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How Unilever Is Preparing for the Future of Work

Launched in 2016, Unilever’s Future of Work initiative aimed to accelerate the speed of change throughout the organization and prepare its workforce for a digitalized and highly automated era. But despite its success over the last three years, the program still faces significant challenges in its implementation. How should Unilever, one of the world's largest consumer goods companies, best prepare and upscale its workforce for the future? How should Unilever adapt and accelerate the speed of change throughout the organization? Is it even possible to lead a systematic, agile workforce transformation across several geographies while accounting for local context? Harvard Business School professor and faculty co-chair of the Managing the Future of Work Project William Kerr and Patrick Hull, Unilever’s vice president of global learning and future of work, discuss how rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation are changing the nature of work in the case, “Unilever's Response to the Future of Work.”

Is Happiness at Work Really Attainable?

Francesca Gino discuss whether Henco Logistics' focus on employee happiness can endure through the Mexican company's rapid growth and leadership transition. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

As small companies grow to around 100 employees, the skills of their managers are challenged in new ways. Julia Austin describes how leaders themselves must scale. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Marketplace Scalability and Strategic Use of Platform Investment

One well-known feature of marketplace platforms like Airbnb and eBay is their scalability. This paper identifies the strategic trade-off and implications for scalability when a platform provides services to existing and potential sellers that help reduce their fixed costs of running the business. Timing this investment is an important consideration for maximizing marketplace scalability.

Careem: Riding the First Unicorn in the Middle East

Doubling in size every two-and-a-half months, ride-hailing service Careem was experiencing growing pains operationally and culturally. Shikhar Ghosh discusses how the founders struggled to keep its 4 million customers satisfied. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Turbulence, Firm Decentralization and Growth in Bad Times

What makes some firms more resilient than others to large negative macro shocks? This paper finds that the internal organization of firms—specifically, the extent to which decision-making is decentralized from headquarters to plant managers—is an important mediating factor through which macroeconomic shocks affect firm performance and, ultimately, growth.

Towards a Prescriptive Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategic Choice, Learning, and Competition

This paper explore how firms’ choices about capability investments shape competitive outcomes. In essence, while general-purpose management capabilities rooted in such activities as quality management systems and corporate governance may contribute to performance differences across firms, firms also need to develop market-specific capabilities to compete. It is also crucial to manage two types of uncertainty: supply side uncertainty to create new capabilities and demand side uncertainty about the value of those capabilities.