Online forum OPEN until July 23. Leadership may be much-discussed, but followership merits equal attention, suggests HBS professor Jim Heskett. As a follower, what advice would you give other followers who want to have an impact on their jobs and organizations? As a leader, what do you do to foster good followership?
The traditional division of labor between the sexes—women managing the private realm and men the public—continues to have an indirect influence on job negotiation outcomes through links between private realm and public realm negotiations. Women's negotiations at work are often constrained by agreements in negotiations at home. There still remains a significant "unexplained" difference in male and female compensation that, according to research in the past several years, cannot be accounted for by gender differences in work commitment, education, and experience, or other considerations such as unionization. The literature on gender in negotiation may offer insights with regard to how negotiation contributes to or could help diminish gender differences in compensation. Bowles and McGinn review two bodies of literature on gender in negotiation—one from psychology and organizational behavior on candidate-employer negotiations, and another from economics and sociology on household bargaining over chores and child care.
Online forum closed. Summing Up. According to Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman, nearly all research techniques commonly used today probe humans only at their conscious level, though it is the subconscious level that really determines behavior.
Money can't buy you love but it can buy happiness—as long as it's money for someone else. New research by HBS professor Michael I. Norton and colleagues Elizabeth W. Dunn and Lara B. Aknin, described in the journal Science, looks into how and why spending money on others promotes happiness. Norton explains more in this Q&A.
This paper considers allocation and bargaining problems, and introduces conditions that one might expect fair procedures to satisfy. However, not all conditions one might hope for can be satisfied simultaneously. Furthermore, some apparently plausible and widely proposed axioms and procedures have consequences whose undesirability clearly goes far beyond what can be excused in this way. Thus pitfalls lurk in the field of fair division.
What happens when you encounter a company with a great deal of power, like Wal-Mart, that is also the ultimate non-negotiable partner? A series of Harvard Business School cases by James Sebenius and Ellen Knebel explore successful deal-making strategies. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Managers face a range of options to diffuse innovative practices within their organizations. This paper focuses on one such technique: providing practice-specific information through mechanisms such as internal seminars, demonstrations, knowledge management systems, and promotional brochures. In contrast to corporate mandates, this "information provision" approach empowers facility managers to decide which practices to actually implement. The authors examine how corporate managers diffused advanced environmental management practices within technology manufacturing firms in the United States. The study identifies several factors that encourage corporate managers to employ information provision, including subsidiaries' related expertise, the extent to which the subsidiaries were diversified or concentrated in similar businesses, and the geographic dispersion of their employees.
It was the Valentine's Day from hell for JetBlue employees and more than 130,000 customers. Under bad weather, JetBlue fliers were trapped on the runway at JFK for hours, many ultimately delayed by days. How did the airline make it right with customers and learn from its mistakes? A discussion with Harvard Business School professor Robert S. Huckman.
Disaster brings out the best in some, the worst in others. But every disaster tells a tale we can learn from. Here we look at lessons learned from failures involving polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, NASA, and a Mount Everest climbing team.
Earnings management behavior may be divided into two categories: 1) the opportunistic exercise of accounting discretion; and 2) the opportunistic structuring of real transactions.
This paper focuses on the latter by providing evidence that managers use retail-level marketing actions (price discounts, feature advertisements, and aisle displays) to influence the timing of consumers' purchases in relation to their firms' fiscal calendars and financial performance. The results will be of interest to practitioners negotiating with suppliers as well as those responsible for setting price and promotion strategy in response to competitor actions, and practitioners responsible for designing incentive-based compensation as well as regulators monitoring reporting of fiscal period-ending promotion.
How do chief executives establish strategic practices around their visions and intents? How do such practices make it possible to create both high commitment and high performance? The central puzzle for HBS professor emeritus Michael Beer and colleagues is not the creation of high commitment per se, but the kind of commitment that is useful for the implementation of strategy and sustainable performance. Beer et al. sought out major companies in North America and Europe that had a history of sustainable, above-average financial performance, and where there were indications of the companies being high-commitment organizations. They then conducted in-depth interviews with 26 CEOs of such companies, asking about activities and practices that help create commitment and performance.
Most organizations understand the need to manage stakeholder trust. The bad news: Most organizations don't really understand how to manage the difficult job effectively. However, for those companies wishing to reap the benefits of improved cooperation with suppliers, increased motivation and productivity among employees, enhanced loyalty among customers, and higher levels of support from investors, managing stakeholder trust is a prudent, if not critical investment. Trust management may require an appreciation for some unconventional insights regarding the appropriate investment of resources. Stakeholders differ in regard to the kinds and degrees of vulnerability they face; what they need to believe before they will trust also differs. Would-be trust managers will be wise to consider these varying needs and to anticipate the tradeoffs that exist in strengthening relationships with specific stakeholders.
This paper attempts to encourage a better dialogue between research on social influence and on negotiation. It provides an overview of the literature on both areas, and identifies opportunities for creating more effective and useful research. First, HBS professors Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman identify those elements of psychological influence that do not require the influencer to change the economic or structural aspects of the bargaining situation in order to persuade the target. Second, they review prior research on behavioral decision-making in negotiation to identify those ideas that may be relevant to influence in negotiation. Third, they provide a framework for thinking about how to leverage behavioral decision research to wield influence in negotiation. Fourth, they consider how targets of influence might defend against these tactics. Fifth, because psychological influence is, by definition, aimed at achieving one's own ends through the strategic manipulation of another's judgment, they consider the ethical issues surrounding its application in negotiation.
Online forum now closed. For managers, sustainability can mean the integration and intersection of social, environmental, and economic responsibilities. The concept is admirable, says Jim Heskett, but does it also confuse managers entrusted with the bottom line? How should they make trade-offs? Jim sums up reader responses.
Professional service firms are being challenged as never before—by clients, associates, and the competition, just for starters. But old-style PSF leaders are not equipped to respond, says Harvard Business School professor Thomas J. DeLong. He discusses his new book When Professionals Have to Lead. Plus: Book excerpt.
It's a question as relevant for business as for the U.S. presidential campaign, says HBS professor Jim Heskett. If "judgment capability" is a function of experience, what kind of experience is important? Does plenty of experience really improve judgment? Online forum now CLOSED.
Published in 2007
Discussions prior to takeovers are complex and multifaceted, taking place among principals, bankers, and lawyers, and sometimes also conveyed through the media. Based on a laboratory experiment, this study shows that the effects of talk at this early stage go beyond simply increasing social awareness and cooperation and, in the case of mergers and acquisitions, beyond allowing companies to conduct due diligence and share information. As the researchers learned, these discussions may have material effects as well. The frame resulting from an emphasis on fairness or an emphasis on competitive pressures in such discussions may be a significant factor in determining the payoffs realized by involved firms.
Online forum closed. It's an open question whether management, as it is currently practiced, contributes much to creativity and innovation, says HBS professor Jim Heskett. What changes will allow managers, particularly in larger organizations, to add value to the creative process? What do you think?
In The Moral Leader course at Harvard Business School, students exchange their business management case studies to discuss some of the great protagonists in literature. Professor Sandra Sucher discusses how we all can find our own definition of moral leadership.
Who is the best CEO candidate? An insider with intimate knowledge of your company, or an outsider who is ready to put sacred cows out to pasture? The answer, says HBS professor Joseph L. Bower, is both. In this Q&A, he discusses his new book, The CEO Within, and why inside-outsiders are the key to succession planning.
