Publications

05 Sep 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Making the Right Technical Hire

they do not have a good hiring strategy. For decades, there have been books and articles about building engineering teams. The infamous book The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks should be on every software engineer and tech startup... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin; Technology

November – December 2011
Article

Competitive Strategy for Open Source Software

By: Vineet Kumar, Brett Gordon and Kannan Srinivasan

Commercial open source software (COSS) products-privately developed software based on publicly available source code-represent a rapidly growing, multibillion-dollar market. A unique aspect of competition in the COSS market is that many open source licenses require... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Product Development; Growth and Development; Markets; Motivation and Incentives; Quality; Policy; Perspective; Profit; Open Source Distribution; Emerging Markets

Find at Harvard

07 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

The Organizational Model for Open Source

Programmers contribute to free software and open source projects for many reasons—some for the fun of it, some to improve their skills, others for a paycheck. Many people have wondered why these people give their work away. The truth is... View Details

Keywords: by Mallory Stark

January 2018
Article

Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Competition Among Applicants

By: Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

Despite seeming to be an important requirement for hiring, the concept of a slot is absent from virtually all of economics. Macroeconomic studies of vacancies and search come closest, but the implications of slot-based hiring for individual worker outcomes has not been... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Selection and Staffing; Employment; Competency and Skills

Find at Harvard

11 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won’t

Call it corporate alchemy. New research finds that multinational companies can spin gender bias into gold by recruiting and hiring well-educated female managers in countries that traditionally discriminate against women. Employing women... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

March–April 2017
Article

Hiring an Entrepreneurial Leader: What to Look For

By: Timothy Butler

Aspiring to be innovative and agile, companies of all shapes and sizes want to recruit entrepreneurial managers. But most firms lack a scientific way to separate the true entrepreneurs from other candidates. To address that problem, Butler compared the psychological... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Leadership Style; Attitudes

Find at Harvard

February 2019 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Hot Chicken Takeover

By: William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman and Olivia Hull

By December 2018, entrepreneur Joe DeLoss’s fried chicken company, Hot Chicken Takeover, has opened three restaurants in Columbus, Ohio, using an unconventional employment model that helps people with criminal records get back on their feet. DeLoss is proud of the... View Details

Educators

August 2014
Case

Opening the Valve: From Software to Hardware (A)

By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats

Valve, one of the world's top video game software companies, has also become an iconic example of an organization with virtually no hierarchy. A 400-person organization, Valve's unique organizational form (described in detail in the case and accompanying employee... View Details

Educators

22 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted

staggering scope of the findings could help put a value on the work, so senior leaders and non-tech managers at firms understand just how important hiring open source expertise is to success. The results... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Computer; Information Technology; Technology

31 May 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Finding an Open Slot

Keywords: by Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw, and Christopher Stanton

12 Nov 2024
HBS Case

Inside One Startup's Journey to Break Down Hiring (and Funding) Barriers

truly reintegrate into society if few firms will hire them? And, how can society—especially at a time of rising prices and low unemployment—afford to exclude the roughly one in three working Americans with criminal records from the... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Employment

18 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

New Hires Lose Psychological Safety After Year One. How to Fix It.

welcome. In fact, new hires often enter fresh roles feeling optimistic and confident their organizations are eager to hear from them, but over time, employees increasingly feel less “psychologically safe” to contribute ideas, new research... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

August 2014 (Revised August 2015)
Supplement

Opening the Valve: From Software to Hardware (B)

By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats

Valve, one of the world's top video game software companies, has also become an iconic example of an organization with virtually no hierarchy. A 400-person organization, Valve's unique organizational form (described in detail in the case and accompanying employee... View Details

November–December 2024
Article

Group Size and Its Impact on Diversity-Related Perceptions and Hiring Decisions in Homogeneous Groups

By: Aneesh Rai, Edward H. Chang, Erika Kirgios and Katherine L. Milkman

Why do some homogeneous groups face backlash for lacking diversity, whereas others escape censure? We show that a homogeneous group’s size changes how it is perceived and whether decision makers pursue greater diversity in its ranks. We theorize that people make... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Perception; Decision Making; Groups and Teams; Selection and Staffing; Size

01 Jan 2020
What Do You Think?

Why Not Open America's Doors to All the World’s Talent?

“The idea of opening America’s borders to creative, entrepreneurial immigrants is attractive. H1B is not, in my view, the correct vehicle for this. I would rather that the country revamp its immigration program along the lines currently... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

2022
White Paper

The Emerging Degree Reset: How the Shift to Skills-Based Hiring Holds the Keys to Growing the U.S. Workforce at a Time of Talent Shortage

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Christina Langer, Julia Nitschke, Layla O'Kane, Matthew Sigelman and Bledi Taska

Employers are resetting degree requirements in a wide range of roles, dropping the requirement for a bachelor’s degree in many middle-skill and even some higher-skill roles. This reverses a trend toward degree inflation in job postings going back to the Great... View Details

Keywords: Skills; Workforce; Talent; Human Resource Management; Selection and Staffing; Competency and Skills; Talent and Talent Management; Human Resources

05 May 2022
HBS Case

College Degrees: The Job Requirement Companies Seek, but Don't Really Need

Employers struggling to find workers during the current labor shortage might want to rethink their hiring criteria by taking a new look at job candidates who lack college degrees. American employers have routinely defaulted to requiring... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

17 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

How ‘Hybrid’ Nonprofits Can Stay on Mission

two key questions that leaders must address to keep the mission on course while still making enough money to sustain that mission: One, whom should you hire to strike a healthy balance between idealism and the bottom line? And two, what's... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

August 2017 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Managing Diversity and Inclusion at Yelp

By: Michael Luca, Joshua Schwartzstein and Gauri Subramani

This case explores the industry-wide lack of employee diversity in the technology sector and Yelp’s decision to take a leadership position in identifying strategies to increase diversity. The goal of the case is to provide an opportunity for students to develop a... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Employees; Leading Change; Strategy; Organizational Culture; Technology Industry

Educators