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HBS Strategy Research Conference October 24 – 25, 2008

This year HBS is celebrating its 100 Year Anniversary. To mark this special occasion we are planning a unique conference that integrates academic presentations, practitioner perspectives, and dynamic academic-CEO interactions. Our theme this year will be:

Putting People Back in Strategy

The conference aims to reinvigorate and revive research efforts that examine the many ways in which people are central to the success of firm strategy. We are organizing the conference around four main sessions, each covering a facet of our overarching theme:

Human Cognition

The way managers think affects how strategies are conceived, executed and changed. This session will examine sources of differences in cognitions and their impact on performance variation. Both theoretical and empirical contributions will be examined.

Social Networks

Social networks are critical to firm strategy as they facilitate acquisition of outside resources and internal firm coordination. This session will examine these network functions, paying particular attention to the fit between social networks and organizational design as they support firm strategy.

Labor Markets

Managing human capital - a key component of any strategy - constitutes an opportunity and a challenge as firms globalize. This session will explore how firms deal with multiple and often conflicting institutional forces to recruit, motivate and coordinate human capital across locations.

Leading Strategy

Leading strategy is often described as a top management responsibility. This session will explore what it means to lead strategy, whether CEOs have a unique role in this process, and, if they do, what is involved in doing the job well. We will also discuss priorities in building a research agenda to explore these issues.