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  • 2023
  • Working Paper

Organizational Responses to Product Cycles

By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham, Jorge Tamayo and Nicolas Torres
We use daily administrative data from a leading automobile manufacturer to study the organizational impacts of introducing new models to the auto assembly line. We first show that costly defects per vehicle spike when new models are introduced. As a response, the firm... View Details
Keywords: Product Quality Upgrading; Product Cycles; Organizational Behavior; Knowledge Hierarchies; Worker Skills; Auto Manufacturing; Training; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Knowledge Management; Production; Product; Organizational Structure; Auto Industry; Argentina
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  • 2005
  • Working Paper

Silent Saboteurs: How Implicit Theories of Voice Inhibit the Upward Flow of Knowledge in Organizations

By: James R. Detert and Amy C. Edmondson
This article examines, in a series of three studies, how people working in organizational hierarchies wrestle with the challenge of upward voice. We first undertook in-depth exploratory research in a knowledge-intensive multinational corporation in which employee input... View Details
Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Working Conditions; Knowledge Management; Attitudes; Organizational Culture
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  • 2025
  • Working Paper

Generative AI and the Nature of Work

By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin Xu
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate a considerable potential to complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid... View Details
Keywords: Generative Ai; Digital Work; Open Source Software; Knowledge Economy; AI and Machine Learning; Open Source Distribution; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Labor
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  • 06 Sep 2011
  • Research & Ideas

The Power of Leadership Groups for Staying on Track

Command-and-control leaders are finding it difficult to motivate frontline employees and take advantage of their knowledge and wisdom. This is especially true in global organizations that require collaboration between people of many... View Details
Keywords: by Bill George
  • 2014
  • Working Paper

Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors

By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Structure; Decision Making; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry
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  • Article

Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors

By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Design; Management Practices and Processes; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; United States
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  • 14 Oct 2002
  • Research & Ideas

The Widening Rift Between Corporations and Society

field questions from HBS Working Knowledge senior editor Martha Lagace in an e-mail interview.Lagace: In The Support Economy, you make the case that managerial capitalism, invented a hundred years ago, desperately needs an overhaul. How... View Details
Keywords: by Martha Lagace
  • Research Summary

Simultaneous Distinction, Democratization and Omnivorism Effects: A Longitudinal Analysis of Dynamic Symbolic Boundaries in Counterfeit Consumption Networks

Sociologists have long examined the interactive relationship between social structure, taste and power.  This literature has overwhelmingly fallen into three, ostensibly competing, theoretical “camps”: Distinction, where high-status consumers use... View Details
  • Web

Faculty & Research

strengthen its pharma pipeline, manage debt, and cut through bureaucracy. His bold response: Dynamic Shared Ownership (DSO), a radical model replacing traditional hierarchies with self-organizing teams. By 2025, Bayer was on track to cut... View Details
  • 24 Oct 2023
  • HBS Case

From P.T. Barnum to Mary Kay: Lessons From 5 Leaders Who Changed the World

Book” he wrote and that eventually sold 35 million copies, “to keep our fool ego from running hog wild at A.A.’s expense,” Wilson reflected. Leadership Lesson 2: “There is always this danger as people succeed and rise up the hierarchy... View Details
Keywords: by Avery Forman
  • 24 Apr 2012
  • First Look

First Look: April 24

of Knowledge database, which includes articles from MEDLINE, Social Science Citation Index, and Science Citation Index. Study design. We conducted a systematic review of articles published before January 2010 to identify survey... View Details
Keywords: Carmen Nobel
  • 11 Apr 2023
  • Op-Ed

The First 90 Hours: What New CEOs Should—and Shouldn't—Do to Set the Right Tone

and ties, learned to speak a limited amount of English, and quit smoking. Word quickly spread that this CEO had broken hierarchy to meet with a group of overlooked employees who had previously been taken for granted. Take a close look at... View Details
Keywords: by John Quelch
  • 14 Feb 2022
  • Research & Ideas

Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age

and uncharted ways. Trusting executives: Distribute authority. It’s important to shake the command-control model, which depends on hierarchy and rules. Leaders must learn to exercise influence without relying on formal authority. They set... View Details
Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards; Technology
  • 31 Jan 2022
  • Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

decision-making” as one of the most critical success factors in the digital era, judgment—an analog skill—is still required. Digitally mature companies have employees up and down the hierarchy who can look at data critically, knowing that... View Details
Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards
  • 12 May 2021
  • Book

The Hard Truth About Being a CEO

a leadership guide to navigating a role that Fubini says is unlike any other, which leaves many new CEOs and leaders struggling to find their footing. “People strive for a long time to develop functional skills and operational knowledge... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
  • Web

Technology & Innovation - Faculty & Research

access pushes decisions down, as it allows for superior decentralized decision making without an undue cognitive burden on those lower in the hierarchy. Better communication pushes decisions up, as it allows employees to rely on those above them in the View Details
  • 01 Oct 2021
  • Research & Ideas

Dying to Lead: How Reaching the Top Can Kill You Sooner

employees. For individuals older than 30 in 1930, being in the upper levels of the hierarchy was associated with a 3.9-year shorter lifespan. For people over 40 years old in 1930, Nicholas estimates a 3.3-year “longevity penalty.”... View Details
Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald
  • 21 Apr 2009
  • First Look

First Look: April 21, 2009

mismatch can create. First, hierarchical industry organizations can "lock out" certain types of innovation indefinitely by perpetuating established business practices. Second, even when the vertical hierarchies produce highly... View Details
Keywords: Martha Lagace
  • 26 Apr 2022
  • Book

What Does Your Business Stand For? Why Building Trust Starts with Purpose

founders “had no hierarchy between themselves, committed to consensus-based decision-making and agreed that clear communication should be a core value of their start-up, going as far as to conduct regular 360-degree reviews of one... View Details
Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati
  • 28 Feb 2019
  • News

New Program Will Develop Leaders of Innovative Ventures

applicants. “Traditional career hierarchy has completely eroded, and for the better,” says Tom Roberts. “If you have the right idea, the right answers, the right content, there’s no reason you can’t go make a really substantial impact... View Details