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- Article
GitLab: Work Where You Want, When You Want
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Kevin Crowston, Linus Dahlander, Marco S. Minervini and Sumita Raghuram
GitLab is a software company that works “all remote” at the scale of more than 1,000 employees located in more than 60 countries. GitLab has no physical office and its employees can work from anywhere they choose. Any step of the organizational life of a GitLab...
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- April 2020
- Case
GitLab and the Future of All-Remote Work (A)
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Emma Salomon
GitLab is arguably one of the world’s largest “all-remote” companies. Started in 2011 and with more than 1,000 employees at present, it has no physical offices and all employees, including the entire C-Suite, work remotely from all parts of the world. The case...
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- November 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 12: Aligning Performance Goals and Incentives
By: Robert Simons
This module reading explains how managers use performance goals and incentives to ensure that employee actions align with the overall business strategy of the organization. The module begins by discussing how managers use goals to communicate business strategy, the...
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- Article
Why Leadership Training Fails—and What to Do about It
By: Michael Beer, Magnus Finnström and Derek Schrader
U.S. corporations spend enormous amounts of money—some $456 billion globally in 2015 alone—on employee training and education, but they aren't getting a good return on their investment. People soon revert to old ways of doing things, and company performance doesn't...
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- March 2016
- Supplement
Trouble at Tessei
By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan W. Buell
In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen ("bullet") trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the...
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Keywords:
Service Management;
Employee Engagement;
Employee Motivation;
Leadership And Managing People;
Quality Improvement;
Efficiency;
Japan;
Operational Transparency;
Employee Coordination;
Transparency;
Leadership;
Service Delivery;
Service Operations;
Employees;
Quality;
Transportation Industry;
Japan
- October 2015 (Revised February 2020)
- Teaching Note
Trouble at Tessei
By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan Buell
In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen ("bullet") trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the...
View Details
Keywords:
Service Management;
Employee Engagement;
Employee Motivation;
Leadership And Managing People;
Quality Improvement;
Efficiency;
Japan;
Operational Transparency;
Employee Coordination;
Transparency;
Leadership;
Service Delivery;
Service Operations;
Employees;
Quality;
Transportation Industry;
Japan
- January 2015 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Trouble at Tessei
By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan W. Buell
In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen ("bullet") trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the...
View Details
Keywords:
Service Management;
Employee Engagement;
Employee Motivation;
Leadership And Managing People;
Quality Improvement;
Efficiency;
Japan;
Operational Transparency;
Employee Coordination;
Transparency;
Leadership;
Service Delivery;
Service Operations;
Employees;
Quality;
Transportation Industry;
Japan
- 2009
- Book
Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization
By: Ranjay Gulati
In an era of raging commoditization and eroding profit margins, survival depends on resilience: staying one step ahead of your customers. Sure, most companies say they're "customer focused," but they don't deliver solutions to customers' thorniest problems. Why?...
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- 2009
- Working Paper
International Differences in the Size and Roles of Corporate Headquarters: An Empirical Examination
By: David J. Collis, David Young and Michael Goold
This paper examines differences in the size and roles of corporate headquarters around the world. Based on a survey of over 600 multibusiness corporations in seven countries (France, Germany, Holland, UK, Japan, US, and Chile) the paper describes the differences among...
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Keywords:
Business Headquarters;
Size;
Organizational Structure;
Culture;
Japan;
France;
Germany;
Netherlands;
United Kingdom;
United States;
Chile
- September 2006 (Revised March 2012)
- Case
Fritidsresor Under Pressure (A): The First 10 Hours
By: Joshua D. Margolis, Vincent Marie Dessain and Anders Sjoman
When a tsunami hit Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004, the leadership team at a Swedish tour company must manage a devastating crisis affecting thousands of its customers and employees in Thailand. Documents the challenges the company faced in the first ten hours of...
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- 2006
- Working Paper
Too Motivated?
I show that an agent's motivation to do well (objectively) may be unambiguously bad in a world with differing priors, i.e., when people openly disagree on the optimal course of action. The reason is that an agent who is strongly motivated is more likely to follow... View Details
- Article
Organizational Beliefs and Managerial Vision
Can managers have an impact on their firm that goes beyond their direct actions and decisions? This article shows that a manager with strong beliefs about the right course of action will attract, through sorting in the labor market, employees with similar beliefs. This...
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- May 2000 (Revised December 2018)
- Case
SMA: Micro-Electronic Products Division (A)
By: Michael Beer and Michael Tushman
The Micro-Electronic Products Division of SMA has financial and organizational problems. Conflict and lack of coordination exist between functional groups. Employees do not have a sense of direction and morale is low. The cause of these problems is found in a change in...
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- February 2000 (Revised August 2000)
- Case
Boston.com
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jon K Rust
How aggressively should an incumbent move when developing an online business that threatens its core product? With Internet competitors taking direct aim at the traditional print newspaper business model, the Boston Globe fought back with its own web initiative,...
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- July 1997 (Revised December 1997)
- Case
Allentown Materials Corporation: The Electronic Products Division (A)
By: Michael Beer
A division of Allentown Materials Corp. has financial and organizational problems. Conflict and lack of coordination exist between functional groups. Employees do not have a sense of direction, and morale is low. The cause of these problems is found in a change in...
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- April 1989 (Revised March 1990)
- Case
Burlington Northern (B)
Describes the experiences of a seasoned Burlington Northern (BN) sales representative after the introduction of ShipSmart, a decision support system developed by the BN to help its employees and customers analyze logistics problems. After a brief description of a...
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- July 1976 (Revised April 1983)
- Case
Corning Glass Works: The Electronic Products Division (A)
By: Michael Beer
Describes a division of Corning Glass Works that finds itself with deep financial and organizational problems. Severe conflict and lack of coordination exist between functional groups. Employees do not have a sense of direction and morale is low. Provides sufficient...
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- Research Summary
Inside Modern Giants
This research focuses on the leadership of large, complex firms--'modern giants'--companies of billions of dollars in revenues and tens of thousands of employees. Our interest lies in describing how the corporate center and senior management teams of large companies...
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- Research Summary
The Role of Information Technology in the Provision of Services
By: James I. Cash
James I. Cash, Jr. is exploring the role of information technology in service management. Specifically, he is studying the implications of the ubiquity of information technology at three levels in service-providing organizations. (In the United States today, service...
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