Publications

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04 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 4

consumers to reduce their energy usage. OPOWER was co-founded in 2008 by two young Harvard graduates, Dan Yates and Alex Laskey, who were inspired by Robert Cialdini's... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2012
Book

Harder Than I Thought: Adventures of a Twenty-First Century Leader

By: Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan and Shannon O'Donnell

Being a great leader today is much harder than you think—meet Jim Barton. He's a newly minted CEO, rising leader of a firm in transition, and manager of massive complexity—thanks to our incredibly networked and increasingly unpredictable world of business. What if you... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Complexity; Crisis Management; Problems and Challenges; Volatility

Article

Megastudies Improve the Impact of Applied Behavioural Science

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Dena Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Pepi Pandiloski, Yeji Park, Aneesh Rai, Max Bazerman, John Beshears, Lauri Bonacorsi, Colin Camerer, Edward Chang, Gretchen Chapman, Robert Cialdini, Hengchen Dai, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ayelet Fishbach, James J. Gross, Samantha Horn, Alexa Hubbard, Steven J. Jones, Dean Karlan, Tim Kautz, Erika Kirgios, Joowon Klusowski, Ariella Kristal, Rahul Ladhania, Jens Ludwig, George Loewenstein, Barbara Mellers, Sendhil Mullainathan, Silvia Saccardo, Jann Spiess, Gaurav Suri, Joachim H. Talloen, Jamie Taxer, Yaacov Trope, Lyle Ungar, Kevin G. Volpp, Ashley V. Whillans, Jonathan Zinman and Angela L. Duckworth

Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens’ decisions and outcomes. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time... View Details

Keywords: Policy Making; Behavioral Science; Behavior; Change; Decision Making; Policy

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June 2018
Teaching Note

Verona Group (Brief Case)

By: Robert L. Simons and Sarah Abbott

Teaching Note for HBS No. 918-531. View Details

October 2011 (Revised April 2017)
Teaching Note

Raleigh & Rosse: Measures to Motivate Exceptional Service (Brief Case)

By: Robert L. Simons and Michael Mahoney

Teaching Note for 4353. View Details

Keywords: Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Goal Setting; Compensation; Incentives; Motivation; Sales Compensation; Strategy And Execution; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Salesforce Management; Organizational Culture; Accounting; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits

November 2008 (Revised October 2009)
Case

American Cancer Society: Access to Care

By: Robert L. Simons and Kathryn Rosenberg

CEO John Seffrin decides to radically change the strategy of the American Cancer Society. The new Access to Care strategy relies on advocacy to change public policy and increase the number of Americans eligible for cancer prevention and treatment. The new strategy... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Governance Controls; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Nonprofit Organizations; Business Strategy; Health Industry; United States

March 1990 (Revised November 1999)
Case

MCI Communications: Planning for the 1990s

By: Robert L. Simons and Hilary Weston

Concentrates on the evolution of MCI's strategy-setting process following a period of dramatic growth. Opportunistic strategies during MCI's early years have given top managers a dislike of formal strategic planning and a strongly-held belief in top down strategy... View Details

Keywords: Globalization; Growth and Development; Planning; Strategic Planning; Growth Management; Business or Company Management; Competition; Alignment; Communications Industry

January 2000
Case

Cross Country Group, The: A Piece of the Rock (B)

By: Robert L. Simons and Indra Reinbergs

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Accounting Industry; Employment Industry

June 1999 (Revised December 2001)
Teaching Note

Birch Paper Company TN

By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila

Teaching Note for (9-158-001). View Details

03 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 3, 2009

private assets, and personal saving, represent exercises in linguistics, not economics. Technological Innovation and Organizations Authors: Josh Lerner and Pierre Azoulay Publication: In Handbook of Organizational Economics, edited by... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

14 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: February 14

Christopher L. Magee Abstract Many products are manufactured in networks of firms linked by transactions, but comparatively little is known about how or why such transaction networks differ. This paper... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

07 Aug 2012
First Look

First Look: August 7

Communicating Frames in Negotiation Authors:Kathleen L. McGinn and Markus Noth Publication:." In The Oxford Handbook of Economic Conflict Resolution, edited by Gary E. Bolton and Rachel T.A. Croson.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 23, 2008

increasingly successful claims of social scientists, backed by philanthropic foundations, on business education and the growing appeal of "scientific" approaches to decision-making and management. We also show that these... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

05 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 5

and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when websites engage in operational transparency by signaling that they are exerting... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Mar 2013
First Look

First Look: March 12

capture of accounting regulation by segments of the financial-services industry. Paper: http://hbr.org/2013/03/why-fair-value-is-the-rule/ar/1 Working PapersCarry Trade and Exchange-Rate Regimes Authors:Alfaro, Laura, and Fabio Kanczuk... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 8, 2008

suffering incurred by the affected population. We use a political economy model of disaster prevention, supported by case studies and preliminary empirics to explain why some governments prepare well for... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

February 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Supplement

Henkel: Building a Winning Culture (D)

By: Robert L. Simons and Carolyn Deller

This three-page case is the third update to Henkel: Building a Winning Culture (A). In this supplement, dated 2021, a new CEO has taken over Henkel and implemented a new strategy. His changes to the original performance management system are presented as a new... View Details

Keywords: Execution; Management Control Systems; Performance Goals; Incentives; Levers Of Control; Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Evaluation

January 1998 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Cafes Monte Bianco: Building a Profit Plan

By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila

Alert: This case has been revised since its original publication; all amounts have been converted to euros and the dates have been updated to 2020. If you’ve taught with this case in the past, please note that changes may affect teaching plans and classroom use. Using... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Cash Flow; Investment Return; Profit; Financial Statements; Food and Beverage Industry; Italy

March 1997 (Revised November 2013)
Case

Purity Steel Corporation, 2012

By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila

Managers introduce a new performance evaluation system based on sales growth and return-on-investment (ROI). A branch manager wonders whether his new warehouse should be leased to mitigate the impact on ROI. Formulas and performance calculations are provided. A... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Judgments; Motivation and Incentives; Performance Efficiency; Compensation and Benefits; Salesforce Management; Performance Consistency; Performance Productivity; Steel Industry