Publications

SSRN

01 Sep 2020
Blog Post

6 Ways to Support COVID-Weary Employees

as their mental well-being—a forthcoming article in American Psychologist examines current organizational psychology research to help business leaders manage COVID-related fallout in the workplace and develop solutions to ease the stress... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

April 2016 (Revised December 2016)
Case

The Container Store

By: Tatiana Sandino, Zeynep Ton and Aldo Sesia

The Container Store (TCS) is a Texas-based retailer of organization and storage solutions. The company prides itself in taking care of its employees first, and its cofounder and CEO Kip Tindell practices Conscious Capitalism. Since its beginnings in 1978, TCS grew to a... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Conscious Capitalism; Merchandising; Customer Focus and Relationships; Growth and Development Strategy; Operations; Service Delivery; Going Public; Performance Evaluation; Performance Productivity; Retail Industry; United States

05 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

Understanding the Process of Innovation

Idea Group's four-phase process of innovation: the generation of ideas and the winnowing of the ideas down to a manageable few. There's usually some process by which a potentially great idea gets prostituted into something lackluster.—... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gray

March 27, 2013
Article

Downton Abbey: Real Life Lessons for Trust & Estate Advisors

By: Josh Baron and Devin Bird

The article discusses how the TV series "Downton Abbey" reflects challenges and opportunities faced by business families. The show's storyline, centered around the aristocratic Crawley family and their estate, parallels real-world situations where business families... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; Management Succession; Family Ownership; Adaptation; Transition

Read Now

January 2025
Case

Shifting Winds: DEI in Corporate America

By: Clayton S. Rose, Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon and David Lane

In the 2020s, intense and conflicting social and political pressures challenged organizational leaders around the world. Prominent among these were powerful competing views on workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) in the United States. Public... View Details

16 Dec 2020
Blog Post

Faculty Books Published in 2020

In 2020, our faculty published 14 books that dive into their research and pull from their professional experiences on topics including the future of capitalism, managing time, how AI is transforming work, the power of experiments, a... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

September 2018
Case

Verisk: Trailblazing in the Big Data Jungle

By: Andrew Wasynczuk, Francesca Gino and Karim Sameh

This case revolves around Verisk Analytics' initiatives to drive innovation throughout the firm's many business verticals. Verisk, originally named ISO, started life as an insurance rating agency in the early 1970s, acting as an intermediary between insurance companies... View Details

March 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Background Note

Getting to Net Zero: The Role of the Financial Sector

By: Shawn Cole, Jonah Zahnd, Karina Chung and Jack Cenovic

In early 2025, momentum towards the goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 continued in many parts of the world, even as it appeared to face a set-back following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Financial institutions... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Law; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Risk and Uncertainty; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry

10 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Become a Value Creator

asked how he could pay back the favor. Cash put his arm around his colleague's shoulder and said, "You don't owe me anything, Brian. This is the way we do things here. Just pay it forward." “Shareholder value or profits are... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

10 Dec 2007
HBS Case

One Laptop per Child

Drop it on the ground. Sprinkle water on its surface. Let it sit in the sun and expose it to swarms of dust—the XO laptop is designed to handle most any abuse from a child. But the journey of the XO laptop from concept to the educational tool for the world's poorest... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Computer

December 2021
Case

Whistleblowing at Veolia: A Technology Solution

By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese, Christian Godwin and James Weber

In 2019, Bruno Masson, the vice chairman of Veolia’s Ethics Committee, was preparing for a meeting on a rollout plan for a new whistleblowing system to more countries. Veolia, a global supplier of water, waste, and energy services, had recently gone through several... View Details

Keywords: Whistleblowing; Corporate Misconduct; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Crime and Corruption; Values and Beliefs; Trust; Employee Relationship Management; Utilities Industry

06 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

Why Businesses Need a Language Strategy

global marketplace, it is imperative for multinational organizations to have clear language strategies. Neeley has coauthored a September Harvard Business Review article with HBS Professor of Management Practice Robert Steven Kaplan on... View Details

Keywords: Re: Tsedal Neeley

06 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

The Truth About Authentic Leaders

Engage in reflection and introspective practices by taking time every day to step back from the 24/7 world, turn off all electronics, and reflect on what is most important to them. This can be done through introspective practices that are... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

04 May 2021
Book

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

distills the formula down to five key ingredients: Connecting employees with what drives them, and this is usually focused around finding ways to make the world a better place; Creating genuine human connection among employees and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail

24 Oct 2016
Research & Ideas

Bernie Madoff Explains Himself

evening for several months. Madoff, a renowned stockbroker turned fraudster, conducted the phone calls from FCI Butner, a medium-security federal correctional institution in North Carolina. At the time, he was serving the third year of a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

29 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 29, 2008

delivery around specific categories of disease. It provides an opportunity to evaluate BWH's approach to integration along all of these dimensions and to identify the nature of the tradeoffs that hospitals—specifically, academic medical... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

June 2020
Article

Air Pollution, State Anxiety, and Unethical Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review

By: J Lu, J. Lee, F. Gino and A. Galinsky

Lu, Lee, Gino, and Galinsky (2018) reported four studies demonstrating that air pollution predicted unethical behavior and that one mediating mechanism was state anxiety. In contrast, Heck and colleagues reported two null-effect studies on air pollution, trait... View Details

Keywords: State Anxiety; Pollution; Behavior; Moral Sensibility; Analysis