Publications

May 1994
Case

Laura Ashley (D)

By: Richard L. Nolan

Describes the resignation of the CEO hired three years earlier to transform the company. View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Resignation and Termination; Management Succession; Performance Evaluation

November 2005
Case

Michael Ovitz and The Walt Disney Company (A)

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Alexis Chernak

Faced with the need to hire a new president, The Walt Disney Co. pursued Michael Ovitz, a founder of the Creative Artist Agency. Although initially disinterested, Ovitz engaged in negotiations with Michael Eisner, CEO of The Walt Disney Co., in the summer of 1995... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Management Teams; Selection and Staffing; Negotiation; Organizational Culture

31 Aug 2021
Book

Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

School Professor Julie Battilana. The crux of the problem is that CEOs and other leaders often get such a power trip that they lack empathy and humility, which inhibits their ability to understand and respect what their View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

May–June 2019
Article

Cross-Silo Leadership

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Tiziana Casciaro and Sujin Jang

Today the most promising innovation and business opportunities require collaboration among functions, offices, and organizations. To realize them, companies must break down silos and get people working together across boundaries. But that’s a challenge for many... View Details

Keywords: Cross-functional Management; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Groups and Teams; Employees; Attitudes

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07 Jun 2021
News

Three Strategies for Winning the Post-pandemic War for Talent

January 2020
Article

The Job Rating Game: Revolving Doors and Analyst Incentives

By: Elisabeth Kempf

Investment banks frequently hire analysts from rating agencies. While many argue that this "revolving door" creates captured analysts, it can also create incentives to improve accuracy. To study this issue, I construct an original dataset, linking analysts to their... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating Agencies; Investment Banking; Recruitment; Performance Evaluation; Financial Services Industry

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August 2019
Case

Simón Cohen at Henco: Sustaining 'High Performance, Happy People'

By: Francesca Gino, Jeff Steiner, Arianna Camacho and Paul Green

Simón Cohen—Founder of Henco Logistics—transformed a small Mexican logistics company into a major player within the industry. Cohen credits the firm’s focus on employee happiness as the key ingredient to its success, an approach he developed following a personal... View Details

Keywords: Work/life Balance; Growth Strategy; Corporate Culture; Motivation; Values; Authentic Leadership Development; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Motivation and Incentives; Values and Beliefs; Service Operations; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry

Web

Rewiring the Workplace: Behavioral Economics and the Future of Inclusive Organizations - Blog: RGE Report

practice, however, alleviating the effects of inequities requires a shift in organizational culture, including fundamentally reworking value systems and decision-making frameworks to cultivate the best environment for the View Details

21 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Why Artificial Intelligence Isn't a Sure Thing to Increase Productivity

Evidence on Complementarities Between Human Capital and Machine Learning. The paper, written with Evan Starr and Rajshree Agarwal of the University of Maryland, suggests that firms must think carefully about... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology; Information

March 2008
Case

Patel Food and Chemicals Private Limited (A)

By: Felda Hardymon and Ann Leamon

Alok Patel, the founder and chairman of a Gujarat-based, privately held edible oils processor, must decide whether to hire a CFO candidate. Previously, his company's book-keeping has been done by an uncle, who has mentioned that he may retire soon. Patel could hire his... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Family Business; Managerial Roles; Emerging Markets; Diversity; Finance; Food and Beverage Industry; Gujarat

April 2011 (Revised July 2014)
Case

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.: Driving Change Through Internal Communication

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), confronted in 2003 with an urgent need to change how it operated externally, adopted a highly innovative approach to communicating internally. This case, set in 2010, presents an overview of the new, more interactive model of employee... View Details

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Interpersonal Communication; Employee Relationship Management; Innovation and Management; Leading Change; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Corporate Strategy; India

27 Jan 2011
News

The Gender Advantage for Multinational Firms

Web

Blending Traditional Models of Philanthropy with Business | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

evolved since then. Social impact for me is including a human angle when making decisions. It's a value system. In a business context it means considering your impact in the context of the whole - your environment, your customers, your... View Details

2021
Working Paper

Venture Capital's 'Me Too' Moment

By: Sophie Calder-Wang, Paul A. Gompers and Patrick Sweeney

In this paper, we document the historically low rate of hiring of women in the venture capital sector. We find that the high-profile Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins gender discrimination trial had dramatic treatment effects. In difference-in-differences regressions, we... View Details

Keywords: Gender Discrimination; Founders; Venture Capital; Selection and Staffing; Gender; Lawsuits and Litigation

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Web

Expatriate Traders in the Treaty Port Communities - A Chronicle of the China Trade

intricacies and nuances of the trading business as well as a foreign climate, diet, language, and occasional violence that erupted in the treaty ports. In Canton, employees of... View Details

March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Culture at Google

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Amy Klopfenstein and Sarah Mehta

Beginning in 2017, technology (tech) company Google faced a series of employee-relations issues that threatened its unique culture of innovation and open communication. Issues included protests surrounding Google’s contracts with the U.S. government, restrictions of... View Details

June 2012
Article

Leadership Is a Conversation

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

Globalization and new technologies have sharply reduced the efficacy of command-and-control management and its accompanying forms of corporate communication. In the course of a recent research project, the authors concluded that by talking with employees, rather than... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Management Style; Interpersonal Communication; Leadership; Cooperation; Partners and Partnerships

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September 2017
Case

Dr. William Carson— Intrapreneurial Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry

By: Steven Rogers and Alyssa Haywoode

Dr. William Carson, an African-American alum of Harvard University became the President and CEO of a multi billion dollar division of Otsuka, a Japan based pharmaceutical company. His ascension to this leadership position followed a thriving career in academic medicine... View Details

Keywords: Dr. Williams Carson; Otsuka America Pharmaceutical; Harvard; Abilify; Aripiprazole; Health Testing and Trials; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Decision Choices and Conditions; Pharmaceutical Industry; Japan