Leadership
Leadership
As our world grows increasingly global, intricate, and ever-changing, the role of leaders is becoming more and more complex and critical to business success. In the 1950s and 1960s, Fritz Roethlisberger and Elton Mayo's contributions to the "Hawthorne effect," and work by Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch on organizational integration, sparked the field of Organizational Behavior. Early work by Michael Beer on leading organizational change, Rosabeth Kanter on innovation for productivity, John Kotter on power and influence, and Michael Tushman on innovation management helped shape today's understanding of organizational transformation. With an interest in Leadership that spans our academic units, our approach to research is collaborative and multi-disciplinary. We leverage a wide range of research methodologies – from onsite field research to surveys, experiments, and extensive longitudinal studies.
Leadership Initiative
The Leadership Initiative undertakes cutting-edge research and course development projects about leadership and leadership development, both within HBS and through collaborations with other organizations.
LeadershipRecent Publications
Outcome and Process Frames: Strategic Renewal and Capability Reprioritization at the Federal Bureau of Investigation
- June 2025 |
- Article |
- Strategic Management Journal
[Managerial Summary]: This study examines how leaders can build support for strategic renewal when an organization must develop new capabilities while maintaining existing ones. We analyze how FBI Director Robert Mueller, in the wake of 9/11, used strategic communication—or framing—to persuade members of Congress overseeing the FBI's budget to support the development of new counterterrorism capabilities alongside its traditional law enforcement mandate. We highlight two types of frames: outcome frames (focused on what the organization seeks to achieve) and process frames (emphasizing how the organization operates). Our findings reveal that sequencing these types of frames is essential. By using outcome frames to address immediate concerns and shifting to process frames to resolve longer-term tensions, leaders can build stakeholder support for complex resource reprioritization efforts.
Windsurf and the AI Code Assistant Market
- May 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety
- May–June 2025 |
- Article |
- Harvard Business Review
Campbell's Recipe for Advancing School Nutrition
- April 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Thrivent: From Insurance Agents to Financial Advisors
- April 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Lisa Su and AMD (A)
- April 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Governing Sustainability in a Shifting Context (A)
- April 2025 (Revised May 2025) |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Joe Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics (A)
- April 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
#FutureFresenius: Implementing a New Strategy to Transform the Company and Advance Patient Care
- April 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif
- April 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research