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The Morning Star Company: Self-Management at Work

A Harvard Business School case on Morning Star’s self-management model, accountability, compensation, and peer-based coordination.

Source: Harvard Business SchoolAdded June 12, 2026Published 2013
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Why it matters

It brings a rigorous case-study lens to the hard questions of accountability and compensation in self-managed organizations.

Best for

Students, researchers, and operators studying self-management beyond the surface-level idea of no bosses.

This paid 22-page Harvard Business School case, published September 26, 2013, is by Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats. It examines Morning Star's self-management system through a concrete operating problem: how to design compensation and peer accountability without reintroducing a conventional management hierarchy.

Choose it as a discussion case rather than a current company profile or implementation manual. Its company facts and decision point reflect the case period, access is licensed per user through Harvard Business Publishing, and the case does not establish that Morning Star's choices will transfer unchanged to another organization.

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Heirloom Library entries are summaries and wayfinding notes. The original source is the best place to read the full resource.

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