Publications

November 2017 (Revised June 2019)
Case

JOE & THE JUICE Crosses the Atlantic (with video link)

By: Ethan Rouen and Suraj Srinivasan

As JOE & THE JUICE began its rapid U.S. expansion in 2017, its founder and CEO, Kaspar Basse, fretted about how he could keep his employees feeling like they were doing meaningful work. Founded in 2001, JOE & THE JUICE had always focused on making healthy juices,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Employees; Retention; Expansion; Growth Management

06 Jun 2018
Research & Ideas

Cut Salaries or Cut People? The Best Way to Survive a Downturn

eugeniek Companies looking to shed costs in an economic downturn rarely cut compensation—typically, they slash jobs instead. New research confirms the wisdom of that decision. The study concludes that when a company cuts employee pay the... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

November 2008 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Teena Lerner: Dividing the Pie at Rx Capital (Abridged)

By: Boris Groysberg, Victoria Winston and Robin Abrahams

Teena Lerner, the CEO of Rx Capital, had a problem. Her three-year-old hedge fund was highly profitable, but in 2004, one of her four equities analysts lost a lot of money for the firm. If Lerner followed her existing compensation system, designed to reward teamwork,... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Evaluation; Groups and Teams; Financial Services Industry

25 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Steer Clear of the Blind Spots That Derail Experiments

Should companies let employees keep working remotely after the COVID-19 pandemic ends? Assessing the impact of remote work has involved a lot of guesswork for business leaders, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Consider the Chinese... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

[This is the sixth installment in a monthly series on management issues in the time of COVID-19.] We recently asked 600 CEOs: What is keeping you awake at night during this global pandemic? A major and multifaceted concern that emerged is how to keep View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

02 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

What If Closing the Wage Gap Means Everyone Earns Less?

It’s a sticky but common dilemma for managers: A valued employee finds out that a coworker earns more, gets upset, and demands a raise. If gender or race figure into the wage gap, tensions can escalate fast. Companies, including Whole... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

December 2022 (Revised June 2023)
Case

KKR at CHI Overhead Doors (A)

By: Dennis Campbell and Ethan Rouen

This case examines the decision by private equity firm KKR to grant equity to every employee at portfolio company CHI Overhead Doors upon purchasing the company in 2015. The case explores whether this initiative will create shared value, growing profits through better... View Details

Keywords: Performance Improvement; Profit Sharing; Compensation and Benefits; Organizational Culture

October 2014
Case

Honeywell and the Great Recession (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Susan J. Winterberg

CEO Dave Cote spent six years turning around an ailing Honeywell and in 2008 Cote and his team face a new challenge: how to respond to the Great Recession. Cote does not want to give up the gains he made in transforming and unifying Honeywell. With a fall-off in... View Details

Keywords: Layoffs; Furloughs; Downsizing; Work Sharing; Short Time Work; Recessions; Earnings Forecast; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Cost Management; Executive Compensation; Crisis Management; Financial Crisis; Manufacturing Industry

May–June 2021
Article

Eliminate Strategic Overload

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee

As companies respond to intensifying competitive pressures and challenges, they ask more and more of their employees. But organizations often have very little to show for the efforts of their talented and engaged workers. By selecting fewer initiatives with greater... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Initiatives; Value-based Strategy; Organizational Effectiveness; Strategy; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

06 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Motivate Your High Performers to Share Their Knowledge

Many employees fall into a rut. They do their jobs and respond to challenges in a set way to deliver stable results. But consistency can give way to performance gaps between a company’s high achievers and its weakest links. Fortunately,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

06 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

Money and Quotas Motivate the Sales Force Best

who were selling water purifiers, were not told they were part of an experiment; Chung says the four branches were selected far apart to limit any "watercooler effect" of employees comparing notes. Within the six months, there were 14... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Retail

September 2019
Case

JTC: Stronger Together with Shared Ownership

By: Ethan Bernstein and Daniela Beyersdorfer

Nigel Le Quesne, CEO of Jersey-based financial services firm JTC, firmly believed that "shared ownership" was at the heart of his company’s successful track record. The firm had seen its revenues, profits, and number of clients and staff grow steadily throughout its... View Details

Keywords: Ownership; Employee Ownership; Leadership Style; Compensation and Benefits; Organizational Culture; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Going Public; Mission and Purpose; Management Practices and Processes; Human Resources; Financial Services Industry; Channel Islands; Europe; United States

January 1998 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Lincoln Electric: Venturing Abroad

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Jamie O'Connell

Lincoln Electric, a 100-year-old manufacturer of welding equipment and consumables based in Cleveland, Ohio, motivates its U.S. employees through a culture of cooperation between management and labor and an unusual compensation system based on piecework and a large... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Restructuring; Transformation; Construction; Compensation and Benefits; Management; Market Entry and Exit; Labor and Management Relations; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Manufacturing Industry; Ohio

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 the skills they’ll need to hire for or train for in View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology; Information

17 Aug 2018
News

Worker Representation on Boards Won’t Work Without Trust

February 2009 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Jieliang Phone Home! (A)

By: Willy Shih, Ethan Bernstein and Nina Bilimoria

At Precision Electro-Tek's mobile phone manufacturing facility in southern China, thousands of operators—bright and capable young men and (mostly) women like Jieliang Hao—are motivated to improve line productivity through small innovations for faster assembly and have... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Job Design and Levels; Business Processes; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Manufacturing Industry; China

April 2023 (Revised July 2023)
Case

Fermenting Accounting Problems at Vermont Kombucha Corp.

By: Tatiana Sandino and Marshal Herrmann

Founded in 2005, Vermont Kombucha Corp. (V-Ko) was an early mover in the fledgling U.S. market for kombucha, a drink brewed for its health benefits. Early on, the company captured more than 90% of market share. Under the leadership of its founder and CEO, Joe Williams,... View Details

Keywords: Going Public; Business Model; Financial Reporting; Ethics; Corporate Governance; Stock Shares; Food and Beverage Industry

Research Summary

Overview

By: Tatiana Sandino

In studying management control systems, Professor Sandino aims to understand how different control mechanisms can help lead employees within an organization to achieve common goals. Her work builds on contingency theory by exploring environmental, strategic, and... View Details

November 2007
Article

Innovation and Incentives: Evidence from Corporate R&D

By: Josh Lerner and Julie Wulf

Beginning in the late 1980s, American corporations began increasingly linking the compensation of central research personnel to the economic objectives of the corporation. This paper examines the impact of the shifting compensation of the heads of corporate research... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Research and Development; Patents; Employee Stock Ownership Plan