Publications

Educators

June 2002
Case

Oxfam America in 2002

Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America,a major international relief and development nongovernmental organization (NGO), is working with his staff to undertake a major strategic shift in the organization. The organization is placing a growing emphasis on... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business or Company Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Non-Governmental Organizations

2008
Book

Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage

By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Joe Wheeler

Hundreds of large organizations worldwide have used the groundbreaking Service Profit Chain to improve business performance. Now The Ownership Quotient reveals the next generation of the chain: customer and employee "owners" of your business. Employee-owners exhibit... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Customer Ownership; Employee Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation

March 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Technical Note

Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both — Lessons from Retail & Service Chains

By: Tatiana Sandino

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Standards; Employees; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Retail Industry; Service Industry

Educators

June 1995 (Revised June 1995)
Case

Ernst & Young United Kingdom (A)

By: John J. Gabarro and Samantha Graff

Intended to be a robust example of the challenges encountered during the early stages of a large-scale organizational transformation effort in a professional service firm. Describes a massive change program initiated and led by the new managing partner along with a... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Change Management; Leading Change; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Problems and Challenges; United Kingdom; London

Article

The Mixed Effects of Online Diversity Training

By: Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman, Dena M. Gromet, Robert W. Rebele, Cade Massey, Angela L. Duckworth and Adam M. Grant

We present results from a large (n = 3,016) field experiment at a global organization testing whether a brief science-based online diversity training can change attitudes and behaviors toward women in the workplace. Our preregistered field experiment included an... View Details

Keywords: Diversity Training; Bias; Field Experiment; Training; Gender; Race; Prejudice and Bias

2008
Working Paper

The Future of Social Enterprise

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Herman B. Leonard and Susan McDonald

The Future of Social Enterprise considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. We trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Investment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Performance Effectiveness; Social Enterprise; Consolidation; Value

June 2020
Article

Start-up Inertia versus Flexibility: The Role of Founder Identity in a Nascent Industry

By: Tiona Zuzul and Mary Tripsas

Through an inductive, comparative study of four early entrants in the nascent air taxi market, we examine why start-ups, generally characterized as flexible, malleable entities, might instead exhibit inertial behavior. While two of the firms engaged in ongoing... View Details

Keywords: Founder Identity; Nascent Industries; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity

Register to Read

April 2017
Teaching Note

Global Leadership in a Dynamic and Evolving Region: Molinas @ The Coca-Cola Company (A, B, C, D)

By: Tsedal Neeley and Nathan Overmeyer

Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 417-068, 417-069, 417-070, and 417-071. View Details

Keywords: Functions; Structure; Centralization; Decentralization; Diversity; Country Of Origin Effects; Global Contextual Intelligence; Leading Change; Crisis Management; Organizational Structure; Experience and Expertise; Situation or Environment; Central Asia; Turkey

Article

Organizational Culture, Innovativeness and Market Orientation in Hong Kong Five Years After Handover: What Has Changed?

By: Rohit Deshpandé and John U. Farley

Keywords: Markets; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Culture; Change; Hong Kong

July 1998 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Champion International

By: Michael Beer and James Weber

Richard Olson, a long-tenured employee, was named CEO of Champion in 1996. Champion had been conducting an organizational transformation since the early 1980s that could be considered successful on most operational and social measures. However, due to industry... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design

10 Jan 2007
HBS Case

The Challenge of Managing National Security

carry back to private-sector organizations. As for how the intelligence community is doing, we're still seeing the structural changes in the community play out. Two of the most important are the establishment of the role of Director of... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Service

July 2021
Article

Big Data for Social Benefits: Innovation as a Mediator of the Relationship between Big Data and Corporate Social Performance

By: Goran Calic and Maryam Ghasemaghaei

Over the last decade, the use big data in firms has seen a rapid increase. Whilst scholars have begun to unpack the relationship between big data utilisation and financial performance, significant uncertainty exists about the ethical uses of this new asset. Whether... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Improvement; Organizational Change and Adaptation

14 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Working Moms Are Mostly Thriving Again. Can We Finally Achieve Gender Parity?

So much has changed since a groundbreaking study found that daughters of working moms often perform better in their own careers than daughters of stay-at-home moms—and are just as happy, to boot. Diversity, equity, View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Companies Must Forget—and Borrow

established organizations are wise to consider radically new approaches that address changing needs of consumers in today's digital age. Yet companies should be wary of the temptation to toss out all... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education; Advertising

December 1998 (Revised July 2016)
Background Note

Tools of Cooperation, The

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Howard H. Stevenson and Jeremy Dann

Presents a theory about the tools a manager can use to get people to agree on a coordinated course of action and effect change in his or her organization. The extent to which people in the organization agree on the way the world works, and agree on what they want,... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Framework; Managerial Roles; Organizations; Performance Effectiveness; Cooperation

Educators

August 25, 2022
Article

Find the Right Pace for Your AI Rollout

By: Rebecca Karp and Aticus Peterson

Implementing AI can introduce disruptive change and disfranchise staff and employees. When members are reluctant to adopt a new technology, they might hesitate to use it, push back against its deployment, or use it in limited capacity — which affects the benefits an... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Change Management