Business administration and support services

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.

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.

Traditionally, business viewed the social sector as a dumping ground for spare cash, obsolete equipment, and tired executives. But today smart companies are approaching it as a learning laboratory.

Political scientists, legislators, educators, business executives, lawyers, consumerists—practically everyone, it sometimes seems—is calling for better public management. For businessmen, the need is especially important because they feel surrounded by government institutions with which they are legally required to interact. But enthusiasm for good government is one thing; understanding the nature of it, to say nothing […]

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?

This is the fourth in HBR’s series of interviews with some of the world’s recognized leaders—individuals who have led not a company but a country. Each leader illuminates something different about the subject of leadership: the quality of thinking, the sense of responsibility, the style of management. The qualities of the individuals vary, in part […]

Greatest Southeast Community Hospital is a 494-bed acute care facility located in southeast Washington, D.C. With revenues of $145 million and 2,650 employees, it is both the largest private employer and the only medical facility in a troubled and isolated community called Anacostia. Nearly a quarter of the area’s residents live below the poverty line, […]

New organizations are emerging in its place—organizations that are corporate in form but have no public shareholders and are not listed or traded on organized exchanges. These organizations use public and private debt, rather than public equity, as their major source of capital. Their primary owners are not households but large institutions and entrepreneurs that […]

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. […]

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.

Because of the prevailing gloom in current economic headlines, it is easy to forget that these same headlines portrayed 1979 as a year of record corporate profitability. And once a recovery gets under way, it should not be long before we are deluged by another flood of optimism. But the optimism will be misplaced. Inflation […]

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

From Ronald Reagan’s White House to the centers of French socialism, from the speeches of Democratic liberals to the pages of Britain’s Economist, one assumption about U.S. technology has long held firm: a key American asset is the startup culture of Silicon Valley and similar centers of entrepreneurship. In the late 1980s, however, the heralds […]

The Power of the Financial Press: Journalism and Economic Opinion in Britain and America, Wayne Parsons (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 300 pages, $24.95. The Growth Experiment: How the New Tax Policy Is Transforming the U.S. Economy, Lawrence B. Lindsey (New York: Basic Books, 1990), 288 pages, $21.95. In 1944, an Australian taxi […]

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

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.

One man’s plan for blasting open the electricity market.

With the 1992 presidential election, the United States will close an important chapter in a ten-year political debate. No matter how sharp the disagreements among the candidates or who ultimately wins the election, one outcome at least is certain: in the next administration, the United States will have some kind of national industrial policy. Throughout […]

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” are seated at a negotiating table. “They” are seated across from us. The outcome of these talks will shape America’s future competitiveness and economic well-being. But “us” is not necessarily companies based in the United States. “Them” is not foreign nations. Rather, us is the people—most prominently, the work force—of the United States. And […]