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Faculty - Race, Gender & Equity

Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, where she teaches the Motivation and Incentives course to MBA students. Professor Whillans earned her PhD in Social Psychology from... Initiatives focus... View Details

November 2009 (Revised December 2009)
Case

RL Wolfe: Implementing Self-Directed Teams

By: David A. Garvin and Elizabeth Collins

Key topics include team design, team management, job design, employee empowerment, implementing change, and high performance workforces. In 2004, John Amasi, the director of production for a manufacturer of plastic pipe, introduced the concept of self-directed teams... View Details

Keywords: Work Force Management; Employee Empowerment; Motivation; Motivation and Incentives; Leading Change; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Productivity; Groups and Teams; Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Manufacturing Industry; Texas

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Understaffed and Overworked: What Now?

Meet Cheryl Andrus: Manager. Survivor. A vice president responsible for corporate and product marketing at FranklinCovey in Salt Lake City, Andrus was asked in August 2002 to also take charge of one of the company's business lines. Along with these new responsibilities... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Michelman

07 May 2020
Research & Ideas

The One Good Thing Caused by COVID-19: Innovation

pandemic. An increase in risk perception makes consumers more willing to pay for safety features, which, in turn, provides producers greater incentives to develop and commercialize technologies that address consumers' demands for safety.... View Details

Keywords: by Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso

November 2005 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Leading Change at Simmons (A)

By: Tiziana E. Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson, Stacy McManus and Kate Roloff

Explores the challenge of managing large-scale organizational change at Simmons, an old and established company that manufactures and distributes mattresses. The new CEO, Charlie Eitel, hired to turn the organization's performance around, considers whether to implement... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Motivation and Incentives; Leading Change; Employee Relationship Management; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

17 Sep 2019
Cold Call Podcast

How a New Leader Broke Through a Culture of Accuse, Blame, and Criticize

Keywords: Re: Amy C. Edmondson; Health

07 Aug 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Financial vs. Strategic Buyers

Keywords: by Marc Martos-Vila, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf & Jarrad Harford

March 2024
Article

When Are Social Protests Effective?

By: Eric Shuman, Amit Goldenberg, Tamar Saguy, Eran Halperin and Martijn van Zomeren

Around the world, people engage in social protests aimed at addressing major societal problems. Certain protests have led to significant progress, yet other protests have resulted in little demonstrable change. We introduce a framework for evaluating the effectiveness... View Details

Keywords: Protests; Social Issues; Outcome or Result; Measurement and Metrics; Power and Influence; Motivation and Incentives

Find at Harvard

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06 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Behavioral Finance—Benefiting from Irrational Investors

and the title of a second-year course he teaches at HBS. "At the foundation of finance is the idea that investors and managers act rationally, so that capital market prices reflect fundamentals and managers respond to incentives in... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

16 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist?

opposite is true. For example, we trust managers to carry out the interests of shareholders: We can build contracts to align manager incentives with those of shareholders, but we are never able to completely contract on all the things we... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

November 1999
Case

Long-Term Capital Management, L.P. (C)

By: Andre F. Perold

Long-Term Capital Management, L.P. (LTCM) was in the business of engaging in trading strategies to exploit market pricing discrepancies. Because the firm employed strategies designed to make money over long horizons--from six months to two years or more--it adopted a... View Details

Keywords: Fluctuation; Capital; Financial Liquidity; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Management; Risk Management; Markets; Motivation and Incentives; Financial Services Industry

November 1999
Case

Long-Term Capital Management, L.P. (A)

By: Andre F. Perold

Long-Term Capital Management, L.P. (LTCM) was in the business of engaging in trading strategies to exploit market pricing discrepancies. Because the firm employed strategies designed to make money over long horizons--from six months to two years or more--it adopted a... View Details

Keywords: Fluctuation; Capital; Financial Liquidity; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Management; Risk Management; Marketing; Motivation and Incentives; Financial Services Industry

Blog

Leading Successful Digital Transformation

during this interim period of upskilling, and the incentive and reward system should be adjusted to allow current employees to go through this U-curve of performance. A final word: Digital transformation requires strengthening the core... View Details

04 Jun 2001
What Do You Think?

What’s the Future of the Subscription Model?

value of their lifetime revenue streams, can provide a strong incentive for continued product and service excellence. At the same time that former manufacturing enterprises are adopting the subscription model, it appears that media and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

02 Aug 2007
What Do You Think?

How Will Millennials Manage?

Summing Up Are we approaching a "millennial watershed" in management? The next generation of managers, comprising many "millennials," will be more adept at managing in a changing, global, and networked environment. They will do it with a greater... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

08 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: A Sense of Urgency

The problem with using crises to reduce complacency and create urgency is that the tactic is a potential diamond sitting on a rock surrounded by quicksand and very nasty beasts. Any naiveté about the downside risks can cause disaster. Big Mistake Number 1: Assuming... View Details

Keywords: by John P. Kotter

April 1999 (Revised December 2003)
Case

Al Dunlap at Sunbeam

By: Brian J. Hall, Rakesh Khurana and Carleen Madigan

Al Dunlap was one of the best-known corporate turnaround artists of the 1990s. In 1996, he was hired at Sunbeam to effect a restructuring, but was fired almost two years later when the company's financial performance and stock price began to decline. Many of the... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Restructuring; Stock Shares; Performance Evaluation; Leadership Style; Resignation and Termination; Motivation and Incentives; Executive Compensation; Outcome or Result; Consumer Products Industry; United States