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In this fictionalized case study, an in-house lawyer at a cosmetics company is trying to decide the best approach to negotiating with a government entity. The company is the largest extractor of volcanic ash in the Northern Mariana Islands and the governor of the territory has proposed a large tax increase. The lawyer believes the company should approach the negotiation carefully, but the company's CEO wants to take a harder line and threaten to shut down. The CEO wants to issue a press release to that effect. The lawyer must decide whether making a statement to the press is the right tactic. Written by Francesca Gino and featuring expert commentary by Andrzej Klesyk and Michael Hartman.

What's the best way to lift people out of poverty? The social entrepreneurs in the new "impact sourcing" industry believe the answer is providing work, not aid. Their organizations hire people at the bottom of the pyramid to perform digital tasks such as transcribing audio files and editing product databases. Essentially, they do business process outsourcing that also boosts economic development. Samasource, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, is one of the leaders in this new field. It has developed a model that addresses the challenges that impact sourcing faces: inexperienced workers; customers who make decisions on price, not social impact; and the cost of building the necessary IT infrastructure. One way Samasource overcomes hurdles is by teaming up with local entrepreneurs. The local partners run the service centers and cover the $25,000 needed to set each one up, and Samasource helps them win customers like LinkedIn and Google, prep and scope projects, hire and train staff, and measure success. Samasource's model is especially attractive because it has achieved big results with a small staff. Though it has only 30 employees, the nonprofit has created 16 centers that have paid more than $2 million to 3,000-plus employees.

This case examines negotiations between a company and government over natural resources. The Fijian government proposed a substantial increase in its water extraction tax that would only apply to large extractors and thus to FIJI Water and not to its competitors. FIJI Water responded by calling the increase "discriminatory" and threatening to shut down its operations, but in the end its negotiations resulted in its agreeing to pay the tax increase.

In September 2008, the Polish State Treasury and the Dutch insurer Eureko were wondering if they were ready for reaching an amicable solution on PZU. If so, for how much and under what conditions should they settle so that they, as well as PZU, are satisfied? If not, what other potential alternatives might exist?

In October 2008, Andrzej Klesyk, CEO of Poland's largest insurer PZU, reflected on possible ways of resolving a decade-long cross-border shareholder conflict at his company. Owned 55% by the Polish State Treasury and 33% by the Dutch insurer Eureko as of October 2008, PZU was a highly profitable company and Poland's biggest asset holder. Eureko aimed at majority ownership of PZU as the building block of its Eastern European expansion strategy. The Treasury, however, was reluctant to forfeit control of the country's crown jewels. Several rounds of negotiations and international arbitration failed to resolve the conflict, leading to a progressive breach of trust. Was there anything Klesyk could do to break this international and multilateral stalemate?

After a decade-long dispute with the Polish State Treasury, in October 2009 the Dutch insurer Eureko agreed to exit PZU in exchange for compensation. Who was the biggest beneficiary of the settlement: Eureko, the Treasury, or PZU itself?

Samasource sought to use work, not aid, for economic development. The company secured contracts for digital services from large companies in the United States and Europe, divided the work up into small pieces (called microwork) and then sent it to delivery centers in developing regions of the world for completion through a web-based interface. Different from traditional business process outsourcing companies, Samasource relied on a marginalized population of workers to execute the work. The case explores how the company can grow its capability to help individuals around the globe through the provision of digital work. This case includes color exhibits.

Seeking to go beyond global best practices in reducing environmental impacts, FIJI Water, a premium artesian bottled water company in the United States, launched a Carbon-Negative campaign that would offset more greenhouse gas emissions than were released by the company's operations and products. The case examines the controversies surrounding this program as well as the program's impacts on the environment and FIJI Water's brand image. The company also faced decisions regarding how to best manage its relationship with the Fijian government, which recently dramatically raised imposed export taxes and could limit FIJI Water's access to water, its primary raw material. The case enables students to better understand the challenges of implementing an environmental strategy and of negotiating with parties that control raw materials, and invites discussion of the effectiveness of various approaches and the general lessons for the management of companies seeking to operate in an environmentally responsible manner.

What causes so many companies that once dominated their industries to slide into decline? In this article, two Harvard Business School professors argue that such firms lose their touch because success breeds failure by impeding learning at both the individual and organizational levels. When we succeed, we assume that we know what we are doing, but it could be that we just got lucky. We make what psychologists call fundamental attribution errors, giving too much credit to our talents and strategy and too little to environmental factors and random events. We develop an overconfidence bias, becoming so self-assured that we think we don't need to change anything. We also experience the failure-to-ask-why syndrome and neglect to investigate the causes of good performance. To overcome these three learning impediments, executives should examine successes with the same scrutiny they apply to failures. Companies should implement systematic after-action reviews to understand all the factors that led to a win, and test their theories by conducting experiments even if "it ain't broke."

The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias. Although the exercise can be performed individually, it is a better vehicle to explore how some team-level dynamics and structural choices can either increase or reduce the probability of falling into such biases. The exercise creates a situation that mirrors the one leading to the Challenger disaster.

The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias. Although the exercise can be performed individually, it is a better vehicle to explore how some team-level dynamics and structural choices can either increase or reduce the probability of falling into such biases. The exercise creates a situation that mirrors the one leading to the Challenger disaster.

The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias. Although the exercise can be performed individually, it is a better vehicle to explore how some team-level dynamics and structural choices can either increase or reduce the probability of falling into such biases. The exercise creates a situation that mirrors the one leading to the Challenger disaster.

Although extroverted leaders have important strengths, in certain situations an introvert may make the better boss. This research suggests that the extrovert's tendency to take over discussions may stifle the ideas of his or her subordinates; whereas introverted leaders tend to listen more carefully and show greater receptivity to suggestions, making them more effective leaders of proactive teams.

Without realizing it, managers delegate unethical behavior to people in their organizations on a regular basis. This occurs whenever someone tells their subordinates to 'do whatever it takes' to achieve production or sales goals, leaving open the possibility of aggressive or even unethical tactics; it happens when companies outsource production to offshore subcontractors that are inexpensive because they are less constrained by costly labor and environmental standards; and it happens when partners at accounting firms remind junior auditors about the importance of retaining a client that has inappropriate accounting practices. In these and countless other situations, people are motivated to overlook the problematic ethical implications of other people's behavior. The result: scandals that can cost trillions of dollars. The good news, say the authors, is that the evidence strongly supports the notion that most people value ethical decisions and behavior and strive to develop the habit of ethicality. Nevertheless, people still find themselves engaging in unethical behavior because of biases that influence their decisions-biases of which they may not be fully aware. Fighting human nature is no easy task, but the authors explain that leaders can and must make the structural changes necessary to reduce the harmful effects of our psychological and ethical limitations.

An organization with a strong learning culture faces the unpredictable deftly. However, a concrete method for understanding precisely how an institution learns and for identifying specific steps to help it learn better has remained elusive. A new survey instrument from professors Garvin and Edmondson of Harvard Business School and assistant professor Gino of Carnegie Mellon University allows you to ground your efforts in becoming a learning organization. The tool's conceptual foundation is what the authors call the three building blocks of a learning organization. The first, a supportive learning environment, comprises psychological safety, appreciation of differences, openness to new ideas, and time for reflection. The second, concrete learning processes and practices, includes experimentation, information collection and analysis, and education and training. These two complementary elements are fortified by the final building block: leadership that reinforces learning. The survey instrument enables a granular examination of all these particulars, scores each of them, and provides a framework for detailed, comparative analysis. You can make comparisons within and among your institution's functional areas, between your organization and others, and against benchmarks that the authors have derived from their surveys of hundreds of executives in many industries. After discussing how to use their tool, the authors share the insights they acquired as they developed it. Above all, they emphasize the importance of dialogue and diagnosis as you nurture your company and its processes with the aim of becoming a learning organization. The authors' goal--and the purpose of their tool--is to help you paint an honest picture of your firm's learning culture and of the leaders who set its tone.

An abstract is not available for this product.

An abstract is not available for this product.

A significant part of the long-term economic growth in developed economies depends on the translation of scientific research into new products and processes. Focuses on the front end of this value creation stream. The laboratory of George Whitesides has a 30-year history of outstanding chemistry research as reflected by the quality and quantity of journal papers, paper citations, successful graduates, breakthrough ideas and concepts, and new companies. Details the research philosophy and processes for selecting research problems and forming teams. Whitesides guides students to choose challenging research topics rather than safe, incremental research, and problems that require interdisciplinary teams. Allows discussion of: the principles for operating a creative and productive lab; the role of the leader in creating the infrastructure and systems for discovery and learning; the issues of resource allocation and the appurtenant wasted effort as researchers seek academic research support; and the scale and scope limits for highly successful labs. Also discusses applying the Whitesides lab principles and processes to nonscience organizations and teams.

Whom do you turn to for advice when the stakes are high? Do you value others' opinions when the stakes are low? New research looks at how people weigh--and misuse--counsel.

Teradyne, a leading manufacturer of semiconductor test equipment, embarked on a multiyear effort to improve its product development capabilities and to implement more formalized project management approaches. Examines the development of a new-generation tester that involved significant hardware and software design. For this, the company decided to implement new approaches to project management and project teams. Invites discussion of the effectiveness of these approaches and the general lessons for the management of product development.