Publications

13 Aug 2019
News

How hobbies can improve your happiness and productivity at work

27 May 2022
News

How “Digital Nomad” Visas Can Boost Local Economies

January 2025 (Revised February 2025)
Technical Note

Skills-First Talent Management Onboarding, Development, and Performance Management

By: Boris Groysberg, James Barnett, Robin Abrahams and Katherine Connolly Baden

The second in a series of notes on how organizations manage skills-first talent-management chains, covering onboarding, development, and performance management. Onboarding included the practices, programs, and policies used by an organization to facilitate new employee... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employee Relationship Management; Management Systems; Performance; Personal Development and Career

2021
Article

Helping and Happiness: A Review and Guide for Public Policy

By: Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans

Perhaps one of the most reaffirming findings to emerge over the past several decades is that humans not only engage in generous behavior, they also appear to experience pleasure from doing so. Yet not all acts of helping lead to greater happiness. Here, we review the... View Details

Keywords: Generosity; Helping; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Happiness; Policy

Read Now

Article

Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage

By: Robert D. Austin and Gary P. Pisano

Many people with neurological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia have extraordinary skills, including those in pattern recognition, memory, and mathematics. Yet they often struggle to fit the profiles sought by employers. A growing number of... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Diversity; Competency and Skills

Register to Read

07 Mar 2022
Research & Ideas

Effective Leaders Share the Spotlight with Their Teams

During a 2017 Amgen earnings call, CEO Robert Bradway began answering an analyst’s question, then turned to colleague Sean Harper and said, “Sean, I'll let you talk about the specifics.” Bradway’s simple act of calling on Harper to add insight is the type of View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Comcast New England: A Journey of Organizational Transformation

By: Michael Beer and Anita Arun

This case describes how Kevin Casey, Comcast's New England Region general manager, transformed a low commitment and performance organization. When he took charge of this Comcast region he inherited an organization that was bureaucratic, had low customer satisfaction,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Satisfaction; Employee Relationship Management; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Performance Improvement; Telecommunications Industry; New England

Purchase

24 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

Passion at Work Is a Good Thing—But Only If Bosses Know How to Manage It

Who wouldn't want to work for a company that values passion? And what employer wouldn't seek an employee who’s deeply passionate about their work? But, here's the rub, according to recent research from Harvard Business School: View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Case

Rosalind Fox at John Deere

By: Anthony Mayo and Olivia Hull

Rosalind Fox, the factory manager at John Deere’s Des Moines, Iowa plant, has improved the financial standing of the factory in the three years she’s been at its helm. But employee engagement scores—which measured employees’ satisfaction with working conditions and... View Details

Purchase

10 Oct 2017
News

Radical Transparency Can Reduce Bias — but Only If It’s Done Right

28 Nov 2016
Blog Post

Why We Recruit: Wayfair

almost all of our non-engineering teams at HBS, including Category Management, Marketing, Product Management, Operations, and more. What recruiting tactics have you found most successful in engaging with students and/or alumni at... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

25 Aug 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Managerial Practices That Promote Voice and Taking Charge among Frontline Workers

Keywords: by Julia Rose Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer & Michael W. Toffel; Health

February 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Haier: Incubating Entrepreneurs in a Chinese Giant

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Nancy Hua Dai

CEO Zhang Ruimin must plan how to accelerate the growth of self-managed microenterprises. Platforms were Haier’s business platforms operating in five major sectors: white goods transformation, investment and incubation, financial holdings, real estate, and cultural... View Details

Keywords: China; Microenterprise; Appliances; Platform; Change; Innovation; Opportunities; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; China

Purchase

February 2016
Article

Unearned Status Gain: Evidence from a Global Language Mandate

By: Tsedal Neeley and Tracy Dumas

Theories of status rarely address unearned status gain—an unexpected and unsolicited increase in relative standing, prestige, or worth, attained not through individual effort or achievement, but from a shift in organizationally valued characteristics. We build theory... View Details

Keywords: Status and Position; Equality and Inequality; Spoken Communication; Organizations; Japan; United States