532 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge

If your company quietly allows employees to break some rules with the tacit approval of management, that’s a moral gray zone. And your company is not alone. When rules are broken but privileges are not abused, such unspoken pacts between workers and management can allow both to achieve their respective goals of expressing professional identity and sustaining efforts in positive ways, says HBS professor Michel … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Martha Lagace, Michel J. Anteby | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior

Many women say, “I have enough money.” I rarely hear a man say that. And it’s because money is different to men and women. I think, for men, money is often a symbol of their power; it’s not for what can they buy. For women, money is not usually how they measure their success. It’s not that they don’t want it; but they want it … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Myra M. Hart | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Money, Women in Business

Global markets are changing the relationship between firms and nation-states in important ways, says HBS professor Mihir A. Desai. His new working paper, “The Decentering of the Global Firm,” offers a practical framework for business leaders to think strategically about where to locate their company’s financial and legal homes, and managerial talent. Q&A with Desai.

Content: Article | Authors: Martha Lagace, Mihir A. Desai | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: International

In today’s diverse workplace, your actions and motives are constantly under scrutiny. Time to manage your own professional image before others do it for you. An interview with professor Laura Morgan Roberts.

Content: Article | Authors: Laura Morgan Roberts, Mallory Stark | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

Why is it that many of the same companies appear repeatedly on lists of the best places to work, the best providers of customer service, and the most profitable in their industries? In their new book, The Ownership Quotient, HBS professors Jim Heskett and Earl Sasser and coauthor Joe Wheeler assert the answer lies in recognizing that strong, adaptive cultures can foster innovation, productivity, and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Earl Sasser, James L. Heskett, Joe Wheeler | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Do you notice when someone changes the subject after you ask them a question? If you don’t always notice or even mind such conversational transformations, you’re not alone. New research by Todd Rogers and Harvard Business School professor Michael I. Norton explores the common occurrence of “conversational blindness.” Q&A with Rogers.

Content: Article | Authors: Michael I. Norton, Todd Rogers | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The MBA industry is in turmoil. Many business schools are revisiting their offerings to see if they still have relevance in the 21st century. And HBS is using its centennial year to convene worldwide experts on business education and plot its directions for the next 100 years.

Content: Prospective MBA Content | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: About the MBA Degree, Business School News

Harvard Business School professor William A. Sahlman’s article on how to write a great business plan is a Harvard Business Review classic, and has just been reissued in book form. Now a decade old, we asked Sahlman what he would change if he wrote the article today.

Content: Article | Authors: Sean Silverthorne, William A. Sahlman | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, People

A new Harvard Business School working paper looks inside the communications “black box” of a large company to understand who talks to whom, and finds the corporate silo as impenetrable as ever. Q&A with professor Toby E. Stuart.

Content: Article | Authors: Sarah Jane Gilbert, Toby E. Stuart | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Companies often manage strategy in fits and starts. Though executives may formulate an excellent strategy, it easily fades from memory as the organization tackles day-to-day operations issues, doing what HBS professor Robert S. Kaplan calls “fighting fires.”

A new book by Kaplan and David P. Norton aims to make strategy a continual process. The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage shows managers how … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert S. Kaplan | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Strategy

Television spots, word-of-mouth, viral ads. Marketing managers have more options at their disposal than ever before. But how to decide? Harvard Business School professors Sunil Gupta and Thomas Steenburgh offer a way for managers to conceptualize the most effective approach.

Content: Article | Authors: Sunil Gupta, Thomas Steenburgh | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Leaders have to achieve psychological independence to enable them to apply their talents to the work at hand. This independence frees the leader to expand on his or her talents and thereby become an object to allow subordinates to identify with and to cultivate and apply their own talents in the interests of meeting and even expanding on objectives.

Content: Quotation | Author: Abraham Zaleznik | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Leadership, Personality / Behavior

Quality and process improvement programs are like teaching people how to fish. Strategy maps and scorecards teach people where to fish.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert S. Kaplan | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Execution, Strategy

Consumers get hit with the price-increase hammer every time they drive past a gas station. Harvard Business School professor John Quelch offers tips on how marketers can cope with inflation and consumer sticker shock.

Content: Article | Author: John A. Quelch | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Pricing

Managers are oriented to process, while leaders are attuned to substance. Process is concerned with establishing procedures for solving problems, while substance deals directly with the problems at hand. Process is soon related to obsessive thinking and depressive emotional states, while substance energizes and draws on imaginative thinking. Managers tend instinctively to delegate; leaders like to get involved in working toward solutions to substantive problems. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Abraham Zaleznik | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Leadership, Management

Consumer needs and desires are not entirely mysterious. In fact, marketers of successful brands regularly draw on a rich assortment of insights excavated from research into basic frames or orientations we have toward the world around us, according to HBS professor emeritus Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman, authors of Marketing Metaphoria. Here’s a Q&A and book excerpt.

Content: Article | Authors: Gerald Zaltman, Lindsay Zaltman, Martha Lagace | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

In the wake of World War II, Georges Doriot helped found the world’s first public venture capital firm, American Research and Development. Doriot (1899—1987) was also a professor at Harvard Business School for 40 years. This book excerpt from Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital (HBS Press) describes how ARD first came to “marry” investors and innovators.

Content: Article | Author: Spencer E. Ante | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: History, Venture Capital

Like death and taxes, commoditization of your products is a given. Marketing professor John Quelch offers tips for delaying the inevitable and dealing with it once it arrives.

Content: Article | Author: John A. Quelch | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Corporate R&D labs used to be the key for companies to create competitive advantage. But in the 21st century, innovation is moving out of the lab and across the globe. That’s why Harvard Business School professor Alan MacCormack and his research collaborators believe that a real source of competitive advantage is skill in managing innovation partnerships.

Content: Article | Authors: Alan D. MacCormack, Sean Silverthorne | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Innovation

With apologies to Thomas Friedman, managers who believe the hype of a flat world do so at their own risk, says HBS professor Pankaj Ghemawat. National borders still matter a lot for business strategists. While identifying similarities from one place to the next is essential, effective cross-border strategies will take careful stock of differences as well.

Content: Article | Author: Martha Lagace | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: International