Harvard Business Review is a general
managementManagement in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
magazineMagazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
published since 1922 by
Harvard Business School PublishingHarvard Business Publishing was founded in 1994 as a not-for-profit, wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. Its mission is to improve the practice of management and its impact in a changing world. The company consists of three market groups: Higher Education, Corporate Learning, and Harvard...
, owned by the
Harvard Business SchoolHarvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives, and management consultants. It has been the frequent publishing home for scholars and management thinkers such as
Clayton M. ChristensenClayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. He is best known for his study of innovation in commercial enterprises...
, Peter F. Drucker, Michael E. Porter,
Rosabeth Moss KanterRosabeth Moss Kanter is a tenured professor in business at Harvard Business School, where she holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship...
,
John Hagel IIIJohn Hagel or John Hagel III is an author and former consultant who specializes in the intersection of business strategy and information technology. In 2007, Hagel, along with John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, founded the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation...
,
Thomas H. DavenportThomas H. Davenport is an American academic and author specializing in business process innovation and knowledge management...
,
Gary HamelDr. Gary P. Hamel is an American management expert. He is a founder of Strategos, an international management consulting firm based in Chicago.-Early life:...
, C.K. Prahalad,
Vijay GovindarajanVijay Govindarajan, known as VG, is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business and founding director of Tuck's Center for Global Leadership...
,
Robert S. KaplanRobert S. Kaplan is Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, United States, and co-creator, together with David P. Norton, of the balanced scorecard, a means of linking a company's current actions to its long-term goals...
, Robert H. Schaffer and others. Management and business concepts and terms such as "
Balanced scorecardThe Balanced Scorecard is a strategic performance management tool - a semi-standard structured report, supported by proven design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the...
," "Core competence," "Strategic intent," "
ReengineeringBusiness process re-engineering is the analysis and design of workflows and processes within an organization.According to Davenport a business process is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome....
," "
GlobalizationGlobalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
," "
Marketing myopiaMarketing myopia is a term used in marketing as well as the title of an important marketing paper written by Theodore Levitt. This paper was first published in 1960 in the Harvard Business Review; a journal of which he was an editor...
," and "
Glass ceilingIn economics, the term glass ceiling refers to "the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements." Initially, the metaphor applied to barriers in the careers of women but...
" were first given prominence in HBR's pages.
Its worldwide English-language circulation is 250,000, and there are 11 licensed editions of the magazine, including two Chinese-language editions, an Italian, a German edition, a
PolishPolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
edition, a
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
edition, a Brazilian (Portuguese-language) edition, and an English-language South Asia edition. The magazine is editorially independent of Harvard Business School. It is not peer reviewed.
History and organization
Harvard Business Review began in 1922 as a shopping magazine of Harvard Business School’s faculty and students. In the first issue, Harvard Business School Dean Wallace B. Donham described the aims of the magazine in the article “An Essential Groundwork for a Broad Executive Theory.” “ The theory of business must develop to such a point that the executive may learn from the experiences of others in the past how to act under the conditions of the present,” he wrote. “Otherwise, business will continue to be unsystematic, haphazard, and for many men a pathetic gamble.”
Dean Donham and the editors believed that the magazine would serve as a natural complement to the school. In its early years, the magazine focused on macroeconomic trends and developments and published industry-specific articles like “Are Railroad Freight Rate Structures Obsolete?” It also contained a section of student contributions, which was discontinued in 1939.
HBR began switching its editorial focus toward general management after World War II, as a growing number of executives became interested in the management techniques pioneered at General Motors and other large companies. Over the next three decades, the magazine continued to refine its focus on general management issues that affect business leaders, billing itself as the “magazine for decision makers.” Prominent articles published during this period included “Marketing Myopia,” “Barriers and Gateways to Communication,” and “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.”
A notable period in the magazine’s history was during the late 1980s, during Theodore Levitt’s tenure as editor. Levitt, a professor at HBS, implemented editorial and design changes geared toward making the magazine accessible to a more general business audience, with shorter articles covering a broader range of topics and the introduction of New Yorker-style cartoons.
Originally published by HBS, HBR has since 1993 been published by Harvard Business School Publishing, a non-profit subsidiary of Harvard that also publishes cases, books (through the HBS Press), newsletters, and corporate learning programs and materials. In 2001, the magazine increased its frequency from bimonthly to monthly.
Since 1959, the magazine’s annual McKinsey Award has recognized the two most significant HBR articles published each year, as determined by a group of independent judges. Past winners have included the late management guru
Peter DruckerPeter Ferdinand Drucker was an influential writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.”-Introduction:...
, who was honored seven times;
Clayton M. ChristensenClayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. He is best known for his study of innovation in commercial enterprises...
;
Theodore LevittTheodore Levitt was an American economist and professor at Harvard Business School. He was also editor of the Harvard Business Review and an editor who was especially noted for increasing the Review's circulation and for popularizing the term globalization...
;
Michael PorterMichael Eugene Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School. He is a leading authority on company strategy and the competitiveness of nations and regions. Michael Porter’s work is recognized in many governments, corporations and academic circles globally...
;
Rosabeth Moss KanterRosabeth Moss Kanter is a tenured professor in business at Harvard Business School, where she holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship...
;
John Hagel IIIJohn Hagel or John Hagel III is an author and former consultant who specializes in the intersection of business strategy and information technology. In 2007, Hagel, along with John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, founded the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation...
and C.K. Prahalad.
Editorial staff changes
In 2002, a management and editorial staff shakeup occurred at the publication after the revelation of an affair between editor-in-chief Suzy Wetlaufer and former
General ElectricGeneral Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
CEO
Jack WelchJohn Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr. is an American chemical engineer, business executive, and author. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001...
. Two senior editors left complaining the affair initiated during Wetlaufer's work with Welch for an article had broken ethical standards and cited an unfair office climate. Shortly after the resignations, Wetlaufer resigned on March 8 amid further rebuke by remaining staff. Three months later, the publisher, Penelope Muse Abernathy, was also forced out.
In January 2009 Harvard Business Review named
Adi IgnatiusAdi Ignatius is editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review. He joined the magazine in January 2009.Previously, he was deputy managing editor for Time, where he was responsible for many of Time’s special editions, including the Person of the Year and Time 100 franchises...
, the former Deputy Managing Editor of
TIME magazineTime is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, as Editor-in-Chief.
External links