Leadership

Leadership is a featured research topic and an initiative at Harvard Business School.

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.

Featured Works

Chapter | The Rise of HR | 2015
Leave No Slice of Genius Behind: Selecting and Developing Tomorrow's Leaders of Innovation
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.
Keywords: innovation; human resources; talent management; talent development and retention; leadership; Innovation Leadership; Human Resources; Talent and Talent Management; Leadership; Leadership Development;

Citation:
Hill, Linda A. "Leave No Slice of Genius Behind: Selecting and Developing Tomorrow's Leaders of Innovation." In The Rise of HR: Wisdom from 73 Thought Leaders, edited by Dave Ulrich, William A. Schiemann, and Libby Sartain, 233–240. Alexandria, VA: HR Certification Institute, 2015. View Details
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Article | JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association
Professionalism, Fiduciary Duty, and Health-Related Business Leadership
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?

Citation:
Margolis, Joshua D. "Professionalism, Fiduciary Duty, and Health-Related Business Leadership." JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association 313, no. 18 (May 12, 2015): 1819–1820. View Details
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Article | Harvard Business Review | July–August 2014
How the Other Fukushima Plant Survived
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.

Citation:
Gulati, Ranjay, Charles Casto, and Charlotte Krontiris. "How the Other Fukushima Plant Survived." Harvard Business Review 92, nos. 7/8 (July–August 2014): 111–115. View Details
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Article | Harvard Business Review | October 2014
The Transparency Trap
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.

Citation:
Bernstein, Ethan. "The Transparency Trap." Harvard Business Review 92, no. 10 (October 2014): 58–66. View Details
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Module Note | March 2015
Power and Influence in Society
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.

Citation:
Battilana, Julie. "Power and Influence in Society." Harvard Business School Module Note 415-055, March 2015. View Details
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Recent Publications

Article | Harvard Business Review Digital Articles | November 12, 2020
What We Can Learn About Unity from Hostile Takeovers
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
In the wake of the recent election, the United States faces a fraught, difficult transfer of power. What we know about hostile takeovers in business can provide help in finding a path forward. Leaders on the winning side of the more successful acquisitions emphasized shared identity, inclusion, and investment in the future.
Keywords: Leadership; Transition; Government and Politics; Mergers and Acquisitions;

Citation:
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. "What We Can Learn About Unity from Hostile Takeovers." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (November 12, 2020). View Details
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Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2020
Amazon: Cult or Culture?
Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott and Tricia Gregg
Amazon was one of the first entrants in e-commerce. Under the leadership of founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon had expanded beyond books to manufacturing and selling a wide range of products and services globally. Bezos had built a customer-centric culture that permeated all aspects of the company. As Amazon continued to grow and expand into new business areas, would it be able to maintain its culture and practices? How much of Amazon’s success depended on the cult of Bezos? As the company continued to diversify beyond Bezos’s immediate oversight, what could Amazon do to ensure that it stayed relentless?
Keywords: culture; technology companies; retail; Human Resource Practices; Growth; founder; Leadership; Organizational Culture; Growth Management; Technology; Human Resources; Talent and Talent Management; Retail Industry; Technology Industry;

Citation:
Groysberg, Boris, Sarah L. Abbott, and Tricia Gregg. "Amazon: Cult or Culture?" Harvard Business School Case 421-008, November 2020. View Details
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Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2020
Truebird—An AlleyCorp Venture
Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In December 2018, Kevin Ryan and Wendy Tsu faced an important decision – to finalize the CEO candidate for Truebird, an innovative, automated coffee café concept. Like many of AlleyCorp and Ryan’s companies, Truebird started with the observation of an unmet need – an inability to get good coffee at a reasonable price without a wait. Ryan’s track record as a serial entrepreneur included companies such as MongoDB, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and Business Insider. The commonality across AlleyCorp’s diverse businesses was a systematic process to ideation, led by Wendy Tsu, and an emphasis on the early Co-founder/CEO. Over the years, Ryan had refined his process of identifying the most appropriate person to serve as CEO. Two strong candidates had been shortlisted for the CEO position at Truebird. Unlike traditional approaches that used the reference check as a safety net, Ryan and Tsu considered reference check interviews as a stronger indicator of on-the-job performance. How should they structure a reference check process that would allow a complete understanding of each candidate? What questions should they ask when they found people who had worked with, or for, each of the candidates?
Keywords: Startup; hiring; staffing; recruiting; Business Ventures; Finance; Leadership; Management Skills; Management Teams; Jobs and Positions; Job Interviews; Human Resources; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Technology Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States;

Citation:
Ghosh, Shikhar, and Shweta Bagai. "Truebird—An AlleyCorp Venture." Harvard Business School Case 821-030, November 2020. View Details
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Article | Harvard Business Review Digital Articles | October 19, 2020
Today's Leaders Need Vulnerability, Not Bravado
Amy C. Edmondson and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Few myths are as pervasive as the notion that leaders ought to appear tough and confident. Or at least, that was the case prior to the current pandemic, which has exposed the many weaknesses of forceful, dominant leaders and highlighted the superiority of those who have the courage to reveal their vulnerabilities.
Keywords: Leadership; Leadership Style;

Citation:
Edmondson, Amy C., and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. "Today's Leaders Need Vulnerability, Not Bravado." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (October 19, 2020). View Details
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Article | Harvard Business Review | September–October 2020
A New Model for Ethical Leadership
Max Bazerman
Rather than try to follow a set of simple rules (“Don’t lie.” “Don’t cheat.”), leaders and managers seeking to be more ethical should focus on creating the most value for society. This utilitarian view, Bazerman argues, blends philosophical thought with business school pragmatism and can inform a wide variety of managerial decisions in areas including hiring, negotiations, and even time management. Creating value requires that managers confront and overcome the cognitive barriers that prevent them from being as ethical as they would like to be. Just as we rely on System 1 (intuitive) and System 2 (deliberative) thinking, he says, we have parallel systems for ethical decision-making. He proposes strategies for engaging the deliberative one in order to make more-ethical choices. Managers who care about the value they create can influence others throughout the organization by means of the norms and decision-making environment they create.
Keywords: social value; Leadership; Moral Sensibility; Ethics; Decision Making; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Society;

Citation:
Bazerman, Max. "A New Model for Ethical Leadership." Harvard Business Review 98, no. 5 (September–October 2020): 90–97. View Details
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Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020
The Black New Venture Competition
Karen Mills, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin Sinozich and Gabriella Elanbeck
Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to do something to make a difference for early-stage Black technology entrepreneurs seeking funding. In just four months, they created the inaugural Black New Venture Competition (BNVC), which attracted 300 applicants and became the largest student-led business plan competition for Black entrepreneurs in the U.S. Over the course of the competition, Foster and Simpson were able to begin to identify some of the biases and frictions in the evaluation and funding of early-stage Black ventures. Was there bias in the selection rubric? What would happen when these Black founders faced traditional white VC investors in their next funding round? Now Foster and Simpson needed to decide what to keep and what to change for future iterations of the BNVC. Were they, and their successors, even thinking big enough for BNVC 2.0?
Keywords: Startup; start-up; Startup financing; Startups; start-ups; African-American Protagonist; african-american entrepreneurs; african-american investors; African-Americans; African-American women; black leadership; Black inventors; Black entrepreneurs; Harvard Business School; Harvard; business and society; early stage funding; Early Stage Finance; technology entrepreneurship; discrimination; Technology ventures; entrepreneurial finance; entrepreneurial financing; Business Plan; Business Startups; Business Ventures; Business Growth and Maturation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Small Business; Leadership; Technology; Competition; Technology Industry;

Citation:
Mills, Karen, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin Sinozich, and Gabriella Elanbeck. "The Black New Venture Competition." Harvard Business School Case 821-029, September 2020. View Details
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Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020
True North: Pioneering Analytics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence
Karim R. Lakhani, Kairavi Dey and Hannah Mayer
True North was a private equity fund that specialized in the growth and buyout of mid-market, India-centric companies. The leadership team initially believed that technology was not core to traditional businesses and steered clear of new age technology-oriented businesses. Then, in 2007, True North invested in Meru Cabs, a ride-sharing service with a growing fleet of cabs that had to change its business model with the launch of tech-based platforms like Uber. This experience led True North to significantly alter its stance on the importance of technology-powered business models. The team learned that all businesses needed to effectively become technology businesses to remain relevant. True North initiated the “Analytics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence” (3A) project. A system, Kelp, was designed and developed internally to facilitate the transformation of True North into an AI-first firm based on the introduction of data-driven decision making and productivity-enhancing digital tools. In 2020, as different elements of Kelp were launched, the leadership team met to discuss the future of this technology.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; Technology; Management; Operations; Organizations; Leadership; Innovation and Invention; Business Model; Computer Industry; Technology Industry;

Citation:
Lakhani, Karim R., Kairavi Dey, and Hannah Mayer. "True North: Pioneering Analytics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence." Harvard Business School Case 621-042, September 2020. View Details
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Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020
Lojas Americanas: Project DNA and the 'People Machine'
Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and Sarah L. Abbott
Lojas Americanas (“Americanas”) was one of the largest retailers in Brazil. Via its stores, digital platform and Innovation Engine, the company served more than 38 million people. In recent years, Americanas had enjoyed rapid growth; growing from 98 stores in 2001 to 1,700 stores in 2019. As each store had its own manager, and there was a growing need for district and regional managers, meeting these human resource needs had become an increasingly large challenge. Compounding this, one of the company’s core talent management principles was that store managers should be hired from inside the company. This challenge was the genesis for what became known as Project DNA. Via Project DNA Americanas executives aimed to: determine empirically the extent to which store managers impacted store performance; identify those characteristics that differentiated a good manager from an average one; and create a leadership training program to develop and reinforce those characteristics. To date, approximately 1,500 managers had participated in the training, and while it was still early days, initial results had been impressive. The question for Americanas’ management was: what could be done to improve and update the project? And, could the learnings of Project DNA be applied elsewhere?
Keywords: retail; Data Analytics; growth and development; Data and Data Sets; Analysis; Training; Performance; Employees; Management; Human Resources; Leadership Development; Retail Industry; Brazil;

Citation:
Groysberg, Boris, Eric Lin, and Sarah L. Abbott. "Lojas Americanas: Project DNA and the 'People Machine'." Harvard Business School Case 421-038, September 2020. View Details
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Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020
Tech with a Side of Pizza: How Dominos Rose to the Top
Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson
After hitting an all-time low in 2008, Domino’s Pizza underwent a vigorous rebranding, product development, and embraced innovative technologies to become the world’s leading international fast-food retailer. Domino’s considered itself as much a tech company as it was a purveyor of fast food, with digital orders accounting for a high percentage of sales. Domino’s was run more like a Silicon Valley company than a fast food chain and was described by CEO Patrick Doyle as “a technology company that delivers pizza.” As it bested rivals like Pizza Hut and Papa John’s, Domino’s declared itself “The Official Food of Everything.” In 2020, as much of the world remained in lockdown Domino’s, which offered delivery options from drones to driverless vehicles, saw a jump in sales. How did Domino’s become the world’s leading restaurant?
Keywords: digital marketing; Digital technology; innovation; scaling; Data Analytics; Technological Innovation; Technology; Strategy; Management; Marketing; Operations; Human Resources; Entrepreneurship; Change Management; Analysis; Performance; Customers; Growth and Development; Competitive Advantage; Employees; Training; Leadership Development; Food and Beverage Industry; Technology Industry; United States;

Citation:
Groysberg, Boris, and Susan Seligson. "Tech with a Side of Pizza: How Dominos Rose to the Top." Harvard Business School Case 421-035, September 2020. View Details
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Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020
&pizza: Leading an ‘Employee-First’ Company During a Period of Societal Challenges
Francesca Gino and Jeffrey Huizinga
&Pizza is a pizza chain that in the spring of 2020 finds its business completely up-ended by the COVID-19 crisis and shut-down. Many companies in the restaurant and hospitality sector responded to the crisis by shutting down their operations and laying off employees. &Pizza’s leader took a different approach: as the company pivoted mainly to a delivery model, he realized there would be added strain on his employees, and so he decided to not only avoid lay-offs, but to increase wages and provide other benefits to its Tribe (i.e., the employees).
Keywords: Agility; crisis; culture; values; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Leadership; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs;

Citation:
Gino, Francesca, and Jeffrey Huizinga. "&pizza: Leading an ‘Employee-First’ Company During a Period of Societal Challenges." Harvard Business School Case 921-017, September 2020. View Details
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