Education
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- 07 Jul 2019
- HBS Case
Walmart's Workforce of the Future
A case study by William Kerr explores Walmart's plans for future workforce makeup and training, and its search for opportunities from digital infrastructure and automation. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 30 Jun 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
The Comprehensive Effects of Sales Force Management: A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Selection, Compensation, and Training
When sales forces are well managed, firms can induce greater performance from them. For this study, the authors collaborated with a major multinational firm to develop and estimate a dynamic structural model of sales employee responses to various management instruments like compensation, training, and recruiting/termination policies.
- 03 Apr 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
Learning or Playing? The Effect of Gamified Training on Performance
Games-based training is widely used to engage and motivate employees to learn, but research about its effectiveness has been scant. This study at a large professional services firm adopting a gamified training platform showed the training helps performance when employees are already highly engaged, and harms performance when they’re not.
- 02 Apr 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
Managerial Quality and Productivity Dynamics
Which managerial skills, traits, and practices matter most for productivity? This study of a large garment firm in India analyzes the integration of features of managerial quality into a production process characterized by learning by doing.
- 23 Jan 2019
- Sharpening Your Skills
Sports: Lessons for Managers
When people look to illustrate a great business idea or accomplishment, a sports metaphor usually isn't far away. Why Harvard Business School researchers look for teaching gold on the playing fields of the world. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 20 Nov 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Reverse the Curse of the Top-5
Scholars and those who evaluate them for promotion can overweight publications ranked in a discipline’s five top journals. This paper explains the origins of journal rankings, the errors and distortions when journal rankings are used to evaluate faculty research, how they inhibit innovative research on emerging practice issues, and possible reforms to reduce their perverse incentives.
- 23 Jul 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
The Creative Consulting Company
Management theories cannot be tested in laboratories; they must be applied, tested, and extended in real organizations. For this reason the most creative consulting companies balance conflicting demands between short‐term business development and long‐term knowledge creation.
- 27 Jun 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment
For many girls in developing countries, early adolescence is a time of key challenges: school dropout rates rise, and social and economic pressures increase for marriage and motherhood. This randomized control trial involving Zambian adolescent girls finds that negotiation skills can help them navigate these challenges. Girls taught negotiation skills had significantly better educational outcomes over the next three years.
- 20 Apr 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Executive Education in the Digital Vortex: The Disruption of the Supply Landscape
The competitive landscape of executive education is feeling a tectonic shift even as demand grows for managerial skills. This study maps and analyzes the major providers of executive education programs, including business schools, consultancies, and corporate universities, to better understand and explain the industry’s present and future dynamics.
- 07 Jun 2017
- Research & Ideas
How an African History Scholar Became a Modern Righter of Wrongs
A scholar of colonial-era African history, Caroline M. Elkins had dramatic success turning prior knowledge into real-world action—namely, with a groundbreaking lawsuit against the British government, which revealed a chillingly bureaucratic process for destroying evidence of torture. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 03 Nov 2016
- Op-Ed
Forget About Making College Affordable; Make it a Good Investment
Making college affordable is a popular campaign topic this year, but Joseph Fuller argues the real debate should be over increasing the returns for students. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 03 Oct 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Executive Development Programs Enter the Digital Vortex: I. Disrupting the Demand Landscape
The informational and computational “tectonic shifts” of the past decade—enabling sharing, transacting, collaborating, and learning online—have created new challenges for executive development programs, in part by making visible to both buyers and sellers the specific objectives of participants and their organizations. Drawing on interviews with sponsoring organizations and participants in executive education at Harvard Business School, this study examines what learners and organizations want from executive development and maps the sources of value and drivers of demand for executive development.
- 03 Oct 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
The Skills Gap and the Near-Far Problem in Executive Education and Leadership Development
An increasingly obvious and costly gap has emerged between the skills that executives need in order to cope with the volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and complex business landscape and the skills being imparted by executive development programs. Providers of these programs need to focus on cultivating skills least susceptible to digital distributed delivery in ways that will make them most relevant to the greatest number of contexts. In addition, skills that are difficult to articulate and translate into formulas will benefit from focused, heavily social learning environments supported by constant reinforcement from savvy facilitators and motivated peers.
- 11 Aug 2016
- Cold Call Podcast
Why College Rankings Keep Deans Awake at Night
Can parents and prospective students trust college rankings? Bill Kirby unpacks this complex system, including what “world-class” actually means, what rankings don’t take into account, and how schools are learning to game an imperfect system. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 03 Aug 2016
- What Do You Think?
How Can We Hold the “Leadership Industry” Accountable?
SUMMING UP This month’s reader comments provide little hope that the leadership-development industry can achieve its goals, says James Heskett. So why does the leadership industry continue to thrive? Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 25 Jul 2016
- Research & Ideas
Who is to Blame for 'The Great Training Robbery'?
Companies spend billions annually training their executives, yet rarely realize all the benefit they could, argue Michael Beer and colleagues. He discusses a new research paper, The Great Training Robbery. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 19 Apr 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
The Great Training Robbery
There is a widely held assumption in corporate life that well trained, even inspired individuals can change the system. This article explains why training fails and discusses why the “great training robbery” persists. The authors offer a framework for integrating leadership and organization change and development, and discuss implications for the corporate HR function.
- 09 Mar 2016
- Lessons from the Classroom
In This Classroom, Beer Can Improve Your Grade
The Strategic Brew computer simulation puts MBAs in charge of their own breweries, rising or sinking based on the popularity of their pseudo suds. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell explains lessons learned from a beer game Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 24 Feb 2016
- Research & Ideas
Why It's Best to Take Tests Early in the Day
New research by Francesca Gino and colleagues finds students perform best on standardized tests at the start of the school day. The findings also provide insight into how workers can avoid cognitive fatigue in the office. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
Has the Twitter Age Left the Case Method Behind?
SUMMING UP: Is the business case study method outmoded? James Heskett's readers are divided on whether the case is ripe for replacement. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.