Publications

Research Summary

FOUNDATIONS OF BUSINESS STRATEGY

Pankaj Ghemawat is involved in an ongoing stream of research and course development on the foundations of business strategy. Recent work has included the application of game theory to business strategy, as reported in the book Games Businesses Play, and the... View Details

October 2010
Article

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric 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: Cost vs Benefits; Organizational Culture; Economics; Information Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Values and Beliefs; Mergers and Acquisitions; Framework; Satisfaction; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Communication

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Asim Ijaz Khwaja is the Director of the Center for International Development and the Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-founder of the View Details

June 2011
Article

Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-granted Rules of Self-censorship at Work

By: J. R. Detert and Amy C. Edmondson

This article examines, in a series of four studies, the nature and impact of implicit voice theories-largely taken-for-granted beliefs about when and why speaking up at work is risky or inappropriate. In Study 1, qualitative data from 190 interviews conducted in a... View Details

Keywords: Spoken Communication; Interpersonal Communication; Employees; Managerial Roles; Organizational Culture; Risk and Uncertainty; Behavior

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2010
Chapter

When Does Leadership Matter? A Contingent Opportunities View of CEO Leadership

By: Noam Wasserman, Nitin Nohria and Bharat Anand

There is by now a long-standing debate on the impact that CEOs have on company performance. Studies of leadership describe how CEOs can significantly impact company performance, while the "constraints" perspective argues that leaders are sufficiently constrained by... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Leadership; Performance Improvement; Research; Opportunities

20 Jun 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Conversational Peers and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Keywords: by Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

October 2020
Article

Comparative Statics for Size-Dependent Discounts in Matching Markets

By: David Delacretaz, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexandru Nichifor

We prove a natural comparative static for many-to-many matching markets in which agents’ choice functions exhibit size-dependent discounts: reducing the extent to which some agent discounts additional partners leads to improved outcomes for the agents on the other side... View Details

Keywords: Size-dependent Discounts; Path-independence; Respect For Improvements; Market Design; Mathematical Methods

Article

Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand: Impediments to Economic Activity, Market Failures, and Profitability

By: Dennis Yao

In this paper it is argued that failures of the competitive market are necessary conditions for supranormal profitability. Three fundamental causes of these market failures-production economies and sunk costs, transactions costs, and imperfect information-are developed... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Markets; Failure; Profit; Cost; Information; Market Transactions; Competition; Strategy; Production

Research Summary

Governance of Interorganizational Exchange

By: Ranjay Gulati

In a series of papers, I examine the antecedents and consequences of governance choices in exchange relations. Using data from the automotive industry, a coauthor and I have examined the dynamics associated with the social and contractual structure of sourcing... View Details

18 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education

theory of disruptive innovation, often applied to a variety of other industries, such as technology and health care. Christensen's theory was first explored in his two New York Times bestsellers, The... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

17 Mar 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

2018
Working Paper

Channeled Attention and Stable Errors -- Previous Working Version

By: Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch, Matthew Rabin and Joshua Schwartzstein

A common critique of models of mistaken beliefs is that people should recognize their error after observations they thought were unlikely. This paper develops a framework for assessing when a given error is likely to be discovered, in the sense that the error-maker... View Details

Keywords: Perception; Behavior; Theory; Situation or Environment

Michael Tushman holds degrees from Northeastern University (B.S.E.E.), Cornell University (M.S.), and the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. (Ph.D.). Tushman was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, from 1976 to 1998 where he was... View Details

March 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Module Note

Sales Force Compensation

By: Doug J. Chung

The author developed this note for scholars, educators, and practitioners that are interested in sales force compensation. It is based on the author’s investigations across a variety of organizations in multiple industries and provides a conceptual framework for the... View Details

Keywords: Sales Strategy; Sales Force Management; Sales Compensation; Salary; Commissions; Bonuses; Quota Setting/updating; Quota Frequency; Extrinsic Vs Intrinsic Motivation; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Strategy

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13 Oct 2021
News

A Transactional Approach to Power

Research Summary

How and When Does Hierarchy Emerge in Firms?

Despite understanding that formal structure within firms is crucial for maintaining coordination and control as young firms grow, relatively little is systematically known about the initial formation of hierarchy in firms. By exploiting access to a dataset of all... View Details

Keywords: Organization Design; Start-up Growth; Startup Management; Organizational Design; Entrepreneurship; Brazil

September 2021
Article

Shaking Things Up: Disruptive Events and Inequality

By: Letian Zhang

This paper develops a theory of how disruptive events could reduce racial and gender inequality in organizations. Despite pressure from regulators and advocates, racial and gender inequality in the workplace remains high. I theorize that because such inequality is... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Equality and Inequality; Diversity; Race; Gender; Restructuring; Mergers and Acquisitions; Disruption

2010
Article

We Cannot Go On: Disruptive Innovation and the First World War Royal Navy

By: Gautam Mukunda

Insights from Disruptive Innovation theory (DI) are often used in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of national security policy. DI explains why successful companies are sometimes defeated by new competitors with relatively unsophisticated products.... View Details

Keywords: Technology; History; National Security; Framework; Adaptation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Technological Innovation; Machinery and Machining; Disruptive Innovation; Theory; Developing Countries and Economies; Technology Industry