Publications

07 Dec 2021
Op-Ed

Want to Build Better Leaders? Focus on Mindset, Skills, Knowledge

seek opportunities for them to lead early-stage initiatives that will likely change often. During periodic assessments, organizations can ask leaders: What are they noticing in themselves? How have they responded to evolving events? How... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and Shawnette Rochelle

December 1992 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Becton Dickinson Division: Marketing Organization

By: Frank V. Cespedes

The marketing director for the largest division of a health care products company is reviewing the structure and staffing of the division's marketing organization. The division has authorization to hire an additional marketing manager. Hence, the immediate case... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Health Care and Treatment; Human Resources; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Managerial Roles; Product Marketing; Measurement and Metrics; Organizational Structure; Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Health Industry

27 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Manly Men, Oil Platforms, and Breaking Stereotypes

masculinity in the workplace. A resulting working paper, "Unmasking Manly Men: The Organizational Reconstruction of Male Identity," not only explores how organizations influence the way men enact their gender, but also looks at... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

September 2020
Case

Disrupting Justice at RightNow: Persevere, Pivot or Perish

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani

The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a pivot, investor relations,... View Details

Keywords: Legal Aspects Of Business; Startup; Teams; Pivot; Financing; Entrepreneurship; Law; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Financing and Loans; Business Model; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Legal Services Industry; Germany

July 2011
Case

Edna McConnell Clark Foundation-Enabling a Performance Driven Philanthropic Capital Market

By: Allen Grossman and Aldo Sesia

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, focused on building the organizational capabilities of nonprofits that served the disadvantaged youth in the United States, has recently been named an intermediary in the federal government's new social innovation fund (SIF), which... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Financial Strategy; Performance Improvement; Capital Markets; United States

Web

Entrepreneurial Management Curriculum - Faculty & Research

Business Model . Designing organizational structures and processes that allocate responsibilities, promote cross-functional integration, recruit/develop/promote employees, acquire critical resources and financing, and budget/monitor... View Details

2009
Working Paper

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture—in the sense of shared beliefs and values—in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Cost vs Benefits; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Theory

Read Now

February 2009 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Publicis Groupe 2009: Toward a Digital Transformation

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Matthew Bird

After a series of acquisitions, Maurice Levy, the Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, had created the fourth largest marketing and communications company in the world. His next major challenge was managing the firm's digital transformation. In December 2006, the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Transformation; Financial Crisis; Globalized Firms and Management; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Information Technology; Advertising Industry; Communications Industry

09 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Come Fly with Me: A History of Airline Leadership

1978, U.S. airlines were one of the most government-regulated businesses, when suddenly full deregulation changed the competitive landscape once again. How individual executives both shaped the industry and were shaped by it is the... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Air Transportation

January 2009 (Revised March 2009)
Case

A Chinese Start-up's Midlife Crisis: 99Sushe.com

By: William C. Kirby, F. Warren McFarlan and Tracy Manty

Now into their third year at the helm of an Internet start-up in China, Ken Pao and Bill Li were managing a totally different company (with a new name) from the one they first founded in 2006. Having changed their business model from a social networking site to an... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment Funds; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; China

February 2004
Case

The Making of Verizon

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Douglas A Raymond and Ryan Raffaelli

Through a series of mergers, Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon chairman and CEO, successfully shared the co-CEO title twice while building the largest telecom company in the United States. The strong and complementary cultures of the companies that Seidenberg and a key group of... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Change Management; Transition; Leading Change; Organizational Culture; Risk Management; Telecommunications Industry; United States

Web

Online Management Course | HBS Online

processes: decision-making, implementation, organizational learning, and change management. 8 weeks 4-7 hours per week 4 modules Self-Paced This course earns you a Certificate of Completion from HBS Online.... View Details

02 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 2

research on complex organizations. Yet, the behaviors of top executives are frequently featured as an important determinant in historical treatments of strategic change inside large firms. Theories of View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May–June 2019
Article

Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Judith K. Wallenstein and Alice de Chalendar

In 2018 the Project on Managing the Future of Work at HBS teamed up with the BCG Henderson Institute to survey 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers about the various forces reshaping the nature of work. The responses revealed a surprising gap: While the executives... View Details

Keywords: Management; Employees; Attitudes; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation

Find at Harvard

Read Now

25 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

Collaborating Across Cultures

today's business environment, says Roy Y.J. Chua, an assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School who has focused his research on exploring how such collaboration can effectively take place. A... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

09 May 2017
What Do You Think?

Should Management Be Primarily Responsible to Shareholders?

changing the tax laws to render tax-free those capital gains earned on stock held for ten years or more. Shann Turnbull suggested the need for education in “new organizational forms” such as “Network... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

14 Apr 2022
Op-Ed

Let’s Move Forward from COVID—Without Forgetting What We’ve Learned

involuntary loss of knowledge in an organization. The type of organizational forgetting occurring now is creating more problems. Instead of relying on the lessons learned from two years of COVID-19 crisis management, organizations are... View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and MaShon Wilson

16 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Can Decades of Military Overspending be Fixed?

Editor's note: Even with recent disclosures about out-of-control spending on corporate perks and government agency parties, the US military is frequently held up as the exemplar of organizational largesse run wild. In the new book Defense... View Details

Keywords: by J. Ronald Fox; Service

October 2014 (Revised December 2018)
Case

Jean-Claude Biver (A): The Reemergence of the Swiss Watch Industry

By: Ryan Raffaelli

In the early 1980s, the Swiss watch industry was near collapse after failing to adapt to Japanese competition from battery-powered quartz technology. In 1982, Jean-Claude Biver purchased Blancpain, a watch company that had been out of business since 1961 but had once... View Details

Keywords: Re-emergence; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Transformation; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Switzerland