ABN AMRO Bank N.V.: Global Change Agents

Rosabeth M. Kanter; Lance P. Pierce; Ryan Leo Raffaelli

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2007

ABN AMRO Bank N.V.: Global Change Agents

by Rosabeth M. Kanter, Lance P. Pierce and Ryan Leo Raffaelli

Abstract

ABN AMRO Global Banking Group developed its risk management function in response to expansion, and increasingly focused on environmental and social risks. The head of the function needed to influence policies and business decisions in a highly decentralized context in which major country business units such as Brazil, India, and the United States operated relatively independently. Highlights the history of environmental and social responsibility at the bank, links to business performance, and the leadership skills required for a corporate staff head to influence change.

Keywords: Risk Management; Banks and Banking; Expansion; Change; Governing and Advisory Boards; Social Enterprise; Leadership Development; History; Banking Industry; Service Industry; Brazil; India; United States;

Format: Print

24 pages

Educators

Citation:

Kanter, Rosabeth M., Lance P. Pierce, and Ryan Leo Raffaelli. "ABN AMRO Bank N.V.: Global Change Agents." Harvard Business School Case 307-050, April 2007.

Gun violence was a significant problem in America. Three Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellows Christy Wood, Russell Sternlicht, and Gareth Glaser each decided to do something about gun safety. They each used their professional and leadership experience to identify their own solutions to the issue. Wood created a set of principles for investments funds to pressure gun manufacturers and gun sellers within their portfolios to adopt safety standards. Sternlicht designed a membership-based lobbying and advocacy group in order to harness the power of mass movements to create positive change. And Glaser founded a smart-gun company whose product could help reduce certain types of deaths and injuries. Would any of these three innovations move beyond the historical gridlock on gun safety?

This is a teaching note to the original case: Gun violence was a significant problem in America. Three Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellows Christy Wood, Russell Sternlicht, and Gareth Glaser each decided to do something about gun safety. They each used their professional and leadership experience to identify their own solutions to the issue. Wood created a set of principles for investments funds to pressure gun manufacturers and gun sellers within their portfolios to adopt safety standards. Sternlicht designed a membership-based lobbying and advocacy group in order to harness the power of mass movements to create positive change. And Glaser founded a smart-gun company whose product could help reduce certain types of deaths and injuries. Would any of these three innovations move beyond the historical gridlock on gun safety?

Article | Administrative Science Quarterly | September 2019

Technology Reemergence: Creating New Value for Old Technologies in Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970-2008

Ryan Raffaelli

In 1983, 14 years after the introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch, mechanical watches and the Swiss watchmakers who built them were predicted to be obsolete (Landes, 1983). Unexpectedly, however, by 2008 the Swiss mechanical watchmaking industry had rematerialized to become the world’s leading exporter (in monetary value) of watches. This study reveals the process and mechanisms associated with technology reemergence, i.e., the resurgence of substantive and sustained demand for an old (legacy) technology following the introduction of a new dominant design. Drawing on the case of mechanical watchmaking, it reveals how technology reemergence is a decidedly cognitive process, unfolding in two phases: a first phase marked by a redefinition of the meanings and values associated with the legacy technology and facilitated by mechanisms of value recombining, temporal distancing, identity marking, and conceptual bridging and a second phase marked by a redefinition of market boundaries and facilitated by mechanisms of competitive set reclaiming and enthusiast consumer mobilizing. For mechanical watchmakers, the process culminated in competitive and consumer differentiation that ushered in innovation reinvestment and a period of substantive and sustained demand growth for mechanical watches. This paper contributes to research on technology cycles, cognition, and incumbent responses to discontinuous change.

Keywords: technology reemergence; technology cycles; cognition and market redefinition; legacy technology trajectories; Technology; Demand and Consumers; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity; Change; Consumer Products Industry; Switzerland;

Citation:

Raffaelli, Ryan. "Technology Reemergence: Creating New Value for Old Technologies in Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970-2008." Administrative Science Quarterly 64, no. 3 (September 2019): 576–618. View Details

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ABN AMRO Bank N.V.: Global Change Agents

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