Publications

2022
Case

Charting a Course for Boston: Organizing for Change

By: Lisa C. Cox, Mitchell B. Weiss and Jorrit De Jong

Michelle Wu had been elected on the promise of systemic change, but four days after her November 2021 election and just eleven days before taking office as mayor of Boston, she was still considering how best to staff and manage a range of over-arching priorities.... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Selection and Staffing; City; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Boston

04 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Is Your Org Chart Stuck in a Rut? Try a Scientific Experiment

chart from the same two years. Chances are, those two charts look pretty similar. Sure, there are organizational outliers, like online shoe-seller Zappos, which famously... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

23 Nov 2021
Book

What It Takes to Build an Organizational Culture That Wins

forthcoming book, Win from Within: Build Organizational Culture For Competitive Advantage, which is a how-to roadmap for improving an organization’s culture. Heskett, the UPS Foundation Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School,... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

July–August 2016
Article

Beyond the Holacracy Hype: The Overwrought Claims—and Actual Promise—of the Next Generation of Self-Managed Teams

By: Ethan Bernstein, John Bunch, Niko Canner and Michael Lee

Holacracy and other forms of self-organization have been getting a lot of press. Proponents hail them as "flat" environments that foster flexibility, engagement, productivity, and efficiency. Critics say they're naive, unrealistic experiments. We argue, using evidence... View Details

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October 1981 (Revised April 1984)
Case

H.J. Heinz Co.: The Administration of Policy (A)

Relates the April 1979 discovery of improper income transferal practices used at the H.J. Heinz Co. Background data on the company is presented, along with a detailed description of the organizational practices, the management incentive system, and the corporate... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Business Processes; Compensation and Benefits; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry

August 1988 (Revised April 1998)
Case

IBM 360: Giant as Entrepreneur

By: Joseph L. Bower

Presents the ingredients that went into a major entrepreneurial shift by IBM--investing $5 billion into a new product line that would obsolete any existing computer product line offered by the competition, or by IBM itself. The economic and technical challenges of this... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Investment; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Problems and Challenges; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry

April 2007 (Revised November 2007)
Case

Bankinter: Growing Through Small and Medium Enterprises

Surveys the overall sequence of processes needed for the success of a strategy based on customer analytics. In particular, it charts the formulation and implementation of this strategy by a Spanish bank that decided to expand into the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Data and Data Sets; Knowledge Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Segmentation; Banking Industry; Spain

15 May 2017
Sharpening Your Skills

The Promises and Limitations of Big Data

discusses the water industry as an example, and the organizational changes and levers relevant to extracting value from emerging data-analytics technologies. Big Data: Big Deal or Big Hype? Google's announcement in 2008 that it could... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services; Utilities; Public Administration; Health

Article

Imprinting: Toward A Multilevel Theory

By: Christopher Marquis and Andras Tilcsik

The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields—including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research—and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual. This... View Details

Keywords: History; Situation or Environment; Research; Organizations; Power and Influence

2013
Working Paper

Imprinting: Toward A Multilevel Theory

By: Christopher Marquis and Andras Tilcsik

The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields—including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research—and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual. This... View Details

Keywords: History; Situation or Environment; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure

SSRN

December 8, 2023
Article

What Makes a Company Great at Producing Leaders?

By: Sarah Abbott, Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg

GE is well known as an “academy company”—a talent incubator that exports effective leaders to other organizations and even industries. To better understand which companies are top talent incubators today, the authors worked with the Official Board, a firm that provides... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Talent and Talent Management; Training; Organizational Culture

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February 2006
Case

Bumble and bumble: Building a Successful Business in Beauty and Fashion

By: Nancy F. Koehn and Erica Helms

Explores the creation and subsequent rise of Bumble and bumble, a trend-setting hair-care company. Analyzes the vision and achievements of the founding entrepreneur, Michael Gordon, and charts the evolution of the company within the $230 billion global beauty industry.... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Brands and Branding; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Strategy; Financial Condition; Business Growth and Maturation; Success; Distribution; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Fashion Industry

Teaching Interest

AMP 170 - General Management: Processes and Action

The Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program (AMP) helps drive corporate performance by honing individual capabilities to the highest level of performance. The result is a... View Details

06 Oct 2023
Book

Yes, You Can Radically Change Your Organization in One Week

The biggest, thorniest organizational problems can be solved in just one week, say Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, coauthors of the new book Move Fast and Fix Things. Armed with decision-making power and the right change-management... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

June 2000
Case

Rebirth of the Swiss Watch Industry, 1980-1992 (B): Hayek and Thomke at SMH

By: Michael L. Tushman and Daniel Radov

Describes the course pursued by Hayek, Thomke, and others in the formation of SMH. Discusses the new strategy and its implementation, charting the dramatic recovery of the large Swiss watchmakers. Ends with an exploration of Hayek's efforts to build on SMH's successes. View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Organizational Structure; Cost Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Alignment; Success; Asia; Hong Kong

2003
Working Paper

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Managerial Roles; Jobs and Positions; United States

November 2006
Article

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Change; Business Ventures; Compensation and Benefits; Rank and Position; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Jobs and Positions; United States

Article

The Art of Balancing Autonomy and Control: What Managers Can Learn from Hackathon Organizers about Spurring Innovation.

By: Hila Lifshitz - Assaf, Sarah Lebovitz and Lior Zalmanson

Today, managers recognize that innovation requires a high level of work autonomy for their employees. This encourages curiosity, enables independent thinking, and provides an environment in which employees can experiment and test new problem-solving approaches with... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Hackathon; Autonomy; Control; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management