Publications

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January 2018
Article

Big Data and Big Cities: The Promises and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life

By: Edward L. Glaeser, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Luca and Nikhil Naik

New, "big" data sources allow measurement of city characteristics and outcome variables at higher frequencies and finer geographic scales than ever before. However, big data will not solve large urban social science questions on its own. Big data has the most value for... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Urban Scope; City

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29 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Income Inequality Is Rising. Are We Even Measuring It Correctly?

finding ways to reduce inequality to create a more just and equal society for all. In making decisions on how to best intervene, policymakers commonly rely on the Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of resource distribution, including... View Details

Keywords: by Jon M. Jachimowicz, Kristin Blesch, and Oliver P. Hauser

November 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Martini Klinik: Prostate Cancer Care 2019

By: Michael E. Porter, Jens Deerberg-Wittram and Thomas W. Feeley

Since its establishment in 2005, Hamburg’s Martini Klinik had single mindedly focused on prostate cancer care with a commitment to measure long-term health outcomes for every patient. A wholly owned subsidiary of the University Hospital Hamburg, Martini Klinik was a... View Details

Web

Value Measurement for Health Care - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

Value Measurement for He... Value Measurement for Health Care 5-7 Aug 2019 Executive Education Course Learn More Summary Innovative health care organizations worldwide are moving toward better value View Details

August 2012 (Revised August 2014)
Case

Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (A)

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Natalie Kindred

Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a U.S. network of four privately owned oncology focused factory hospitals, was weighing options for growth. CTCA was entirely cancer focused and specialized in treating patients with complex and advanced-stage cancers, who... View Details

2021
Working Paper

Multi-location Workers in Multinational Firms? Tradeoffs in Contextual Specialization of Employees and Organizational Outcomes

By: Hise O. Gibson, Ryan W. Buell and Prithwiraj Choudhury

We study how “contextual specialization,” the act of focusing workers’ organizational tasks within a particular locational context, and “contextual non-specialization,” the practice of diversifying workers’ organizational tasks among multiple locational contexts,... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Performance; Experience and Expertise; Selection and Staffing; Strength and Weakness; Personal Development and Career

2021
Other Unpublished Work

Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2

By: Daniel J. Sturtevant, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn and Sean Gilliland

An interrelated set of tools and methods is disclosed for: (1) measuring the relationship between software source code attributes (such as code quality, design quality, test quality, and complexity metrics) and software economics outcome metrics (such as... View Details

Keywords: Technical Debt; Applications and Software; Economics; Measurement and Metrics; Patents

May 2014
Case

Health Care Accountability: Examples in Cancer Treatment

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Natalie Kindred

This case is designed to support a discussion of the importance of outcomes evidence in empowering the public to make better health care decisions, the desired level of transparency and accountability for health care providers, and the issues with current measuring and... View Details

Keywords: Accountability; Health Care; Cancer; Cancer Treatment; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Cancer Treatment Centers Of America; Vantage Oncology; Radiology; Risk Adjustment; Treatment Outcomes; Health Care Outcomes; Prostate Cancer; Transparency; Health Care and Treatment; Risk Management; Outcome or Result; Health Industry; United States

Web

Hold ourselves accountable to meaningful, measurable progress. - Advancing Racial Equity

Action Plan Hold ourselves accountable to meaningful, measurable progress. Like many of the organizations we study, Harvard Business School is at risk of declaring a lot of good intentions and goals and then failing to follow through on... View Details

April 2023
Article

Performance on Patient Experience Measures of Former Chief Medical Residents as Physician Exemplars Chosen by the Profession

By: Lucy Chen and J. Michael McWilliams

OBJECTIVE To compare care for patients of primary care physicians (PCPs) who were former chiefs with care for patients of nonchief PCPs.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Using 2010 to 2018 Medicare Fee-For-Service Consumer Assessment of Healthcare... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Forecasting and Prediction; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Competency and Skills; Surveys; Health Industry

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Research Summary

The Effect of Hospital and Surgeon Procedure Volume on the Outcomes of Primary and Revision Total Knee Replacement: Magnitude and Mechanisms

My role in this study is to assess whether care provider coordination mediates the relationship between surgical volumes and patient outcomes. It is a study involving hundreds of hospitals and thousands of patients, and for the main study, coordination will be... View Details

July 22, 2014
Blog Post

What Impact? Resist Taking Credit for Results You Can't Achieve

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan

Keywords: Impact Measurement; Measurement and Metrics; Outcome or Result

November 2021
Article

Panel Experiments and Dynamic Causal Effects: A Finite Population Perspective

By: Iavor Bojinov, Ashesh Rambachan and Neil Shephard

In panel experiments, we randomly assign units to different interventions, measuring their outcomes, and repeating the procedure in several periods. Using the potential outcomes framework, we define finite population dynamic causal effects that capture the relative... View Details

Keywords: Panel Data; Dynamic Causal Effects; Potential Outcomes; Finite Population; Nonparametric; Mathematical Methods

2013
Working Paper

The Impact of Conformance and Experiential Quality on Healthcare Cost and Clinical Performance

By: Claire Senot, Aravind Chandrasekaran, Peter T. Ward and Anita L. Tucker

The quality of operational processes is an important driver of performance in hospitals. In particular, processes that reliably deliver both evidence-based and patient-centered care, which we call conformance and experiential quality, respectively, have been argued to... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Experiential Quality; Conformance Quality; Clinical Outcomes; Cost Efficiency; Quality; Service Operations; Health Care and Treatment; Performance; Outcome or Result; Health Industry

Research Summary

Overview

The Information Age has introduced well-received opportunities to track performance. Fitbits and Fuelbands allow individuals to track their own performance; companies like Uber and leading hospitals help you choose a driver or a doctor based on how others rated... View Details

Keywords: Management Accounting; Disclosure; Performance Measurement; Incentives; Control; Education; Education Industry; Health Industry; Transportation Industry; Energy Industry; Auto Industry; United States; Japan; India

December 2023
Case

Robert McNamara: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case traces the life of Robert McNamara from Harvard Business School to Ford Motor Company to the U.S. Department of Defense. McNamara excelled in every job along the way: becoming the youngest-ever professor at Harvard Business School, the first non-family... View Details

Keywords: Performance Measurement; Military; Leadership Development; Values and Beliefs; Personal Characteristics; Leadership Style; Success; Business and Government Relations; Power and Influence; Business Education; War

2013
Working Paper

The Appeal of the Appropriate: Accounting, Risk Management, and the Competition for the Supply of Control Systems

By: Anette Mikes

How do certain risk measurements in organizations come to be seen as more reliable and acceptable than others? Taking a multiple-control perspective, I investigate the aftermath of a control debacle at a financial services company (MultiBank), focusing on its insurance... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Multiple Control Systems; Interactive Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Risk Measurement; Financialization Of Accounting; Institutional Logics; Banking; Risk Management; Fair Value Accounting; Insurance; Financial Services Industry

September 2011
Article

A Cancer Center Puts the New Approach to Work: Pilot

By: Heidi W. Albright and Thomas W. Feeley

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute–designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, located in Houston, Texas. Seeing more than 30,000 new patients every year, MD Anderson accounts for approximately 20% of cancer care within the... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Quality; Measurement; Costing; Accounting; Health; Quality; Health Industry; North and Central America