Publications

March 2015
Case

Pearson Affordable Learning Fund

By: Michael Chu, Vincent Dessain and Kristina Maslauskaite

An in-house venture capital fund for affordable private schools at the base of the pyramid established by Pearson, the world's largest education company, PALF sought to invest in business models providing superior educational outcomes in emerging markets on a... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Low Cost Private Schools; Investment Fund; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Transition; Investment; Development Economics; Business Growth and Maturation; Social Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Private Sector; Education; Education Industry; Asia; Africa

Educators

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Article

Reflections: Toward a Normative and Actionable Theory of Planned Organizational Change and Development

By: Michael Beer

A normative and actionable theory of planned organizational change and development is proposed based on fifty years of engagement by the author as a scholar-consultant. Five principles are central features of the theory and practice proposed: 1) Organizations are... View Details

Keywords: Consultant; Process; Systems; Silence; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Learning; Management Teams

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03 Oct 2023
What Do You Think?

Do Leaders Learn More From Success or Failure?

(Jay Yuno/iStock) Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson’s recent thought-provoking book, Right Kind of Wrong, makes a strong case for the notion that we often learn a lot from failure—and in some cases, perhaps even more than we... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Research Summary

Market Triads: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Market Intermediation (Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, June 2002)

By: Rakesh Khurana

This paper examines the role of executive search firms in CEO search. The paper argues that the numerical shift from two party market transactions (e.g. buyers and sellers) to three party transactions (e.g. buyers, sellers, and third party) transforms market exchanges... View Details

2012
Working Paper

An Outside-Inside Evolution in Gender and Professional Work

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Kathleen McGinn and Deborah Kolb

We study the process by which a professional service firm reshaped its activities and beliefs over nearly two decades as it adapted to shifts in the social discourse regarding gender and work. Analyzing archival data from the firm over eighteen years and... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Social Institutions; Organizational Learning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employment; Gender; Society; Service Industry

2019
Article

Creativity from Paradoxical Experience: A Theory of How Individuals Achieve Creativity while Adopting Paradoxical Frames

By: Goran Calic, Sébastien Hélie, Nick Bontis and Elaine Mosakowski

Purpose: Extant paradox theory suggests that adopting paradoxical frames, which are mental templates adopted by individuals in order to embrace contradictions, will result in superior firm performance. Superior performance is achieved through learning and creativity,... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Creativity; Learning

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29 Oct 2015
Other Presentation

Social Progress: The Next Development Agenda (Video)

By: Michael E. Porter and Scott Stern

How do we measure development? The Social Progress Index was launched in 2013 as a holistic approach to benchmarking countries' social performance, independent of economic measures. SPI has been widely taken up on a global basis in evaluating national performance, and... View Details

Keywords: Economic Development; Development Economics; Society; United States

2018
Working Paper

Learning to Become a Taste Expert

By: Kathryn A. Latour and John A. Deighton

Evidence suggests that consumers seek to become more expert about hedonic products to enhance their enjoyment of future consumption occasions. Current approaches to becoming an expert center on cultivating an analytic mindset. In the present research the authors... View Details

Keywords: Hedonic; Wine; Expertise; Holistic; Analytic; Sensory; Taste; Learning; Experience and Expertise; Analysis; Perception

Article

Social Recycling Transforms Unwanted Goods into Happiness

By: Grant Edward Donnelly, Cait Lamberton, Rebecca Walker Reczek and Michael I. Norton

Consumers are often surrounded by resources that once offered meaning or happiness but that have lost this subjective value over time—even as they retain their objective utility. We explore the potential for social recycling—disposing of used goods by allowing other... View Details

Keywords: Disposition; Well-being; Prosocial Behavior; Pro-environmental Behavior; Happiness; Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Environmental Sustainability

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently): How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Improve and Innovate

Keywords: by Mark D. Cannon & Amy C. Edmondson

November 2006
Background Note

Technical Game Theory Note #1: Solving Bi-matrix Games

By: Dennis A. Yao

Explains how to solve bi-matrix games and introduces the Nash Equilibrium concept. View Details

Keywords: Game Theory; Mathematical Methods; Learning; Balance and Stability; Planning; Strategic Planning; Performance Improvement; Strategy; Games, Gaming, and Gambling

Educators

October 2018
Case

Learning How to Honnold

By: Eugene F. Soltes, Sara Hess and Dutch Leonard

Alex Honnold is the world’s most accomplished free climber. To many, climbing sheer vertical faces of rock—like the famed El Capitan—without a rope is viewed as not simply risky but reckless. Honnold contrasts this sentiment by presenting his perspective on risk taking... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Goals and Objectives; Personal Development and Career; Perspective

Educators

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14 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact

services such as health care, immunization, education, and employment programs. “Highly intelligent, thoughtful people end up developing some very different approaches to measuring social performance.” In an environment where the View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

15 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

The Coming Transformation of Social Enterprise

generation of social enterprise leaders? A: I don't think the business schools by themselves are going to solve this problem. Whether it's HBS or any other business school, ultimately I think students come to View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson

Article

Power Imbalance, Mutual Dependence and Constraint Absorption: A Closer Look at Resource Dependence Theory

By: Tiziana Casciaro and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Despite ubiquitous references to Pfeffer and Salancik's classic volume, The External Control of Organizations, resource dependence theory is more of an appealing metaphor than a foundation for testable empirical research. We argue that several ambiguities in the... View Details

Keywords: Power and Influence; Theory

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2013
Working Paper

Work Design Drivers of Organizational Learning about Operational Failures: A Laboratory Experiment on Medication Administration

By: Anita L. Tucker

Operational failures persist in hospitals, in part because employees work around them rather than attempt to prevent recurrence. Drawing on a process improvement tool—the Andon cord—we examine three work design components that may foster improvement-oriented behaviors:... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Process Improvement; Organizational Learning; Behavioral Operations; Prosocial Behavior; Experiments; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Behavior; Performance Improvement; Health Care and Treatment; Business Processes; Health Industry

18 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

'Likes' Lead to Nothing—and Other Hard-Learned Lessons of Social Media Marketing

TV, but was amplified by exposure on YouTube and other social media. Click to watch. As marketers have experimented, what have they learned about what works on social? We sat down with four marketing experts... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Advertising; Technology

1 Apr 1992
Conference Presentation

Motivation, Creativity, and Learning

By: R. Conti, Teresa M. Amabile and S. Pollack

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Creativity; Learning

March 2016
Article

Environmental Demands and the Emergence of Social Structure: Technological Dynamism and Interorganizational Network Forms

By: Adam Tatarynowicz, Maxim Sytch and Ranjay Gulati

This study investigates the origins of variation in the structures of interorganizational networks across industries. We combine empirical analyses of existing interorganizational networks in six industries with an agent-based simulation model of network emergence.... View Details

Keywords: Interorganizatonal Relationships; Social Networks; Network Emergence; Interorganizational Networks; Information Technology; Networks; Organizational Structure; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Media