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

Managers want the status of professionals, but not all managers want the constraints that go along with professions. Why? For more than 100 years, business education at the top universities has been searching for its soul. HBS professor Rakesh Khurana, author of a new book, says business school education is at a turning point.

Content: Article | Authors: Martha Lagace, Rakesh Khurana | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Education, MBA Related | Industry: Education / Training

The reality is that almost all the high professions require continuing education in order to ensure that their practitioners are up to date with the newest knowledge and techniques. Given the rapidity by which our business context is changing, the graduates of business schools should be able to access continuing education. If we really do believe that knowledge is important for effective practice, then it … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: MBA Related

The fact that too many [students] believe that the way you go about your career is to learn, earn, and only later give back, is misguided. The heart of a profession is that it is in the course of doing one’s work that one is actually doing good and fulfilling the duty that is demanded of professionals.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

My worry-and this is not limited to business schools-is that we have created a context in which people want the status of a profession without any of the constraints of a profession. A profession is not only about the benefits that you claim. It’s also about what you renounce.

I think one of the roles of a professional school in higher education is to make clear … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Education, MBA Related

“Negotiators who are quick to label the other party ‘irrational’ do so at great potential cost to themselves,” say HBS professors Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman. Their new book, Negotiation Genius, combines expertise in psychology with practical examples to show how anyone can improve dealmaking skills. In this excerpt, Malhotra and Bazerman describe what to do when the other party’s behavior does not make … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Deepak Malhotra, Max H. Bazerman | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Negotiation

Successful serial entrepreneurs are able to recognize patterns before an opportunity takes shape. They search for ideas at the intersection of markets, industries, and emerging technologies. They look for disruptors that will “unfreeze” a stable industry and the companies that compete within them. They look for business models that worked well in one market and can be adapted and applied in another. They recognize that … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Do hedge funds improve management of the companies they invest in? A new study by Harvard Business School professor Robin Greenwood and coauthor Michael Schor argues that, in fact, hedge funds create shareholder value through anticipation of change, not necessarily delivering it.

Content: Article | Author: Robin Greenwood | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Finance | Industry: Investing

Repugnance is different in different places and at different times, says Harvard economist Alvin E. Roth in this Q&A. As someone who designs and builds new markets, he marvels at how society decides whether a transaction is “good” or “bad”-even when such transactions are very much alike.

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

It has been well documented that strong trust between a buyer and supplier provides many advantages, such as increased productivity. But according to new research coauthored by HBS professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, trusting relationships can also have a negative side that managers must take into account.

Content: Article | Authors: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Victor Calanog | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Marketing / Sales

The presumption of organic growth is baked into most companies’ stock value, but many companies and their boards are faced with a requirement for organic growth that they’re unsure how to meet. For these companies, the yawning gap between actual revenue growth and investors’ expectations is a ticking time bomb. Marketing is the way in which firms can close this gap because it encompasses all … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Popular metrics such as customer satisfaction, acquisition, and retention have turned out to be very poor indicators of customers’ true perceptions or the success of marketing activities. Often, they’re downright misleading. High overall customer satisfaction scores, for example, often mask narrow but important pain points-areas of major dissatisfaction-such as unhappiness with poor customer service or long wait times. They can also mask backsliding against competitors; … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

The pros and cons of grade disclosure is a hot topic at business schools these days, including Harvard Business School. Should students have to disclose their grades to recruiters? And how does this issue connect to the need for greater transparency in business generally? Here’s what some Working Knowledge readers think.

Content: Prospective MBA Content | Author: James L. Heskett | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Miscellaneous MBA-related Resources

Stars don’t shine alone. As Harvard Business School’s Boris Groysberg and Linda-Eling Lee reveal in new research, it is imperative that top performers as well as their managers take into account the quality of colleagues. Groysberg and Lee explain the implications for star mobility and retention in this Q&A.

Content: Article | Author: Martha Lagace | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Economist Joseph Schumpeter was perhaps the most powerful thinker ever on innovation, entrepreneurship, and capitalism. He was also one of the most unusual personalities of the 20th century, as Harvard Business School professor emeritus Thomas K. McCraw shows in a new biography. Read our interview and book excerpt.

Content: Article | Authors: Sean Silverthorne, Thomas McCraw | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Economics, People

While studying teamwork, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson chanced upon a seeming paradox: Well-led teams appeared to make more mistakes than average teams. Could this be true? As it turned out, good teams, which value communication, report more errors. In a recent research paper Edmondson and doctoral student Sara Singer explore this and other hidden barriers to organizational learning.

Content: Article | Author: Amy Edmondson | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Determining a company’s true costs and profitability has always been difficult, although advancements such as activity-based costing (ABC) have helped. Professor Robert Kaplan and Acorn Systems’ Steven Anderson offer a simplified system based on time-driven ABC that leverages existing enterprise resource planning systems.

Content: Article | Author: Sarah Jane Gilbert | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Finance, Management

If you have only one product and sell to only one or two large customers, you don’t need much of a cost system to learn where you are making and losing money. But companies typically have hundreds of different products or product variations and hundreds or thousands of customers. In this situation, traditional cost systems will not accurately trace a company’s expense base to each … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Accounting, Finance

I sincerely hope that we’re seeing the end of retreats. This personalization of business relationships is misguided. For one thing, it’s expensive to have people climb poles or shoot at one another with paint guns. But the more depressing thing is that it’s taken us half a century to realize that when you remove everybody’s inhibitions, you create more problems than you solve. Regrettably, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Training & Development

An inevitable and unfortunate part of the “I want to be me” movement has been the idea that there is no distinction between your business life and your personal life. People treat colleagues as friends and family-often to disastrous effect. Sexual harassment is a prime example. If you flirt with somebody at a party, that person can’t have you arrested. But if you flirt at … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Legal, Organizational Behavior

Sometimes a valuable customer may be the person who never buys a thing. In a new research paper, Professor Sunil Gupta discusses how to assess the profitability of a customer in a networked setting-a “free” customer who nevertheless influences your bottom line.

Content: Article | Author: Sunil Gupta | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales