Publications
Publications
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(2,251)
- Faculty Publications (380)
- 2016
- Working Paper
Towards a Prescriptive Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategic Choice, Learning, and Competition
By: Gary P. Pisano
The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Advantage
- April 2016 (Revised February 2018)
- Teaching Note
Riot Games: Can Culture Survive Growth?
By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Norris
This teaching note gives instructors a guide for a discussion of Riot Games, a fast growing videogames firm with a strong, player-centric culture. It also offers references to research on culture that will allow students to decide whether or not Riot Games’ culture... View Details
- 2016
- Book
Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Charles A. O'Reilly and Michael Tushman
In the past few years, a number of well-known firms have failed—think of Blockbuster, Kodak, and RadioShack. When we read about their demise, it often seems inevitable—a natural part of "creative destruction." But closer examination reveals a disturbing truth:... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Who Should Select New Employees, Headquarters or the Unit Manager? Consequences of Centralizing Hiring at a Retail Chain
By: Carolyn Deller and Tatiana Sandino
We examine how changing the allocation of hiring decision rights in a multiunit organization affects employee-firm match quality, contingent on a unit’s circumstances. Our research site, a US retail chain, switched from a decentralized hiring model (hiring by business... View Details
- Article
Reflections on the 2013 Decade Award: 'Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited' Ten Years Later
By: Mary Benner and Michael Tushman
This paper reflects on Benner and Tushman (2003): "Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited." Our paper received the Academy of Management Review's best paper award in 2003 and the decade award in 2013. We consider the... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Self-Interest: The Economist's Straitjacket
By: Robert Simons
This paper examines contemporary economic theories that focus on the design and management of business organizations. In the first part of the paper, a taxonomy is presented that describes the different types of economists interested in this subject—market economists,... View Details
Keywords: Self-interest; Economist; Moral Philosophers; Regulation; Capture; Organization Design; Economy Theory; Organization Theory; Management Theory; Commitment; Controls; Governance; Customers; Conflict of Interests; Business or Company Management; Competition; Organizational Design; Business Education; Agency Theory; Economics; Theory; Boundaries
- October 6, 2015
- Article
Compared to Men, Women View Professional Advancement as Equally Attainable, but Less Desirable
By: Francesca Gino, Caroline Ashley Wilmuth and Alison Wood Brooks
Women are underrepresented in most high-level positions in organizations. While a great deal of research has provided evidence that bias and discrimination give rise to and perpetuate this gender disparity, in the current research, we explore another explanation: men... View Details
- Article
The Lives and Deaths of Jobs: Technical Interdependence and Survival in a Job Structure
By: Sharique Hasan, John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning
Prior work has considered the properties of individual jobs that make them more or less likely to survive in organizations. Yet little research examines how a job’s position within a larger job structure affects its life chances and thus the evolution of the... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
A Normative Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategy, Know-How, and Competition
By: Gary P. Pisano
The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Deep Smarts as the Underpinnings of Dynamic Capabilities
By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Michelle Barton
Both ordinary and dynamic capabilities depend upon the deep smarts, i.e., business-critical, experience-based knowledge, held in the heads of an organization’s top talent. This chapter examines the links between individual and organizational capabilities and presents... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
How Leaders Use Values-based Guidance Systems to Create Dynamic Capabilities
How do strategic leaders create change-adept organizations? Based on qualitative field research, this chapter argues that well-defined institutionalized purpose, values, and principles act as an organizational guidance system that integrates and strengthens the... View Details
- August 2015 (Revised February 2017)
- Background Note
The Whys and Hows of Feedback
By: Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams
Performance feedback is crucial to a career in the information-rich global economy. However, feedback is psychologically stressful to both give, and hear. This teaching note explains why feedback is both valuable and difficult, and goes on to summarize research on... View Details
- Article
The Integration of Psychological and Network Perspectives in Organizational Scholarship
By: Tiziana Casciaro, Sigal G. Barsade, Amy C. Edmondson, Cristina B. Gibson, David Krackhardt and Giuseppe Labianca
Although multiple disciplines have been applied to the study of organizations, organizational research is rarely interdisciplinary in the sense of two or more disciplines being linked in the joint analysis of organizational phenomena. The articles in this special issue... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Institutional Innovation: Novel, Useful, and Legitimate
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Mary Ann Glynn
This chapter advances the theoretical construct of institutional innovation, which we define as novel, useful and legitimate change that disrupts, to varying degrees, the cognitive, normative, or regulative mainstays of an organizational field. Institutional... View Details
- Article
Real Effects of Relational Contracts
By: Steven Blader, Claudine Gartenberg, Rebecca Henderson and Andrea Pratt
How important are factors such as "firm culture" and "employee engagement" in driving firm performance? Increasing evidence from a wide range of fields suggests that productivity differs widely across firms, even after the inclusion of careful controls for factors such... View Details
- Article
Team Scaffolds: How Mesolevel Structures Enable Role-based Coordination in Temporary Groups
By: M. Valentine and A. C. Edmondson
This paper shows how meso-level structures support effective coordination in temporary groups. Prior research on coordination in temporary groups describes how roles encode individual responsibilities so that coordination between relative strangers is possible. We... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Innovating without Information Constraints: Organization, Communities, and Innovation when Information Costs Approach Zero
By: Elizabeth J. Altman, Frank Nagle and Michael Tushman
Innovation has traditionally taken place within an organization's boundaries and/or with selected partners. This Chandlerian approach to innovation has been rooted in transaction costs, organizational boundaries, and information processing challenges associated with... View Details
- April 2015
- Article
Measuring Teamwork in Health Care Settings: A Review of Survey Instruments
By: Melissa Valentine, Ingrid M. Nembhard and Amy C. Edmondson
Background: Teamwork in health care settings is widely recognized as an important factor in providing high quality patient care. However, the behaviors that comprise effective teamwork, the organizational factors that support teamwork, and the relationship... View Details
- March 2015
- Supplement
Sanford C. Bernstein CEO Robert van Brugge
By: Linda A. Hill and Allison J. Wigen
Sanford C. Bernstein CEO (and former Global Director of Research) Robert van Brugge answers questions about organizational culture, change management, and collaboration, in this video supplement to the HBS case series "Global Expansion at Sanford C. Bernstein." Sanford... View Details