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Leadership

Leadership

    • 2015
    • Chapter

    Leave No Slice of Genius Behind: Selecting and Developing Tomorrow's Leaders of Innovation

    By: Linda A. Hill

    More than ever, leaders of nearly every kind of organization view their human resources teams as essential to institutional well-being and long-term growth and sustainability. That's the central and animating theme of "The Rise of HR: Wisdom from 73 Thought Leaders," a new anthology published by the HR Certification Institute. Professor Hill's essay addresses the question of how to develop leadership talent capable of building and sustaining organizations that can innovate time and again to address the challenges we face as a global community.

    • 2015
    • Chapter

    Leave No Slice of Genius Behind: Selecting and Developing Tomorrow's Leaders of Innovation

    By: Linda A. Hill

    More than ever, leaders of nearly every kind of organization view their human resources teams as essential to institutional well-being and long-term growth and sustainability. That's the central and animating theme of "The Rise of HR: Wisdom from 73 Thought Leaders," a new anthology published by the HR Certification Institute. Professor Hill's...

    • Article

    Professionalism, Fiduciary Duty, and Health-Related Business Leadership

    By: Joshua D. Margolis

    Expanding fiduciary duty to leaders of health-related businesses can help leaders meet the challenges of caring for not only the corporation and shareholders but also the patients and medical professionals. How should leaders of health-related businesses weigh the demand for efficiency and profit alongside the care of patients and the professional development of physicians? How might physicians approach these leadership roles to withstand the pressures that can divert behavior away from the espoused purposes and ethical standards of medicine?

    • Article

    Professionalism, Fiduciary Duty, and Health-Related Business Leadership

    By: Joshua D. Margolis

    Expanding fiduciary duty to leaders of health-related businesses can help leaders meet the challenges of caring for not only the corporation and shareholders but also the patients and medical professionals. How should leaders of health-related businesses weigh the demand for efficiency and profit alongside the care of patients and the professional...

    • July–August 2014
    • Article

    How the Other Fukushima Plant Survived

    By: Ranjay Gulati, Charles Casto and Charlotte Krontiris

    In March 2011, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was devastated by three reactor explosions and two core meltdowns in the days following a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami that produced waves as high as 17 meters. The world is familiar with Daiichi's fate; less well known is the crisis at its sister plant, Daini, about 10 kilometers to the south. As a result of nature's onslaught, three of Daini's four reactors lacked sufficient power to achieve cooldown. To prevent the disaster experienced up north, the site superintendent, Naohiro Masuda, and his team had to connect them to the plant's surviving power sources. In a volatile environment, Masuda and Daini's hundreds of employees responded to each unexpected event in turn. Luck played a part, but so did smart leadership and sensemaking. Until the last reactor went into cold shutdown, Masuda's team took nothing for granted. With each new problem they encountered, it recalibrated, iteratively creating continuity and restoring order. Daini survived the crisis without an explosion or a meltdown.

    • July–August 2014
    • Article

    How the Other Fukushima Plant Survived

    By: Ranjay Gulati, Charles Casto and Charlotte Krontiris

    In March 2011, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was devastated by three reactor explosions and two core meltdowns in the days following a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami that produced waves as high as 17 meters. The world is familiar with Daiichi's fate; less well known is the crisis at its sister plant, Daini, about 10 kilometers to the...

    • October 2014
    • Article

    The Transparency Trap

    By: Ethan Bernstein

    To get people to be more creative and productive, managers increase transparency with open workspaces and access to real-time data. But less transparent work environments can yield more-transparent employees. Employees perform better when they can try out new ideas and approaches within certain zones of privacy. Organizations allow them to do that by drawing four types of boundaries: around teams of people (zones of attention), between feedback and evaluation (zones of judgment), between decision rights and improvement rights (zones of slack), and for set periods of experimentation (zones of time). By balancing transparency and privacy, organizations can encourage just the right amount of "deviance" to foster innovative behavior and boost productivity.

    • October 2014
    • Article

    The Transparency Trap

    By: Ethan Bernstein

    To get people to be more creative and productive, managers increase transparency with open workspaces and access to real-time data. But less transparent work environments can yield more-transparent employees. Employees perform better when they can try out new ideas and approaches within certain zones of privacy. Organizations allow them to do that...

    • March 2015
    • Module Note

    Power and Influence in Society

    By: Julie Battilana

    This module aims to help students understand how power and influence are employed, both to reproduce the status quo and to effect change in society. It first helps them to understand why, more often than not, power is used to reproduce the existing way individuals and organizations operate in society. It then highlights what it takes to implement societal change. This includes a wide variety of initiatives ranging from attempts to change individuals' and organizations' behaviors in a given industry or sector, to efforts to change behaviors throughout a country, region, or even the world. Addressing the issue of power and influence in society in an MBA classroom is critical, especially at a time like now, when the relationship between business and society is attracting increasing attention, and when business leaders are increasingly expected to contribute not only to financial value creation, but also to social value creation. In this context, it is important to prepare business school students to lead not just in their organizations, but more broadly in society. Meeting this aspiration requires equipping them with knowledge and tools that will enable them to understand what it takes to have a positive impact in the world. In line with this objective, this module note focuses on how leaders who are not part of government or other public agencies can spark, organize, and/or guide action to bring about change at the societal level.

    • March 2015
    • Module Note

    Power and Influence in Society

    By: Julie Battilana

    This module aims to help students understand how power and influence are employed, both to reproduce the status quo and to effect change in society. It first helps them to understand why, more often than not, power is used to reproduce the existing way individuals and organizations operate in society. It then highlights what it takes to implement...

Leadership Initiative

The Leadership Initiative undertakes cutting-edge research and course development projects about leadership and leadership development, both within HBS and through collaborations with other organizations.
Leadership

As our world grows increasingly global, intricate, and ever-changing, the role of leaders is becoming more and more complex and critical to business success. In the 1950s and 1960s, Fritz Roethlisberger and Elton Mayo's contributions to the "Hawthorne effect," and work by Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch on organizational integration, sparked the field of Organizational Behavior. Early work by Michael Beer on leading organizational change, Rosabeth Kanter on innovation for productivity, John Kotter on power and influence, and Michael Tushman on innovation management helped shape today's understanding of organizational transformation. With an interest in Leadership that spans our academic units, our approach to research is collaborative and multi-disciplinary. We leverage a wide range of research methodologies – from onsite field research to surveys, experiments, and extensive longitudinal studies.

Leadership Initiative

The Leadership Initiative undertakes cutting-edge research and course development projects about leadership and leadership development, both within HBS and through collaborations with other organizations.

Leadership

Recent Publications

Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership

By: Geoffrey Jones
  • 2023 |
  • Book |
  • Faculty Research
Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should business leaders play a role in solving society’s problems? For decades, CEOs have been told that their only responsibility is to the bottom line. But consensus is growing that companies―and their leaders―must engage with their social, political, and environmental contexts. Jones distinguishes deep responsibility, which can deliver radical social and ecological responses, from corporate social responsibility, which is often little more than window dressing. Deeply Responsible Business provides a historical perspective on the social responsibility of business, going back to the Quaker capitalism of George Cadbury and the worker solidarity of Edward Filene and carrying us through to impact investing and the B-corps. Jones profiles exemplary business leaders from around the world who combined profits with social purpose to confront inequality, inner-city blight, and ecological degradation, while navigating restrictive laws and authoritarian regimes.

The business leaders profiled in this book were motivated by bedrock values and sometimes driven by faith. They chose to operate in socially productive fields, interacted with humility with stakeholders, and felt a duty to support their communities. While far from perfect, each one showed that profit and purpose could be reconciled. Many of their businesses were wildly successful―though financial success was not their only metric of achievement. As many companies seek to coopt more ethically sensitized consumers, Jones gives us a new perspective to tackle tough questions and envisions a future in which companies and entrepreneurs can play a key role in healing our communities and protecting the natural world.
Keywords: Corporate Responsibility; Business Ecuation; Socially Responsible Investing; Business Education; Ethics; Leadership; Business History; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Religion; Social Enterprise; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Banking Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Computer Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Education Industry; Fashion Industry; Financial Services Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Green Technology Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Electronics Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United Kingdom; Germany; United States; Japan; India; Latin America
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Jones, Geoffrey. Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023.

You Need Two Leadership Gears: Know When to Take Charge and When to Get Out of the Way

By: Lindy Greer, Francesca Gino and Robert Sutton
  • March–April 2023 |
  • Article |
  • Harvard Business Review
The debate about the best way to lead has been raging for years: Should you empower your people and get out of their way, or take charge and push them to do great work? The answer, say the authors, is to do both. Their research shows that effective leaders routinely shift between these two seemingly opposing modes—and build teams whose members are good at switching back and forth too.
Sometimes teams need diver­gent thinking (during idea generation, for instance); at others, they need convergent thinking (to, say, make a decision and map out next steps). Leaders must be crystal clear about which mode is appropriate when. They have to make it psychologically safe for people to speak up, contribute, and argue, and when it’s time to end the discussion and act, signal that they’re taking charge again.
There are four ways to increase the ability to shift modes: Question your assumptions about power and fixed hierarchies. Study your habits and your team’s to see if you’re stuck in one mode or the other. Set clear expectations with meeting agendas and rituals that mark transitions. And reinforce shifts with your own words, deeds, and body language.
Keywords: Leadership Style; Groups and Teams; Organizational Structure
Citation
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Greer, Lindy, Francesca Gino, and Robert Sutton. "You Need Two Leadership Gears: Know When to Take Charge and When to Get Out of the Way." Harvard Business Review 101, no. 2 (March–April 2023): 76–85.

Saudi Arabia: A Vision in Progress

By: Kristin Fabbe, Adel Hamaizia and Tom Quinn
  • February 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
In 2016, when Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced a long-range economic and social transformation plan called Vision 2030, he faced Western skepticism about how the oil-rich and religiously conservative country would accomplish its ambitious goals. In 2022, halfway through the Vision’s timeline, government and private sector leaders needed to take stock. Could they succeed in diversifying the economy away from oil, engineering social change, and elevating Saudi Arabia on the world stage?
Keywords: Economic Growth; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Globalized Economies and Regions; Government Administration; International Relations; Leading Change; Privatization; Religion; Public Opinion; Saudi Arabia
Citation
Educators
Related
Fabbe, Kristin, Adel Hamaizia, and Tom Quinn. "Saudi Arabia: A Vision in Progress." Harvard Business School Case 723-006, February 2023.

Accelerating the Accelerator: Raja Al Mazrouei at DIFC Fintech Hive

By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Lydia Begag
  • February 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
In January 2023, Raja Al Mazrouei became the Managing Director and Acting CEO of Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) in Dubai, UAE. In her previous role as the Executive Vice President of the DIFC Fintech Hive, she successfully built and led an accelerator program for start-ups in the financial technology (fintech) sector in Dubai. The Fintech Hive has had successful partnerships with established banks like Emirates NBD and accelerated over 200 start-ups in the MENA region. Al Mazrouei and her team embraced recent technologies and evolved their business models to keep up with the global digital space.

With Dubai's ambition to be one of the top ten metaverse economies by 2030, Al Mazrouei’s last mandate as EVP of Fintech Hive was to strategize on how to deepen their partnerships and remain at the forefront of technology. She decided to focus on the metaverse with her long-standing partner, Emirates NBD. Although some questioned whether the metaverse would create value for those in the financial sector, this project kept Fintech Hive and Emirates NBD on the cutting edge. Together, they created a global accelerator program for metaverse start-ups to enhance customer experience, contributing to the country’s agenda. It was clear to Al Mazrouei that building partnerships, like the one established with Emirates NBD, would continue to be critical for success in her new position. She was eager to collaborate with her new team and fulfill the country’s ambitions by building the culture and capabilities required to embrace innovation and digital technology across the Dubai government and economy.
Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Management; Strategy; Technology Adoption; Information Infrastructure; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Technological Innovation; Digital Marketing; Digital Strategy; Digital Transformation; Global Strategy; Globalized Markets and Industries; Banks and Banking; Corporate Finance; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Banking Industry; Middle East; Singapore; London; United Arab Emirates; Dubai
Citation
Educators
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Related
Hill, Linda A., Emily Tedards, and Lydia Begag. "Accelerating the Accelerator: Raja Al Mazrouei at DIFC Fintech Hive." Harvard Business School Case 423-064, February 2023.

Moleskine Foundation: Can Creativity Change the World?

By: Ryan Raffaelli, Alexandra C. Feldberg and Sarah Gulick
  • February 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
The Italy-based Moleskine Foundation worked with young adults in Africa and Europe to inspire social change through art and creative projects. Adama Sanneh, the newly appointed CEO of the Moleskine Foundation, faced several challenges: First, he had to make his own mark on an organization that had been shaped by several well-respected Foundation founders and advisors who still remained active on the board. Second, he had to manage the relationship between the Foundation and the Moleskine Company, the Foundation’s largest funder. Third, Sanneh had made news as Italy’s only Black CEO, but he did not want race to become his defining attribute. Finally, he needed to determine how ambitious he could be with the Foundation’s strategy. He and his team held the belief that creativity - a longstanding element of the Moleskine Company identity - could also be a source of social change around the world. Developing a realistic strategy to achieve this goal would be no easy task, and would require support from multiple internal and external stakeholders. The case highlights how individuals manage their identity and set a new strategy when stepping into new leadership roles. In addition, it sheds light on the unique governance challenges that can arise for a corporate foundation associated with a separate for-profit enterprise.
Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Social Enterprise; Leadership; Identity; Strategy; Education Industry; Italy; Africa; Europe; United States
Citation
Educators
Related
Raffaelli, Ryan, Alexandra C. Feldberg, and Sarah Gulick. "Moleskine Foundation: Can Creativity Change the World?" Harvard Business School Case 423-043, February 2023.

Germany, Europe, and Green Industrial Revolution

By: Gunnar Trumbull and Jonathan Schlefer
  • February 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
In 2023, Germany was racing to master yet another industrial revolution: this time in green technology. Could it transform its manufacturing and industry in time to sustain internationally competitiveness, especially with the United States and China; reach carbon neutrality by 2040; and manage its sometimes contentious relationship with the rest of Europe?
Keywords: Economy; Economic Growth; Success; Leadership; Problems and Challenges; Germany
Citation
Educators
Related
Trumbull, Gunnar, and Jonathan Schlefer. "Germany, Europe, and Green Industrial Revolution." Harvard Business School Case 723-043, February 2023.

Peloton Interactive (B)

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Lynn S. Paine and David Lane
  • February 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Supplements “Peloton Interactive (A)” (HBS No. 323-005), describing company restructuring and changes to management and the board of directors between February 8 and early October 2022.
Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth Management; Investment Activism; Leadership; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Sports Industry; United States
Citation
Educators
Related
Srinivasan, Suraj, Lynn S. Paine, and David Lane. "Peloton Interactive (B)." Harvard Business School Case 323-046, February 2023.

Peloton Interactive (A)

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Lynn S. Paine and David Lane
  • January 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Early in February 2022, the board of Peloton Interactive faced some knotty challenges. Immense pandemic demand for its stationary exercise bicycles and treadmills had prompted the firm to scale up production rapidly. But as gyms reopened and the virulence of the virus ebbed, demand had ebbed too, leaving Peloton with unsold inventory, an unsustainable cost structure, and Nasdaq’s worst-performing stock for 2021. Activist shareholders were calling on the board to remove the founder CEO, who was board chair and a controlling shareholder through a dual-class share structure, and sell the company to a strategic investor. Complicating external pressure for change was a dual-class share structure that gave insiders a high degree of control over governance.
Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth Management; Investment Activism; Leadership; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Sports Industry; United States
Citation
Educators
Related
Srinivasan, Suraj, Lynn S. Paine, and David Lane. "Peloton Interactive (A)." Harvard Business School Case 323-005, January 2023.

Adams + Beasley Associates

By: Dennis Campbell and Iuliana Mogosanu
  • January 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
This case illustrates how a strong culture, founder-led SME designed and used a unique performance metric — the job security index — to manage through periods of economic uncertainty. The case centers specifically on how the job security index was used in an interactive control process to focus the organization on identifying strategic uncertainties and developing related action plans to survive the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. The case explores how the design and use of this metric both influenced, and was influenced by, the firm’s broad-based employee ownership incentives.
Keywords: Financial Crisis; Measurement and Metrics; Employee Ownership; Risk and Uncertainty; Small Business; Leadership; Organizational Culture
Citation
Educators
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Related
Campbell, Dennis, and Iuliana Mogosanu. "Adams + Beasley Associates." Harvard Business School Case 123-051, January 2023.

Leadership and the Value of Persistence

By: James J. Anton, Alan Jaske and Dennis Yao
  • 2023 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
Consider a leader’s decision whether to persist with an unsuccessful R&D project or to terminate the project in favor of a new project with an uncertain value. How does that decision affect the effort exerted by the manager assigned to the project? To study this question we build and analyze an equilibrium, infinite-horizon model which embeds a search problem with an agency problem. We assess the policy value of a leader’s persistence instrument under conditions of complete and incomplete information. Among other things, we find that persistence takes advantage of a manager’s incentive to gain access to future, potentially higher-payoff projects to induce effort on the current project. Furthermore, when the leader has superior information about the value of the current project, the manager may choose to delay effort to better take advantage of the information signal provided by the leader’s persistence choice.
Keywords: Persistence; Project Evaluation; R&D Project Management; Projects; Decision Choices and Conditions; Leadership
Citation
Related
Anton, James J., Alan Jaske, and Dennis Yao. "Leadership and the Value of Persistence." Working Paper, January 2023.
More Publications

Faculty

Rosabeth M. Kanter
Boris Groysberg
Linda A. Hill
Nitin Nohria
Lynn S. Paine
Amy C. Edmondson
Michael L. Tushman
Anthony Mayo
Joseph L. Bower
Joshua D. Margolis
Francesca Gino
Nancy F. Koehn
→See All

HBS Working Knowlege

    • 01 Mar 2023

    How Much Does 'Deep Purpose' Matter to the Bottom Line?

    Re: James L. Heskett
    • 27 Jan 2023

    Have We Lost Sight of Integrity?

    by Bill George
    • 24 Jan 2023

    Passion at Work Is a Good Thing—But Only If Bosses Know How to Manage It

    Re: Jon M. Jachimowicz
→More Articles

Harvard Business Publishing

    • Article

    Developing a Digital Mindset: How to Lead Your Organization into the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI

    By: Tsedal Neeley and Paul Leonardi
    • February 2023
    • Case

    Accelerating the Accelerator: Raja Al Mazrouei at DIFC Fintech Hive

    By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Lydia Begag
    • 2020
    • Book

    Capitalism at Risk: How Business Can Lead

    By: Joseph L. Bower, Dutch Leonard and Lynn S. Paine
→More Harvard Business Publishing
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