Publications

February 2024
Technical Note

A Manager's Introduction to Passion for Work

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz

Today, both organizations and employees are increasingly focused on passion. An analysis of 200 million U.S. job postings found that the use of the word “passion” increased nearly tenfold from 2007 to 2019, while a recent survey of thousands of college-educated workers... View Details

Keywords: Recruitment; Job Search; Goals and Objectives; Interests; Personal Development and Career

Educators

2023
Working Paper

How Wicked Problems Drive Business Performance: A Review of the Academic Literature

By: Caroline Adelson, Charlotte Kuller, Cate Tompkins, Ellora Sarkar, Samantha Price and Marco Iansiti

Recent years have seen a rise in the number of businesses engaged in the pursuit of “purposeful” activities – that is, activities that engage with the broader community in ways that expand beyond the pursuit of shareholder value. Many of these activities involve... View Details

Keywords: Wicked Problems; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Performance

October 2022 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Masdar City: Aiming for Sustainable and Profitable Real Estate

By: Boris Vallee and Fares Khrais

Masdar City broke ground in 2008 and was conceived by the Abu Dhabi government to be an international beacon of innovation in sustainable energy and real estate. It was also to be a profitable investment for the government. At first glance, the two goals pulled in... View Details

Educators

2022
Book

Purpose + Profit: How Business Can Lift Up the World

By: George Serafeim

The roadmap and best practices to reap the enormous value that can emerge when your business prioritizes social and environmental goals—such as climate change, diversity and inclusion, and sustainability—right alongside the pursuit of profit.

We not only... View Details

Keywords: ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Profitability; Business And Society; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Goals and Objectives; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Value Creation; Organizational Change and Adaptation

Article

The Conversational Circumplex: Identifying, Prioritizing, and Pursuing Informational and Relational Motives in Conversation

By: Michael Yeomans, Maurice E. Schweitzer and Alison Wood Brooks

The meaning of success in conversation depends on people’s goals. Often, individuals pursue multiple goals simultaneously, such as establishing shared understanding, making a favorable impression, and persuading a conversation partner. In this article, we introduce a... View Details

Keywords: Conversation; Goal Pursuit; Communication; Interpersonal Communication; Goals and Objectives; Framework

2023
Working Paper

Going Beyond the ‘Self’ in Self-Control: Interpersonal Consequences of Commitment Strategy Use

By: Ariella Kristal and Julian Zlatev

Commitment strategies are effective mechanisms individuals can use to overcome self-control problems. Across seven studies (and three supplemental studies), we explore the negative interpersonal consequences of commitment strategy use. In Study 1, using an incentivized... View Details

Keywords: Self-control; Willpower; Commitment Strategies; Goals and Objectives; Behavior; Strategy; Perception

2021
Working Paper

How to Fix ESG Reporting

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

Investors, advocacy groups, academics, and the 200 CEOs of the US Business Roundtable have asked corporations to take on an added purpose beyond a narrow pursuit of shareholder value. In response, many companies now issue ESG (Environmental, Societal, and Governance)... View Details

Keywords: ESG Reporting; Sustainability; Corporate Purpose; Greenhouse Gas; Activity-Based Costing; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Goals and Objectives; Agreements and Arrangements; Corporate Accountability

SSRN

March 2022
Article

Strategic State Capacity: How States Counter Opposition to Climate Policy

By: Jonas Meckling and Jonas Nahm

When can states implement policies against the opposition from powerful interest groups? Research on state capacity has examined bureaucratic sources of capacity, leaving unexplained why countries with similar levels of bureaucratic capacity vary in goal attainment. We... View Details

Keywords: Power and Influence; Policy; Environmental Regulation

March–April 2019
Article

The Dual-Purpose Playbook

By: Julie Battilana, Anne-Claire Pache, Metin Sengul and Marissa Kimsey

Corporations are being pushed to dial down their single-minded pursuit of financial gain and pay closer attention to their impact on employees, customers, communities, and the environment. But changing an organization’s DNA may require upending the existing business... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizing; Business And Society; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Model; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Structure; Leadership

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2018
Article

Cracking the Organizational Challenge of Pursuing Joint Social and Financial Goals: Social Enterprise as a Laboratory to Understand Hybrid Organizing

By: Julie Battilana

While in recent decades the social and business sectors have evolved on fairly separate tracks, today companies are increasingly expected to generate social value in addition to profit. As a result, they also increasingly face the distinct challenge of pursuing social... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Hybrid Organizing; Multiple Goals; Social Enterprise; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture

2018
Chapter

New Prospects for Organizational Democracy?: How the Joint Pursuit of Social and Financial Goals Challenges Traditional Organizational Designs

By: Julie Battilana, Michael Fuerstein and Michael Lee

For an extended period during the first half of the 20th century, industrial democracy was a vibrant movement, with ideological and organizational ties to a thriving unionism. In 2015, however, things look different. While there are instances of democracy in the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Social Enterprise; Values and Beliefs; Integration; Theory

March 2018
Article

In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions

By: Eva Ascarza, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce Hardie, Aurelie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David T. Neal, Foster Provost and Rom Schrift

In today’s turbulent business environment, customer retention presents a significant challenge for many service companies. Academics have generated a large body of research that addresses part of that challenge—with a particular focus on predicting customer churn.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Retention; Churn; Customer Relationship Management; Measurement and Metrics

May 2016
Article

'Both/And' Leadership

By: Wendy K. Smith, Marianne Lewis and Michael Tushman

Leaders face a multitude of strategic paradoxes—contradictory pressures that are too often viewed as "either/or" choices. There are innovation paradoxes, in which the pursuit of new offerings and processes conflicts with the mandate to sustain the tried and... View Details

Keywords: Conflict of Interests; Goals and Objectives; Business Processes

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December 2014
Article

The Contaminating Effects of Building Instrumental Ties: How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty

By: Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino and Maryam Kouchaki

To create social ties to support their professional or personal goals, people actively engage in instrumental networking. Drawing from moral psychology research, we posit that this intentional behavior has unintended consequences for an individual's morality. Unlike... View Details

Keywords: Networking; Morality; Dirtiness; Power; Networks; Moral Sensibility; Identity; Power and Influence

September 2014 (Revised June 2016)
Case

Whole Foods: The Path to 1,000 Stores

By: David F. Drake, Ryan W. Buell, Melissa Barton, Taylor Jones, Katrina Keverian and Jeffrey Stock

The case examines the operations strategy of Whole Foods, one of the largest natural grocery chains in the United States. In late 2013, Whole Foods was expanding rapidly, with a publicly-stated goal of growing from 351 to 1,000 domestic stores by 2022. It was also... View Details

Keywords: Human Capital; Food; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Operations; Strategy; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

Educators

2014
Working Paper

The Contaminating Effects of Building Instrumental Ties: How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty

By: Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino and Maryam Kouchaki

To create social ties to support their professional or personal goals, people actively engage in instrumental networking. Drawing from moral psychology research, we posit that this intentional behavior has unintended consequences for an individual's morality. Unlike... View Details

Keywords: Networking; Morality; Dirtiness; Power; Networks; Moral Sensibility; Personal Development and Career; Power and Influence

SSRN

October 2008
Supplement

John and Andrea Rice: Entrepreneurship and Life

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Shirley M. Spence

Video of an interview conducted by Professor Howard Stevenson with John and Andrea Rice. It presents their views on their notions of career success, finding happiness in life, managing their competitiveness, their goals for the next ten years, and the pursuit of... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Success; Personal Development and Career; Opportunities; Happiness; Competitive Strategy