Harvard Business School Application Process

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The concept of business process orientation (BPO) is based upon the work of Deming (Walton, 1996), Porter (1985), Davenport and Short (1990), Hammer (1993, 1996 and 1999), Grover et al. (1995), and Coombs and Hull (1996). This body of work suggests that firms could enhance their overall performance by adopting a “process view” of the organization. Although many firms have adopted the BPO concept, little to no empirical data existed substantiating its effectiveness in facilitating improved business performance. McCormack (2000) conducted an empirical study to explore the relationship between BPO and enhanced business performance. The research results showed that BPO is critical in reducing conflict and encouraging greater connectedness within an organization, while improving business performance. Moreover, companies with strong measures of BPO showed better overall business performance. The research also showed that high BPO levels within organizations led to a more positive corporate climate, illustrated through better organizational connectedness and less internal conflict. Another empirical study by Kohlbacher (2009) reveals that BPO is positively associated with customer satisfaction, product quality, delivery speed and time-to-market speed. For a central concept, one that has become something of a Holy Grail for 1990s managers, BPO has remained remarkably hard to pin down. Its champions argue that it is a new approach to management that replaces the rigid hierarchies of the past ("I report to my boss") with structures that are much flatter, more cooperative, more process-oriented ("I report to my customer."). Many of us have had experience with both types of organization and we know intuitively what BPO feels like. Yet, if you're like me, you want a more solid foundation on which to make decisions and recommendations. Most of the literature on business process orientation has been in the popular press and lacks a research or empirical focus. Although empirical evidence is lacking, several models have emerged during the last few years that have been presented as the high performance, process oriented organization needed in today and tomorrow’s world. Deming, Porter, Davenport, Short, Hammer, Byrne, Imai, Drucker, Rummler-Brache and Melan have all defined what they view as the new model of the organization. According to each model’s proponent, the “building” of this model requires a new approach and a new way of thinking about the organization which will result in dramatic business performance improvements. This “new way of thinking” or “viewing” your organization has been generally described as business process orientation. Process centering or building an organization with a business process orientation has led to many reported successes. Texas Instruments, Progressive Insurance and American Standard Companies have all been reported, albeit anecdotally, as receiving improved business performance from building a process orientation within an organization (Hammer 1996). Business process orientation has also led to successes when applied to medium and small scale business that is properly setup. Process orientation, and its relationship to improved cross-functional interaction, was introduced almost fifteen years ago by Michael Porter. He introduced the concept of interoperability across the value chain as a major issue within firms (Porter 1985). W. Edwards Deming also contributed with the “Deming Flow Diagram” depicting the connections across the firm from the customer to the supplier as a process that could be measured and improved like any other process (Walton 1986). Thomas Davenport and James Short (1990) described a process orientation within an organization as a key component in the “New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Redesign.” Michael Hammer also presented the business process orientation concept as an essential ingredient of a successful “reengineering” effort. Hammer coined this term to describe the development of a customer focused, strategic business process based organization enabled by rethinking the assumptions in a process oriented way and utilizing information technology as a key enabler (Hammer, 1993). Hammer offers reengineering as a strategy to overcome the problematic cross-functional activities that are presenting major performance issues to firms and cites many examples of successes and failures in his series of books and articles. Hallmark and Wal-Mart are often put forward as success stories and IBM and GM as the failures. Culture is a major theme in the examples cited. A “business process culture” is a culture that is cross-functional, customer oriented along with process and system thinking. This can be expanded by Davenport’s definition of process orientation as consisting of elements of structure, focus, measurement, ownership and customers (Davenport 1993). Davenport also stressed commitment to process improvement that directly benefits the customer and business process information oriented systems as a major component of this culture Finally, Hammer (Hammer 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999) described “process thinking” as cross-functional and outcome oriented. He also used four categories to describe the components of an organization. These are: Business Processes Jobs and Structures Management and Measurement Systems Values and Beliefs

Article title : Business process orientation
"Davenport, T. H. (1993). Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology. Boston MA: Harvard Business School Press. Drucker, Peter..."
Article title : Business process re-engineering
"Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a business management strategy originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of..."
Article title : Business school
"most professors are capable of supervising the application of this method. When Harvard Business School started operating in 1908, the faculty realized..."
Article title : Robotic process automation
"Robotic process automation (RPA) is a form of business process automation that is based on software robots (bots) or artificial intelligence (AI) agents..."
Article title : Harvard University
"Extension schools, and Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Radcliffe Yard. Harvard also has commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge. Harvard Business School, Harvard..."
Article title : Harvard Extension School
"Harvard Extension School (HES) is the continuing education school of Harvard University, a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts..."
Article title : Harvard Medical School
"Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded..."
Article title : Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
"across the Charles River from Harvard's main campus in Cambridge and adjacent to the Harvard Business School and Harvard Innovation Labs. The SEC was named..."
Article title : Discovery-driven planning
"Discovery-driven planning is a planning technique first introduced in a Harvard Business Review article by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan in 1995..."
Article title : Business economics
"business. Managerial economics is the application of economic methods in the managerial decision-making process. Business economics is actually the part of..."

Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The school offers a large full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, HBX and many executive education programs. It owns Harvard Business School Publishing, which publishes business books, leadership articles, online management tools for corporate learning, case studies, and the monthly Harvard Business Review. Harvard's MBA program is ranked #1 in the world by Bloomberg, #1 by the Financial Times, #1 by BusinessInsider and #2 by US News and World Report and Forbes Magazine.

Harvard Business School was established in 1908, initially by the humanities faculty, it received independent status in 1910, and became a separate administrative unit in 1913. The first dean was historian Edwin Francis Gay (1867-1946). Yogev (2001) explains the original concept:
This school of business and public administration was originally conceived as a school for diplomacy and government service on the model of the French Ecole des Sciences Politiques. The goal was an institution of higher learning that would offer a master of arts degree in the humanities field, with a major in business. In discussions about the curriculum, the suggestion was made to concentrate on specific business topics such as banking, railroads, and so on... Professor Lowell said Harvard Business School would train qualified public administrators whom the government would have no choice but to employ, thereby building a better public administration... Harvard was blazing a new trail by educating young people for a career in business, just as its medical school trained doctors and its law faculty trained lawyers. The business school pioneered the development of the case method of teaching, drawing inspiration from this approach to legal education at Harvard. Cases are typically descriptions of real events in organizations. Students are positioned as managers and are presented with problems which they need to analyse and provide recommendations on.
From the start Harvard Business School enjoyed a close relationship with the corporate world. Within a few years of its founding many business leaders were its alumni and were hiring other alumni for starting positions in their firms.
At its founding, Harvard Business School accepted only male students. The Training Course in Personnel Administration, founded at Radcliffe College in 1937, was the beginning of business training for women at Harvard. HBS took over administration of that program from Radcliffe in 1954. In 1959, alumnae of the one-year program (by then known as the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration) were permitted to apply to join the HBS MBA program as second-years. In December 1962, the faculty voted to allow women to enter the MBA program directly. The first women to apply directly to the MBA program matriculated in September 1963.

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