Publications

Educators

Article

Advancing Research on Hybrid Organizing—Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises

By: Julie Battilana and Matthew Lee

Hybrid organizations that combine multiple organizational forms deviate from socially legitimate templates for organizing and thus experience unique organizing challenges. In this paper, we introduce and develop the concept of hybrid organizing, which we define as the... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Social Enterprise; Organizational Structure; Social Entrepreneurship

2019
Article

Reflections on 25 Years of Building Social Enterprise Education

By: James E. Austin and V. Kasturi Rangan

Purpose—This paper aims to reflect on 25 years of the Social Enterprise Initiative at the Harvard Business School, examining the processes and thinking involved at key stages of this pioneering Initiative’s implementation and... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise Initiative; Harvard Business School; Social Enterprise; Education; Programs

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December 2015
Article

Harnessing Productive Tensions in Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Work Integration Social Enterprises

By: Julie Battilana, Metin Sengul, Anne-Claire Pache and Jacob Model

We examine the factors that influence the social performance of hybrid organizations that pursue a social mission, and sustain their operations through commercial activities, by studying work integration social enterprises (WISEs). We argue that social imprinting and... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Organizations; Performance Productivity

March 2011 (Revised August 2014)
Background Note

Social Media in Health Care

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Selin Gunal Tyler and Charles C. Huang

This note reviews the social media firms in health care that help providers and consumers to interact and their nascent business models. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Health Care and Treatment; Digital Platforms; Social and Collaborative Networks; Health Industry

Educators

09 Jun 2015
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Social Media

Using social media to advance your marketing is a potentially powerful and low-cost tool. But the risk is potentially powerful, too—allowing consumers to co-create your brand is enough to induce night sweats... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty; Advertising

2014
Book

A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Almost no one had heard of social media a decade ago, but today websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have more than 1 billion users and account for almost 25 percent of Internet use. Practically overnight, social media seems indispensable to our lives—from... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Web; Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing

28 Mar 2004
Research & Ideas

HBS Celebrates Social Enterprise Initiative

When Harvard Business School launched its Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI) in 1993-1994, few academic institutions were conducting serious research and teaching about how to create View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

Teaching Interest

Managing Social Enterprise (MSE)

This course examines how to create, develop and scale high-performing social enterprises - be they nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid organizations. Unlike the business world where most stakeholders agree on the definition of success and are driven by market forces,... View Details

June 2024
Article

The Monitoring Role of Social Media

By: Jonas Heese and Joseph Pacelli

In this study, we examine whether social media activity can reduce corporate misconduct. We use the staggered introduction of 3G mobile broadband access across the United States to identify exogenous increases in social media activity and test whether access to 3G... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Misconduct; Twitter; Corporate Accountability; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Social and Collaborative Networks

July 13, 2023
Article

Threads Foreshadows a Big—and Surprising—Shift in Social Media

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Liang Wu

Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, has become the fastest downloaded app in history. One of the reasons for this is because it allows users to port over their profiles and follows from the already popular social media platform Instagram, also owned by Meta—a feature... View Details

Keywords: Decentralization; Twitter; Facebook; Instagram; Crypto Economy; Blockchain; Network; Industrial Organization; Competition; Open Innovation; Open Platforms; Open Source Innovation; Social Networks; Social Media; Applications and Software; Information Technology Industry

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June 2023
Article

Amplification of Emotion on Social Media

By: Amit Goldenberg and Robb Willer

Why do expressions of emotion seem so heightened on social media? Brady et al. argue that extreme moral outrage on social media is not only driven by the producers and sharers of emotional expressions, but also by systematic biases in the way people that perceive moral... View Details

Keywords: Emotion; Perception; Prejudice and Bias; Emotions; Social Media

02 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Secrets to a Successful Social Media Strategy

some social media platforms soar while others fizzle, and how business can use them to generate profit. "I have always been fascinated that humans interact online when we can interact offline as we have for... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

January 15, 2021
Article

Social Media Companies Should Self-Regulate. Now

By: Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie

We argue that social media firms should ramp up self-regulation of content in 2021. This argument is based on research on numerous industries where firms and/or industry associations devised self-regulatory strategies that successfully limited or forestalled more... View Details

Keywords: Self-regulation; Internet and the Web; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; Social Media

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2016
Chapter

User-Generated Content and Social Media

By: Michael Luca

This paper documents what economists have learned about user-generated content (UGC) and social media. A growing body of evidence suggests that UGC on platforms ranging from Yelp to Facebook has a large causal impact on economic and social outcomes ranging from... View Details

Keywords: User-generated Content; Crowdsourcing; Design Economics; Internet and the Web; Marketing; Economics; Media; Social Media

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Research Summary

Social media and user-generated content

In this project, Professor Piskorski, jointly with Andreea Gorbatai, examines inherent trade-offs in provision of user-generated content, using Wikipedia as a research setting. In Wikipedia, every user has the right to add material to an article, but with no... View Details

October 2018
Article

The Operational Value of Social Media Information

By: Ruomeng Cui, Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno and Dennis J. Zhang

While the value of using social media information has been established in multiple business contexts, the field of operations and supply chain management have not yet explored the possibilities it offers in improving firms' operational decisions. This study attempts to... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Information; Sales; Forecasting and Prediction; Social Media

08 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Colloquium: The Future of Social Enterprise

Date: March 27-28, 2008 Chairs: V. Kasturi Rangan, Herman B. Leonard, and Susan McDonald Faculty Summary Report Colloquium: The Future of Social Enterprise In our working paper, The Future of View Details

Keywords: Re: V. Kasturi Rangan & Dutch Leonard

May 2024
Supplement

GameStop: Social Media Finds a Cheat Code (B)

By: Joseph Pacelli and Sarah Mehta

This case accompanies “GameStop: Social Media Finds a Cheat Code (A),” no. 124-005. It provides an update on pertinent events from 2021 to 2023. View Details

Keywords: Finance; Markets; Value; Financial Services Industry; Video Game Industry; United States