Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior

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About the Unit

Through its research, teaching, and course development, the Organizational Behavior Unit creates and disseminates knowledge that advances the understanding of how to lead and manage with the aim of increasing personal and organizational effectiveness. Although specific research interests span a wide range of subjects, the faculty share a problem driven, interdisciplinary, multi method approach that has led to significant impact on theory and practice.

Our current intellectual agenda builds on the rich history of OB at HBS and focuses squarely on the organizational changes and challenges arising from today's increasingly global and more competitive economy. In the last decade, the faculty have been recognized for their work on leadership in an increasingly diverse and dynamic environment, the evolution of managerial careers in our society, managing diversity, and organizational design and change to meet evolving needs and expectations in a changing world.

Recent Publications

Trust and Family at Fuwei (C): Bringing Back Ethan Yang

By: Letian Zhang, Wenjie Ma and Jiaqi Jin
  • December 2024 |
  • Supplement |
  • Faculty Research
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Trust and Family at Fuwei (B): Ethan Yang’s Perspective

By: Letian Zhang, Wenjie Ma and Jiaqi Jin
  • December 2024 |
  • Supplement |
  • Faculty Research
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Trust and Family at Fuwei (A): A Confucian Approach to Organizational Design

By: Letian Zhang, Wenjie Ma and Jiaqi Jin
  • December 2024 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
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Scaling Up Transformational Innovations

By: Peter Koen, Ananya Sheth, Mike DiPaola and Linda A. Hill
  • November–December 2024 |
  • Article |
  • Harvard Business Review
For large companies operating in mature sectors—such as Procter & Gamble in consumer goods, Apple in consumer electronics, and Adobe in cloud software—driving growth is a perennial challenge. Growth through acquisition is always an option, but companies often quickly find that the costs outweigh the benefits. According to the authors, the only reliable path to maintaining market leadership is transformational innovation: major changes to products and services that redefine what customers expect by delivering significantly improved performance, providing new kinds of value, resolving long-standing trade-offs, and/or radically reducing manufacturing costs. To understand what makes transformational innovations successful, the authors studied two of them at Procter & Gamble: Oral-B iO, a “smart” electric toothbrush that step-changed the experience of oral hygiene, and Always Infinity, a best-in-class menstrual pad that resolved the long-standing tension between comfort and protection. In this article the authors present a playbook for scaling up transformational innovation, organized around four major challenges: providing sufficient leadership, building the right team, mobilizing resources and capabilities, and making big-bet decisions.
Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Consumer Products Industry
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Why Employees Quit

By: Ethan Bernstein, Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta
  • November–December 2024 |
  • Article |
  • Harvard Business Review
The so-called war for talent is still raging. But in that fight, employers continue to rely on the same hiring and retention strategies they’ve been using for decades. Why? Because they’ve been so focused on challenges such as poaching by industry rivals, competing in tight labor markets, and responding to relentless cost-cutting pressures that they haven’t addressed a more fundamental problem: the widespread failure to provide sustainable work experiences. To stick around and give their best, people need meaningful work, managers and colleagues who value and trust them, and opportunities to advance in their careers, the authors say. By supporting employees in their individual quests for progress while also meeting the organization’s needs, managers can create employee experiences that are mutually beneficial and sustaining.
Keywords: Retention; Recruitment; Talent and Talent Management; Employee Relationship Management; Motivation and Incentives
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High-Status Teammates: Award Evaluation in the National Basketball Association

By: Dominika Kinga Randle and Letian Zhang
  • November–December 2024 |
  • Article |
  • Organization Science
Social evaluations proceed in stages. First, judges filter a broad pool of candidates and pick a subset for detailed assessment. Then, the chosen group undergoes a closer examination, during which winners are selected. At both stages of the process, judges are susceptible to bias. Bias is especially commonplace when contenders work in teams because each team member’s merit can be hard to distinguish from that of others. Our paper investigates evaluation bias originating in intrateam status asymmetries. Using the National Basketball Association’s data, we explore how high-status teammates are associated with their colleagues’ chances of winning awards. We find that bias stemming from high-status teammates’ presence is beneficial to their colleagues in the first stage of evaluations because high-status actors increase their team members ‘visibility to judges. However, our results also show that in the second stage of evaluations, the presence of high-status teammates could decrease their colleagues’ chances of winning awards because lower-status actors might seem less worthy of awards when evaluated alongside high-status individuals.
Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias; Groups and Teams; Status and Position; Sports Industry
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Fritidsresor: Johan Lundgren

By: Joshua D. Margolis
  • October 2024 |
  • Supplement |
  • Faculty Research
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The Three Traps That Stymie Reinvention: Organizational Identity, Architecture, and Collaboration Can Be Either Assets or Liabilities to Pursuing Growth in New Sectors

By: Ryan Raffaelli
  • Fall 2024 |
  • Article |
  • MIT Sloan Management Review
In more than a decade of researching innovation, I have observed how organizations respond to new opportunities, technological changes, or unexpected market shifts that threaten to upend their current business model. This process, which I call reinvention, may occur proactively or reactively. In interviews, focus groups, and workshops with 1,451 individuals who faced reinvention dilemmas across a broad array of sectors, I have found that a core challenge of reinvention is that an organization’s past success can either be the greatest asset or the chief liability to its future. The article introduces three traps that can limit a company’s ability to find new avenues for growth: organizational identity, architecture, and collaboration. It highlights how to avoid them by laying the appropriate communications groundwork to foster a coherent identity, setting up new organizational structures, and paying close attention to interpersonal dynamics at the team and individual level.
Keywords: Innovation And Strategy; Change Leadership; Collaboration; Architecture; Transformation; Disruption; Leading Change; Innovation Strategy; Identity; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure
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Contact Information

Organizational Behavior Unit
Harvard Business School
Morgan Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
OB@hbs.edu