at the scale of more than 1,000 employees located in more than 60 countries. GitLab has no physical office and its employees can work from anywhere they choose. Any step of the organizational life of a GitLab... View Details
- Article
Going It Alone: Competition Increases the Attractiveness of Minority Status
By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang and Katherine L. Milkman
Past research demonstrates that people prefer to affiliate with others who resemble them demographically. However, we posit that when competing for scarce opportunities, strategic considerations moderate the strength of this tendency toward homophily. Across six... View Details
- Article
Returnable Reciprocity: Returnable Gifts Are More Effective than Unreturnable Gifts at Promoting Virtuous Behaviors
By: J.J. Zlatev and Rogers, T.
Increasing virtuous behaviors, such as initiating healthy habits, is an important goal for policymakers and social scientists. To promote compliance with requests to perform virtuous behaviors, we study “returnable reciprocity.” Whereas traditional reciprocity involves... View Details
Keywords: Nudges; Reciprocity; Want-should Conflicts; Wellness; Health; Behavior; Change; Well-being
- November 2020
- Article
When the Boss Comes to Town: The Effects of Headquarters' Visits on Facility-Level Misconduct
By: Jonas Heese and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos
We study the effects of headquarters’ visits on facility-level misconduct. We use the staggered introduction of airline routes to identify exogenous travel-time reductions between headquarters and facilities and test whether such reductions affect facility-level... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Worry at Work: How Organizational Culture Promotes Anxiety
By: Jeremy A. Yip, Emma E. Levine, Alison Wood Brooks and Maurice E. Schweitzer
Organizational culture profoundly influences how employees think and behave. Established research suggests that the content, intensity, consensus, and fit of cultural norms act as a social control system for attitudes and behavior. We adopt the norms model of... View Details
Keywords: Anxiety; Norms; Stress; Culture; Tightness-looseness; Curvilinear; Organizational Culture; Emotions; Performance
- October 6, 2020
- Article
Test Your Board's Readiness for the Post-COVID Era
By: Lynn S. Paine
Research suggests that well-run boards take the process of self-evaluation quite seriously, often using a combination of director surveys and personal interviews to assess the functioning and effectiveness of the board, its committees, and its individual members. As... View Details