Organizational Behavior

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UBTECH: AI-Driven Humanoid Robots

By: Letian Zhang, Qi Li and Bohui Zhang

June 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

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Outcome and Process Frames: Strategic Renewal and Capability Reprioritization at the Federal Bureau of Investigation

By: Ryan Raffaelli, Tiona Zuzul, Ranjay Gulati and Jan Rivkin

June 2025 |
Article |
Strategic Management Journal

[Research Summary]: Framing is critical for leaders who must build support for strategic renewal. While research has concentrated on renewal that replaces one set of capabilities with another, we explore a distinctive challenge: how leaders persuade stakeholders to endorse the reprioritization of resources toward a capability set that must coexist with an existing one. Moreover, while research has focused on how leaders build employee support for renewal, we examine how to persuade those overseeing resource allocation. Our study analyzes Director Robert Mueller's 12-year effort at the FBI—after the 9/11 terrorist attacks—to build up counterterrorism capabilities while maintaining existing law enforcement capabilities. We offer a novel distinction between outcome frames and process frames and discuss how each frame, sequenced properly, is relevant to strategic renewal. [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.

Keywords: Framing; Stakeholder Management; Capabilities; Transformation; Leading Change; Crisis Management; Resource Allocation; Government and Politics; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Public Administration Industry

Time Well Spent: A New Way to Value Time Could Change Your Life

By: Leslie Perlow and Salvatore J Affinito

Summer 2025 |
Article |
MIT Sloan Management Review

When individuals engage in fulfilling activities outside of work, they perform better on the job, but simply encouraging work-life balance doesn’t help with hour-by-hour time management. A new tool for measuring the subjective value of time for individuals as it varies across their weekly activities provides the granular data insights that can help shift nonwork activities to those that are of greater benefit to well-being. The article explains how leaders can make this a team activity.

Keywords: Well-being; Work-Life Balance; Time Management

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Riding the Passion Wave or Fighting to Stay Afloat? A Theory of Differentiated Passion Contagion

By: Emma Frank, Kai Krautter, Wen Wu and Jon M. Jachimowicz

June 2025 |
Article |
Administrative Science Quarterly

Prior research suggests that employees benefit from highly passionate teammates because passion spreads easily from one employee to the next. We develop theory to propose that life in high-passion teams may not be as uniformly advantageous as previously assumed. We suggest that high-passion teams also evoke pressures that lead employees to expend effort to increase their levels of passion, which negates the benefits the team provides. We first conducted an experience-sampling study at an engineering company involved in the production and maintenance of critical infrastructure that benefits the greater good, with 829 employees nested in 155 teams, which we surveyed three times per day for 20 consecutive work days. These data show that employees caught their teammates’ passion and consequently reported better performance, lower emotional exhaustion, and a stronger sense of social connection. However, these benefits coexisted alongside costs employees incurred that were associated with increasing their passion. In a subsequent pre-registered experiment (N = 1,063), we provide causal evidence for these effects and their underlying mechanism, finding that passion contagion is particularly effort-laden—more so than contagion of other states and increases in passion that are not the result of contagion. We develop a theory of differentiated passion contagion that exposes the effort inherent in contagion and the implications of that effort. Our work suggests that passion caught from others may hold less value than passion incited from within, and shifts our understanding of when and why passion for work is beneficial and detrimental. We also discuss implications for broader emotional contagion theory.

Keywords: Passion; Emotional Contagion; Emotions; Groups and Teams; Employees; Power and Influence; Performance Improvement

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Christina Bwana: Cultural Transformation at Ubongo

By: Anthony J. Mayo, Letian Zhang, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Temitayo Lawal

May 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

IQanat: Empowering Rural Youth in Kazakhstan

By: Boris Groysberg and Maxim Pike Harrell

May 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In June 2025, IQanat CEO Aliya Salikova considered scaling opportunities for the foundation, which provided educational opportunities for children from rural regions of Kazakhstan. Established by Kazakhstani businessman and philanthropist Aidyn Rakhimbayev, IQanat sought to address the stark disparity between academic resources in urban and rural parts of the country. The foundation developed mentorship programs and built a flagship school which admitted 100 new rural students a year on a full scholarship basis. To select its students, IQanat conducted an “Olympiad,” a set of tests that assessed 50,000 students annually on academic abilities, emotional intelligence, and specific skillsets. IQanat also offered students who did not receive scholarships access to short, intensive on-campus events or online educational programs. By 2025, the IQanat school and programs had produced more than 2,000 alumni who had been admitted to universities in 16 countries. The initiative’s funding model had also evolved, shifting from an exclusive reliance on Rakhimbayev’s donations to a donor base of 218 trustees—Kazakhstani business leaders who oversaw IQanat at the regional or district level. Salikova planned to oversee the opening of four new schools across the country over the next 5–10 years, along with expanding access to online programs. IQanat also began partnering with universities to track the long-term outcomes of its graduates, aiming to continually improve programs that supported the career success and well-being of its students. How would the foundation sustain momentum with donors and make the most meaningful difference for generations of rural students in Kazakhstan?

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Social Enterprise; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Education Industry; Central Asia

Skills-First Talent Management: The Importance of Managers

By: Boris Groysberg, Nicole Zelazko, Tom Quinn, Robin Abrahams, Izzy Yeoh and Colleen Ammerman

May 2025 |
Background Note |
Faculty Research

This note supplements a 2025 series on skills-first talent management in organizations, comprising “Skills-First Talent Management: Hiring” (HBS No. 425-019), “Skills-First Talent Management: Onboarding, Development, and Performance Management” (HBS No. 425-020), and “Skills-First Talent Management: Engagement and Retention” (HBS No. 425-021). This note explores how managers shape the experiences of employees without four-year college degrees (non-degreed employees or those Skilled Through Alternative Routes [STARs]) and examines the challenges that these employees face, along with best management practices for supporting their development, advancement, and retention.

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Job Design and Levels; Employment; Human Capital; Management Practices and Processes; United States