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

Our initial work in exploring these questions suggests that leadership impacts on meaning in several ways. First, leaders make architectural choices-how to structure the organization, design jobs, and allocate roles and responsibilities-that shape how people who work in the organization experience their jobs. Second, leaders engage in symbolic actions-through the stories they tell, the symbols and rituals they create, and other highly visible actions. The … [ Read more ]

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

Among the many functions of organizational leadership, one of the most important is the development of a worldview for participants. Organizations, like individuals, search for stability and meaning. This search often ends when organizations identify a set of morally sustaining ideals. Ideals animate and help direct decision making in an organization or a society. These ideals are never fully realized. We all recognize that compromise … [ Read more ]

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

Activity-based accounting looks great in the classroom, but too often fails in the field. In this Harvard Business Review excerpt, HBS professor Robert S. Kaplan along with Steven R. Anderson suggest a way around the obstacles.

Content: Article | Authors: Robert S. Kaplan, Steven R. Anderson | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Accounting, Finance

When you do a good job of fixing a customer service problem, you often earn more customer loyalty than if there had been no problem to begin with. Jonathan Byrnes details how to show your worth and earn your customer’s trust.

Content: Article | Author: Jonathan Byrnes | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Management

My biggest surprise was learning that having a captive market for one’s products and services is not enough if the other factors of the economic context are not present. In business school, we take a number of factors for granted, including the rule of law, the efficiency of the market, and the physical and institutional infrastructure that makes capitalism function smoothly. In launching a start-up … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Economics, International

Governments should be concerned with creating the type of investment climate (rule of law, healthy and well-educated people, good physical infrastructure, favorable tax structure, respect for private property, and so on), that leads to private investment. Organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations should limit their activities to assisting governments in this area, rather than attempt to become economic players themselves. When … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Government, International

Not everyone is in favor of inclusion when it comes to decision making. Some people just want to be told what to do because they are looking to you, as the manager, for guidance and they expect you, as the president of the company, to know what is best. It is more of a parental relationship. If the parents look lost or ask the children … [ Read more ]

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

When research on leadership pays more attention to financial results than a person’s ability to give the company a sense of purpose, something crucial is lost. Three Harvard Business School scholars are working to change the debate. A Q&A with Joel M. Podolny, Rakesh Khurana, and Marya Hill-Popper.

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

Contrary to popular belief, most industries evolve slowly and in predictable ways, says strategy expert Anita M. McGahan. Here’s how to align strategy with your “industry trajectory.”

Editor’s Note: the sidebar is more useful than the article…

Content: Article | Author: Anita M. McGahan | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Strategy

HBS Professors Benson Shapiro and Kash Rangan bring us up to date on their pioneering research that helped ignite today’s intense focus on the customer. The key? Know your order cycle management.

Content: Article | Author: Sarah Jane Johnston | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Operations

Over-management saps responsibility. We care less for what is common than for what is our own. Products and outcomes need to be connected to individuals, so they can take praise and blame. Without that, our pride turns against our work, rather than attaching itself to work. No pride, no motivation. But pride requires an occasion for achievement.

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

I think about fitting work in the same way we might think about other practices, often drawn from arts, games, or sports, like piano playing or baseball.

The first thing to ask is whether we have the right aptitudes. No aptitude, no fit. If you’re tone deaf, music is probably not for you. This kind of fit is what society needs: from a social point of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

The image of perfect freedom neglects the fact that many attractive and enjoyable human goods require some discipline and practice. Our enjoyment of cooking or poker or baseball is amplified when we are good at them. It is hard to live a happy life if we develop no talent whatsoever. Becoming good at one thing precludes doing other things. The perfectly free life, with no … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

New research from Harvard Business School’s Francesca Gino suggests that if we pay for information, we tend to overweigh its actual value.

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

There are two dominant mindsets in the world of business or any kind of organization.

One is a productive mindset, and it says it’s a good idea to seek valid knowledge, it’s a good idea to craft your conversations so you make explicit what you are thinking and trying to examine. You craft them in such a way that you can test, as clearly as … [ Read more ]

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

“There are two dominant mindsets in the world of business or any kind of organization.

One is a productive mindset, and it says it’s a good idea to seek valid knowledge, it’s a good idea to craft your conversations so you make explicit what you are thinking and trying to examine. You craft them in such a way that you can test, as clearly as … [ Read more ]

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

Expect resistance to your new proposal? One powerful way to persuade others is plucked from the language of romance.

Content: Article | Author: Robert Cialdini | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

There are four benchmarks for predicting the success of your product or service, according to this view from Strategy and Innovation. Here’s how a few well-known products tested out.

Content: Article | Author: Eric Mankin | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Innovation

You can use deadlines to your strategic advantage in negotiations-but so can your opponent. Here’s how to make the most of time pressure. From Negotiation.

Editor’s Note: I found the arguments made in this article quite unconvincing…what do you think?

Content: Article | Author: Don A. Moore | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Negotiation

Great firms can be undone by disruptors who analyze and exploit an incumbent’s strengths and motivations. From Clayton Christensen’s new book Seeing What’s Next.

Content: Article | Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy