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Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior

  • Faculty
  • Curriculum
  • Seminars & Conferences
  • Awards & Honors
  • Doctoral Students
Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students
    • 2016 Distinguished Scholar Award

      Organization Development & Change Division, Academy of Management

      By: Michael Tushman

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        2016 Distinguished Scholar Award

        Organization Development & Change Division, Academy of Management

        By: Michael Tushman

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        • Harvard Business Review

        Culture is not the culprit

        When Organizations Are in Crisis, It's Usually Because the Business is Broken.

        By: Jay Lorsch and Emily McTague

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        • Harvard Business Review

        Culture is not the culprit

        When Organizations Are in Crisis, It's Usually Because the Business is Broken.

        By: Jay Lorsch and Emily McTague

        More Information

        • We blame women for not taking the lead in the workplace. Here's why that's wrong.

          By: Robin Ely

          Women and men alike make a lot of assumptions about women. Yet when it comes to women and work, some of the most ubiquitous beliefs are the most mistaken.

          More Information

            We blame women for not taking the lead in the workplace. Here's why that's wrong.

            By: Robin Ely

            Women and men alike make a lot of assumptions about women. Yet when it comes to women and work, some of the most ubiquitous beliefs are the most mistaken.

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            • 2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award

              By: Linda A. Hill

              Professor Linda Hill won the 2015 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Innovation. She was also ranked #6 overall on the Thinkers50 ranking.

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                2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award

                By: Linda A. Hill

                Professor Linda Hill won the 2015 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Innovation. She was also ranked #6 overall on the Thinkers50 ranking.

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                • featured in The New Yorker

                Kodak's Old-School Response to Disruption

                By: Ryan Raffaelli

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                • featured in The New Yorker

                Kodak's Old-School Response to Disruption

                By: Ryan Raffaelli

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                • HBS Working Knowledge

                CEOs and Coaches

                How Important is Organizational 'Fit'?

                By: Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik

                How big a factor is matching the right coach with the right team?

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                • HBS Working Knowledge

                CEOs and Coaches

                How Important is Organizational 'Fit'?

                By: Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik

                How big a factor is matching the right coach with the right team?

                More Information

                • HBS Working Knowledge

                Is it Worth a Pay Cut to Work for a Great Manager (Like Bill Belichick)?

                By: Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik

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                • HBS Working Knowledge

                Is it Worth a Pay Cut to Work for a Great Manager (Like Bill Belichick)?

                By: Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik

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                • HBS Working Paper Series

                Does 'What We Do' Make Us 'Who We Are'?

                Organizational Design and Identity Change at the Federal Bureau of Investigation

                By: Ranjay Gulati, Ryan Raffaelli, and Jan Rivkin

                More Information

                • HBS Working Paper Series

                Does 'What We Do' Make Us 'Who We Are'?

                Organizational Design and Identity Change at the Federal Bureau of Investigation

                By: Ranjay Gulati, Ryan Raffaelli, and Jan Rivkin

                More Information

              About the Unit

              Through its research, teaching, and course development, the Organizational Behavior Unit creates and disseminates knowledge that advances the understanding of how to lead and manage with the aim of increasing personal and organizational effectiveness. Although specific research interests span a wide range of subjects, the faculty share a problem driven, interdisciplinary, multi method approach that has led to significant impact on theory and practice.

              Our current intellectual agenda builds on the rich history of OB at HBS and focuses squarely on the organizational changes and challenges arising from today's increasingly global and more competitive economy. In the last decade, the faculty have been recognized for their work on leadership in an increasingly diverse and dynamic environment, the evolution of managerial careers in our society, managing diversity, and organizational design and change to meet evolving needs and expectations in a changing world.

              Recent Publications

              Mastering Consulting and Advisory Skills (MCAS)

              By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti
              • May 2023 |
              • Course Overview Note |
              • Faculty Research
              Citation
              Related
              Fubini, David G., and Patrick Sanguineti. "Mastering Consulting and Advisory Skills (MCAS)." Harvard Business School Course Overview Note 423-078, May 2023.

              Don't Let Passion Lead to Burnout on Your Team

              By: Joy Bredehorst, Kai Krautter, Jirs Meuris and Jon M. Jachimowicz
              • May 17, 2023 |
              • Article |
              • Harvard Business Review (website)
              Passion is often heralded as the key to a fulfilling and successful career, but the authors’ recent research suggests that it can also come at a cost: Feeling passionate about work can lead to exhaustion and even burnout. Through studies with more than 700 employees across a wide range of industries, the authors found that people reported feeling less burned out on days when they felt more passionate about their work—but on the day following a particularly passionate day, employees actually felt more burned out than usual. This is because on days when employees experienced higher levels of passion, they also felt more energized, leading them to exert themselves more and thus be more exhausted the next day. To address this vicious cycle, the authors argue that employees should be proactive about managing their passion and make sure to build in time for rest and recovery. At the same time, rather than encouraging unsustainable passion and pushing people to burn themselves out, managers should help their teams navigate the challenges that can come with feeling passionate about work by managing workloads, monitoring emotional exhaustion, and building systems that foster work-life balance.
              Keywords: Burnout; Emotions; Work-Life Balance; Employees
              Citation
              Read Now
              Related
              Bredehorst, Joy, Kai Krautter, Jirs Meuris, and Jon M. Jachimowicz. "Don't Let Passion Lead to Burnout on Your Team." Harvard Business Review (website) (May 17, 2023).

              Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats Video Supplement Playlist

              By: Boris Groysberg
              • May 2023 |
              • Supplement |
              • Faculty Research
              Keywords: Entertainment; Music Entertainment; Personal Development and Career; Entrepreneurship; Goals and Objectives; Power and Influence; Music Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Fine Arts Industry
              Citation
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              Related
              Groysberg, Boris. "Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats Video Supplement Playlist." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Supplement 422-701, May 2023.

              Stay or Go? Sarah Reynolds Kensington Partners

              By: David G. Fubini, Amr Seifeldin and Patrick Sanguineti
              • May 2023 (Revised May 2023) |
              • Case |
              • Faculty Research
              Sarah Reynolds, a relatively new Partner at the global Kensington Partners strategy consulting firm, has headed the firm's Telecommunications Group for a few years. Thanks to her stellar track record with clients, she has brought the group a range of accolades and recognition, and she anticipates an offer to join the firm's Executive Committee. Amid this success, she faces a handful of challenges: a new hybrid work paradigm within client services, mentoring the Vice Presidents and Associates within her group, integrating and utilizing new technical staffs into her existing practice, and more, all while maintaining the same level of results that brought her such responsibilities in the first place. At the same time, she has also recently received an offer from a major client to join in a pivotal operator role. Reynolds must now decide whether to leave the firm for this opportunity, having only recently been made Partner, or to stay with Kensington amid the pressures of a rapidly evolving client services industry and, perhaps, new responsibilities that could limit her time spent working with clients.
              Keywords: Consulting; Consulting Firms; Client Service; Career Management
              Citation
              Educators
              Related
              Fubini, David G., Amr Seifeldin, and Patrick Sanguineti. "Stay or Go? Sarah Reynolds Kensington Partners." Harvard Business School Case 423-091, May 2023. (Revised May 2023.)

              Dena Almansoori at e&: Fostering Culture Change at a UAE Telco Transforming to a Global Techco (Abridged)

              By: Emily Truelove, Michelle Zhang and Alpana Thapar
              • April 2023 |
              • Case |
              • Faculty Research
              Dena Almansoori, the first female and one of the youngest members of the United Arab Emirates-based e&’s leadership team, joined in 2020 just before e& began a strategic transition from being a regional telecommunications company to becoming a global technology company. As the group chief HR officer, Almansoori had a key role to play in this transition. Her mandate was to build a culture that was a “magnet” for top global talent, such that e& would compete with the likes of Amazon and Google not only for customers, but employees too. Many deemed this to be a radically ambitious goal. When Almansoori entered, the company had never had a town hall meeting; e& did not have standardized benefits for employees; employees called their managers by titles not names and needed their approval to apply for internal jobs. However, in two short years, Almansoori and other leaders had made “seismic” changes to the 70,000-person organization’s strategy, structure, talent profile, and people processes. Changing the “extremely hierarchical culture” that Almansoori saw as antithetical to being a tech company was a slower process. To speed it up, in a radical move for the organization and region, Almansoori rolled out a new internal mobility policy that encouraged employees to apply for internal jobs without asking their manager’s permission. It was a symbolic gesture of “taking control away from leaders and putting it in the hands of employees” and a mechanism for altering manager-employee interactions—an area Almansoori could not directly control. In contrast, her other HR initiatives did not directly impact power dynamics inside e&. As Almansoori assesses the policy’s progress one year on, she grapples with complaints from managers and employees, and sense that she might not have the full leadership team’s support. She is left grappling with if and how to amend the policy she intended as a bold stroke, realizing her actions are symbolically important for e&’s nascent culture change—and for her own credibility.
              Keywords: Leadership; Culture; Transformation; United Arab Emirates; Middle East; Technology; Telecommunications; Employee Mobility; Talent; Leading Change; Human Resources; Telecommunications Industry; Technology Industry; Middle East
              Citation
              Educators
              Related
              Truelove, Emily, Michelle Zhang, and Alpana Thapar. "Dena Almansoori at e&: Fostering Culture Change at a UAE Telco Transforming to a Global Techco (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 423-059, April 2023.

              Dena Almansoori at e&: Fostering Culture Change at a UAE Telco Transforming to a Global Techco

              By: Emily Truelove, Michelle Zhang and Alpana Thapar
              • April 2023 |
              • Case |
              • Faculty Research
              Citation
              Educators
              Related
              Truelove, Emily, Michelle Zhang, and Alpana Thapar. "Dena Almansoori at e&: Fostering Culture Change at a UAE Telco Transforming to a Global Techco." Harvard Business School Case 423-040, April 2023.

              The New-Collar Workforce

              By: Colleen Ammerman, Boris Groysberg and Ginni Rometty
              • March–April 2023 |
              • Article |
              • Harvard Business Review
              Many workers today are stuck in low-paying jobs, unable to advance simply because they don’t have a bachelor’s degree. At the same time, many companies are desperate for workers and not meeting the diversity goals that could help them perform better while also reducing social and economic inequality. All these problems could be alleviated, the authors say, if employers focused on job candidates’ skills instead of their degree status. Drawing on their interviews with corporate leaders, along with their own experience in academia and the business world, the authors outline a “skills-first” approach to hiring and managing talent. It involves writing job descriptions that emphasize capabilities, not credentials; creating apprenticeships, internships, and training programs for people without college degrees; collaborating with educational institutions and other outside partners to expand the talent pool; helping hiring managers embrace skills-first thinking; bringing on board a critical mass of non­degreed workers; and building a supportive organizational culture. IBM, Aon, Cleveland Clinic, Delta Air Lines, Bank of America, and Merck are among the companies taking this approach—and demonstrating its benefits for firms, workers, and society as a whole.
              Keywords: Diversity; Recruitment; Social Issues; Higher Education; Competency and Skills
              Citation
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              Related
              Ammerman, Colleen, Boris Groysberg, and Ginni Rometty. "The New-Collar Workforce." Harvard Business Review 101, no. 2 (March–April 2023): 96–103.

              Racial Inequality in Work Environments

              By: Letian Zhang
              • April 2023 |
              • Article |
              • American Sociological Review
              This article explores racial stratification in work environments. Inequality scholars have long identified racial disparities in wage and occupational attainment, but workers’ careers and well-being are also shaped by elements of their work environment, including firm culture, managerial style, and work-life balance. I theorize two processes that could lead to racial inequality in firms’ work environments: (1) employee sorting due to exclusionary practices, and (2) spillover from racial differences in occupation and geographic location. To test this, I gathered a unique firm-level dataset composed of one million employee reviews, covering most large and medium-sized firms in the United States. I show that firms with more Black employees score lower for managerial quality, firm culture, and work-life balance, and firms with more Asian employees score higher on these dimensions. However, Asian employees’ advantage disappears when controlling for occupation, industry, and geography, whereas Black employees’ disadvantage persists, suggesting that the process of firm-level employee sorting is at work. Consistent with this, I find that Black employees’ disadvantage is strongest in areas with more conservative racial attitudes and more prevalent workplace racial discrimination. I then replicated the main findings using two entirely different data sources. Together, these results underscore racial inequality in work environments, an overlooked but important dimension of workplace inequality.
              Keywords: Discrimination; Race; Equality and Inequality; Working Conditions; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Culture
              Citation
              Find at Harvard
              Read Now
              Purchase
              Related
              Zhang, Letian. "Racial Inequality in Work Environments." American Sociological Review 88, no. 2 (April 2023): 252–283.
              More Publications

              In the News

                • 26 May 2023
                • Harvard Business School

                Harvard Business School Professors Win Wyss Awards for Excellence in Mentoring Doctoral Students

                Re: Michael Norton, Alison Wood Brooks, Feng Zhu & Alexandra Feldberg
                • 24 May 2023
                • Harvard Business School

                Five Harvard Business School Faculty Members Receive Class of 2023 Faculty Teaching Award Honors

                Re: Meg Rithmire, Sophus Reinert, Tony Mayo, Charlotte Robertson & Tom Nicholas
                • 17 May 2023
                • Harvard Business Review

                Don’t Let Passion Lead to Burnout on Your Team

                By: Jon Jachimowicz
              →More Faculty News

              HBS Working Knowledge

                • 23 May 2023

                Lessons on Life, Graffiti, and Value: 'It's in That Darkness That You Can Actually Develop and Evolve'

                Re: James W. Riley
                • 26 Apr 2023

                Is AI Coming for Your Job?

                by Kristen Senz
                • 07 Mar 2023

                ChatGPT: Did Big Tech Set Up the World for an AI Bias Disaster?

                Re: Tsedal Neeley
              →More Working Knowledge 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
                • March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
                • Case

                OneTen at Delta Air Lines: Catalyzing Family-Sustaining Careers for Black Talent (A)

                By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag
                • 2021
                • Book

                Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work

                By: Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg
              →More Harvard Business Publishing

              Seminars & Conferences

              There are no upcoming events.

              →More Seminars & Conferences

              Faculty Positions

              Harvard Business School seeks candidates in all fields for full time positions. Candidates with outstanding records in PhD or DBA programs are encouraged to apply.
              →Learn More

              Contact Information

              Organizational Behavior Unit
              Harvard Business School
              Morgan Hall
              Soldiers Field
              Boston, MA 02163
              OB@hbs.edu

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