Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Working Knowledge
Business Research for Business Leaders
  • Browse All Articles
  • Popular Articles
  • Cold Call Podcast
  • Managing the Future of Work Podcast
  • About Us
  • Book
  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Entrepreneurship
  • All Topics...
  • Topics
    • COVID-19
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Finance
    • Gender
    • Globalization
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Negotiation
    • Social Enterprise
    • Strategy
  • Sections
    • Book
    • Podcasts
    • HBS Case
    • In Practice
    • Lessons from the Classroom
    • Op-Ed
    • Research & Ideas
    • Research Event
    • Sharpening Your Skills
    • What Do You Think?
    • Working Paper Summaries
  • Browse All
    Filter Results: (15) Arrow Down
    Filter Results: (15) Arrow Down Arrow Up
    • Popular
    • Browse All Articles
    • About Us
    • Newsletter Sign-Up
    • RSS
    • Popular
    • Browse All Articles
    • About Us
    • Newsletter Sign-Up
    • RSS

    Battilana, JulieRemove Battilana, Julie →

    Page 1 of 15 Results
    • 13 Jul 2022
    • Book

    Reimagining the Economy: What Would It Take to Put People First?

    by Avery Forman

    Could new ways of working be the remedy for society's ills? In an excerpt from the book Democratize Work, Julie Battilana shares how domestic workers banded together to gain power in an economy that marginalizes them.

    • 19 Jan 2022
    • In Practice

    7 Trends to Watch in 2022

    by HBS News

    Surging COVID-19 cases may have dampened optimism at the start of 2022, but change could be on the horizon. Harvard Business School faculty members share the trends they're watching this year. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 21 Sep 2021
    • Office Hours

    Readers Ask: How Can I Gain Power and Influence?

    by Kristen Senz

    Who has the real power in an organization? Julie Battilana says it comes down to two questions. She discusses power and more on Working Knowledge’s “Office Hours” series. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 31 Aug 2021
    • Book

    Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

    by Jay Fitzgerald

    Employees lower down the organizational ladder have far more power than they realize. If they worked together, they could effect significant change within their workplaces, says Julie Battilana. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 03 Feb 2018
    • Op-Ed

    How to Heed BlackRock's Call for Corporate Social Responsibility

    by Julie Battilana

    BlackRock's Larry Fink is challenging CEOs to serve a social purpose as well as a financial one. Institutional change expert Julie Battilana discusses what it will take to create this "transformation of capitalism." Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 15 Nov 2017
    • Research & Ideas

    How Does a Social Startup Decide to Commercialize? It May Depend on the Founder's Gender

    by Carmen Nobel

    How does the founder of a social venture decide to create a "hybrid" business rather than a traditional nonprofit organization? The decision has a lot to do with the founder’s gender, according to new research by Stefan Dimitriadis, Matthew Lee, Lakshmi Ramarajan, and Julie Battilana. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 20 Sep 2017
    • Research & Ideas

    The Three Types of Leaders Who Create Radical Change

    by Carmen Nobel

    Every successful social movement requires three distinct leadership roles: the agitator, the innovator, and the orchestrator, according to institutional change expert Julie Battilana. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 01 Dec 2015
    • Research & Ideas

    What to Do When Your Organization Has Dueling Missions

    by Carmen Nobel

    It’s no easy feat to manage hybrid organizations, which combine the social mission of a nonprofit with the revenue model of a for-profit business. Julie Battilana and colleagues explain how hybrids can find success with a business model dubbed “spaces of negotiation.” Open for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 03 Sep 2013
    • Working Paper Summaries

    How the Zebra Got Its Stripes: Imprinting of Individuals and Hybrid Social Ventures

    by Matthew Lee & Julie Battilana

    Creating hybrid organizations that combine existing organizational forms is a complex process. Given the legitimacy challenges facing hybrid organizations, why are they created in the first place? The authors focus on the role of "environmental imprinting" on individuals: this means the persistent effects that individuals' environments during sensitive periods have on their subsequent behaviors. After constructing and analyzing a novel dataset of over 700 founders of social ventures, all guided by a social welfare logic, the authors suggest that individual imprinting helps to explain why an entrepreneur founding a social venture might create a hybrid by incorporating a secondary, commercial logic. Overall, the paper contributes to the understanding of hybrid organizations by providing the first large-scale, empirical examination of the antecedents of the widely-discussed type of hybrids that combine social welfare and commercial logics. Key concepts include: Environmental imprinting refers to the effects that characteristics of individuals' environments during sensitive periods have on their subsequent behaviors. Entrepreneurs' direct exposure to various work environments through their own experience influences their likelihood to create a new hybrid venture. The findings contribute to institutional theory more generally by showing how environmental imprints on individuals may enable divergence from current, institutionalized structures, as well as how the contours of such imprints may vary with characteristics such as tenure and type of exposure. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 12 Aug 2013
    • Research & Ideas

    ‘Hybrid’ Organizations a Difficult Bet for Entrepreneurs

    by Michael Blanding

    Hybrid organizations combine the social logic of a nonprofit with the commercial logic of a for-profit business, but are very difficult to finance. So why would anyone want to form one? Julie Battilana and Matthew Lee investigate. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 19 Jun 2013
    • Research & Ideas

    Analyzing Institutions to Solve Big Problems

    by Carmen Nobel & Anna Secino

    The academic study of institutions provides important insights into complex problems, but is often criticized for lacking practical relevance. Institutional theorists gathered at Harvard Business School to discuss how to make their work more broadly understood and useful. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 18 Jan 2012
    • Research & Ideas

    Beyond Heroic Entrepreneurs

    by Carmen Nobel

    Research in progress by Harvard Business School's Julie Battilana and Matthew Lee reveals that a large number of social entrepreneurs are focused on local rather than global change, and on sustainable funding. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 17 Oct 2011
    • Research & Ideas

    How ‘Hybrid’ Nonprofits Can Stay on Mission

    by Carmen Nobel

    As nonprofits add more for-profit elements to their business models, they can suffer mission drift. Associate Professor Julie Battilana says hybrid organizations can stay on target if they focus on two factors: the employees they hire and the way they socialize those employees. Key concepts include: In order to avoid mission drift, hybrid organizations need to focus on whom they hire and whether their employees are open to socialization. Because early socialization is so important, hybrid firms may be better off hiring new college graduates with no work background rather than a mix of seasoned bankers and social workers. The longer their tenure in a hybrid organization, the more likely top managers may be to hire junior people. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 13 Dec 2007
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Acting Globally but Thinking Locally? The Influence of Local Communities on Organizations

    by Christopher Marquis & Julie Battilana

    It is a paradox that in a globalizing and "boundaryless" economy, factors associated with local communities—such as interpersonal networks, laws, and tax rates, among others—remain important for understanding organizational behavior. As Marquis and Battilana argue, communities influence organizational behavior not only as local markets and resource environments, but also through a number of institutional pressures. Focusing on communities as institutional environments provides fresh theoretical insights into organizational behavior, in addition to offering a more unified perspective to the diverse set of research that is emerging on local communities. Key concepts include: Despite globalization, local factors remain important, and in many ways local particularities have become more visible and salient as globalization has proceeded. In today's environment, organizations are embedded both locally and globally. Researchers need to account for these different levels in order to understand organizational behavior and also perhaps advance theory. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 15 Mar 2007
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Initiating Divergent Organizational Change: The Enabling Role of Actors’ Social Position

    by Julie Battilana

    Does social position influence the ability to launch groundbreaking organizational projects? This study investigates that question as well as whether workers' social position in their professional field affects their ability to begin such projects. Using data based on more than ninety clinical managers in the United Kingdom's National Health Service, Battilana studied initiatives such as the development of an alternative to hospitalization for older people and another that would shift role division by transferring decision-making power from physicians to nurses. Her results indicate that social position is an important condition at the heart of organizational change. Key concepts include: A worker's social position is an important condition for their likelihood of initiating important new projects in organizations. Social position is a deciding factor in which types of changes may be made. Within the spectrum of social positions, the characteristics of people who are more likely to initiate such new projects are quite different depending on the type of change project that is considered. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

    • 1
    ǁ
    Campus Map
    Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
    Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
    Soldiers Field
    Boston, MA 02163
    Email: Editor-in-Chief
    →Map & Directions
    →More Contact Information
    • Make a Gift
    • Site Map
    • Jobs
    • Harvard University
    • Trademarks
    • Policies
    • Accessibility
    • Digital Accessibility
    Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College