Business administration and support services

Prosperity depends on it.

HBR’s fictionalized case studies present dilemmas faced by leaders in real companies and offer solutions from experts. This one is based on research by Jeffrey Pfeffer. Adam Baker had been bothered all day by the blunt message his boss and mentor, Merwyn Straus, had delivered to him on the phone that morning: Adam was not […]

What a Chinese travel entrepreneur learned from the SARS crisis and its aftermath

Connecting with your best customers doesn’t have to involve Twitter or Facebook.

To really win their loyalty, forget the bells and whistles and just solve their problems.

In search of high-caliber employees to staff its call center, Zappos relocated the entire company from San Francisco to Las Vegas in 2004. Here’s why the move made sense.

At age 74, Yoshiko Shinohara is a towering figure in Japanese business. She has created a wealth of job opportunities, including many for women, by founding the temporary-staffing agency Tempstaff and lobbying to strike down laws that stifled the temp industry. Tempstaff now has approximately 3,300 employees and is a public company. For the past […]

International travel is no longer the exclusive province of the rich. Over the next several decades, hundreds of millions of new entrants to the middle class will want not only the things—but also the experiences—that money can buy. Indian call-center employees, Russian petrochemical engineers, Chinese middle managers, and Brazilian salespeople are already scouring the web […]

We all know we can learn from our mistakes. So why not go out and make some? Here’s a systematic way to make carefully planned mistakes that pay off.

For a leader, a public apology is always a high-risk move. Understanding what apologies can and cannot do will help you avoid both foolhardy stonewalling and unnecessary contrition.

Every industry and profession has its own vocabulary: words that describe technologies, processes, and materials. These can sound exotic to the uninitiated, but they’re critical to doing the job. Individual companies sometimes have their own custom-tailored definitions. As people move from firm to firm, they must master new terms and new meanings—or fail to assimilate. […]

A few smart companies have stopped complaining about Sarbanes-Oxley, the investor-protection law, and turned it to their advantage—bringing operations under better control while driving down compliance costs.

Strategic dreams often turn into nightmares if companies start engaging in expensive and distracting restructurings. It’s far more effective to choose a design that works reasonably well, then develop a strategic system to tune the structure to the strategy.

The biggest dangers to a company are the ones you don’t see coming. Understanding these threats—and anticipating opportunities—requires strong peripheral vision.

Since Alexander Graham Bell’s day, businesses have bought telephone services the same way they’ve purchased electricity, janitorial functions, and water for the cooler—as packaged offerings defined by an outside provider. Sure, companies could choose from a menu of configuration options and service plans, but, in the end, the phone company or vendor called the shots. […]

Teams in all kinds of nonbusiness settings—from stock car racing to wedding planning to hostage negotiating—rely on flawless preparation and execution. Here’s how they consistently achieve the highest standards.

A young American businessman in a developing country discovers that nothing gets done unless palms are greased. Should he play the game by his personal ethics—or the local rules?

Leaders can make change happen only if they have a coherent strategy for persuasion. The impressive turnaround at a world-renowned teaching hospital shows how to plan a change campaign—and carry it out.

Some of the freshest ideas for evaluating employees are coming from an unexpected source: the public sector.

Most businesspeople will serve on the board of a nonprofit organization at some point. But the governance of nonprofits can differ dramatically from the governance of businesses. Even the best intentions can prove disastrous when new board members fail to understand that their traditional business experience can carry them only so far.