Organizational Behavior
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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- 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 -
We blame women for not taking the lead in the workplace. Here's why that's wrong.
By: Robin ElyWomen 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.
We blame women for not taking the lead in the workplace. Here's why that's wrong.
By: Robin ElyWomen 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. HillProfessor Linda Hill won the 2015 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Innovation. She was also ranked #6 overall on the Thinkers50 ranking.
2015 Thinkers50 Innovation Award
By: Linda A. HillProfessor 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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- HBS Working Knowledge
CEOs and Coaches
How Important is Organizational 'Fit'?
By: Boris Groysberg & Abhijit NaikHow big a factor is matching the right coach with the right team?
- HBS Working Knowledge
CEOs and Coaches
How Important is Organizational 'Fit'?
By: Boris Groysberg & Abhijit NaikHow big a factor is matching the right coach with the right team?
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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- HBS Working Knowledge
Is it Worth a Pay Cut to Work for a Great Manager (Like Bill Belichick)?
By: Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik -
- 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- 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
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
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.
Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats Video Supplement Playlist
By: Boris Groysberg
- May 2023 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Harvard Business Publishing
Seminars & Conferences
There are no upcoming events.