Publications

2008
Working Paper

Embracing Commitment and Performance: CEOs and Practices Used to Manage Paradox

By: Tobias Fredberg, Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote and Flemming Norrgren

We tend to assume that great leaders must make difficult choices between two or more conflicting outcomes. In an interview study with 26 CEOs of top American and European companies (incl. IKEA, Campbell Soups, Nokia, H&M), we find that instead of choosing between... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Managerial Roles; Performance; Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Decision Choices and Conditions

2024
Working Paper

Moral Incoherence During Category Emergence: The Contentious Case of Connected Toys

By: Ryann Noe

Through a longitudinal study of the emergence of connected toys – physical toys that interact with digital devices – I build theory about moral incoherence: when competing views about the moral worth of a category persist over time. During the course of their... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Moral Sensibility; Market Entry and Exit; Consumer Behavior

February 2025
Article

Deep Responsibility, SDGs, and Asia: A Historical Perspective

By: Geoffrey Jones

Although it was only in 2015 the 17 SDGs were adopted by UN Member States, many of the underlying ideas can be found in the strategies of some businesses going back to the nineteenth century. Asia was the home of many of the most advanced concepts of business... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Multinational Corporation; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Governance; Leadership; Asia

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Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. His pathbreaking research, which focuses on unlocking organizational and unleashing... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; computer; financial services; industrial goods; information technology industry; pharmaceuticals; professional services; retailing

Peter Tufano

Peter Tufano is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and Senior Advisor to the Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. From 2011 to 2021, he served as the Peter Moores Dean at View Details

09 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 9, 2008

Public Authorities Control Board rejects a $1.4 billion plan to build the New York Sports and Convention Center (NYSCC) on the West Side of Manhattan. If built, the NYSCC would have served as the home for the Jets and possibly the opening... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Rajiv Lal

Rajiv Lal, is the Stanley Roth, Sr. Professor of Retailing at Harvard Business School. He is currently teaching an elective MBA course on the Business of Smart Connected Products/IOT. He has been responsible for the retailing curriculum and has served as the course... View Details

October 2024
Article

Racial Inequality in Organizations: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective

By: Sanaz Mobasseri, William A. Kahn and Robin J. Ely

This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. organizations and to inform an approach for disrupting it. We treat White men as the dominant group and Black people as the archetypal subordinate group... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Organizational Culture; Gender; Power and Influence; Employees; Attitudes

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2014
Working Paper

Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social Divide

By: Jordan I. Siegel, Lynn Pyun and B.Y. Cheon

The organizational theory of the multinational firm holds that foreignness is a liability, and specifically that lack of embeddedness in host-country social networks is a source of competitive disadvantage; meanwhile the literature on labor market discrimination... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Human Capital; Selection and Staffing; Multinational Firms and Management; Competitive Advantage; Markets; Profit; Gender; South Korea

SSRN

November – December 2011
Article

Explaining Influence Rents: The Case for an Institutions-Based View of Strategy

By: Gautam Ahuja and Sai Yayavaram

Research in strategy has identified and tried to explain four types of rents: monopolistic rents, efficiency rents, quasi rents, and Schumpeterian rents. Building on previous work on political and institutional strategies, we add a fifth type of rent: influence rents.... View Details

Keywords: Institutions; Influence Rents; Generic Strategies; Strategy; Organizations; Renting or Rental; Economics

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June 2016
Article

Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-Job Inequality: Women and Men of the Transportation Security Administration

By: Curtis K. Chan and Michel Anteby

What could explain inequality within a given job between groups of workers, particularly between women and men? Extant workplace inequality scholarship has largely overlooked as a source for inequality the job’s work content—the actual tasks workers perform. It is... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Work; Mechanisms And Processes; Stratification; Labor Process; Qualitative Methods (General); Case Method; Field Research; Equality and Inequality; Working Conditions; Gender; Labor; Labor and Management Relations; Air Transportation Industry

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Research Summary

Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social Divide

The organizational theory of the multinational firms holds that foreignness is a liability, and specifically that lack of embeddedness in host-country social networks is a source of competitive disadvantage; meanwhile the literature on labor market discrimination... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firm; Multinationals; Labor Market Discrimination

February 2015
Article

On the Ethnic Origins of African Development: Traditional Chiefs and Pre-Colonial Political Centralization

By: Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou

We report on recent findings of a fruitful research agenda that explores the importance of ethnic-specific traits in shaping African development. First, using recent surveys from Sub-Saharan African countries, we document that individuals identify with their ethnic... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; Development Economics; Government and Politics; Africa

Brian J. Hall is the Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He served as the Unit Head for the Negotiation, Organizations and Markets (NOM) Unit for 14 years. Previously, he was an assistant professor of economics in the... View Details

Keywords: accounting industry; consulting; consumer products; executive search; financial services; high technology; investment banking industry; management consulting; private equity (LBO funds); restaurant; sports; venture capital industry

February 2015
Article

Location Choices under Strategic Interactions

By: Juan Alcacer, Cristian Dezso and Minyuan Zhao

The literature on location choices has mostly emphasized the impact of location and firm characteristics. However, most industries with a significant presence of multi-location firms are oligopolistic in nature, which suggests that strategic interaction among firms... View Details

Keywords: Location Strategies; Multinational Strategy; Oligopolistic Competition; Firm Heterogeneity; Geographic Location; Multinational Firms and Management; Balance and Stability; Decision Choices and Conditions; Game Theory

9 May 2011 - 11 May 2011
Conference Presentation

How Firms Respond to Mandatory Information Disclosure

By: Anil Doshi, Michael Toffel and Glen W. S. Dowell

When new institutional pressures arise, which organizations are particularly likely to resist or acquiesce? When subjected to new information disclosure mandates, an increasingly popular form of market-based government regulation, which types of organizations are... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Environmental Regulation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation