Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,120)
- Faculty Publications (328)
- March–April 2019
- Article
Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees
By: Ryan W. Buell
Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details
- February 2019
- Technical Note
Can Multiunit Organizations Remain Agile as They Grow?
By: Tatiana Sandino
This note discusses how multiunit organizations incorporate flexibility into their management control systems, some by authorizing all or a select number of their dispersed units to make input and process decisions, some by investing in data-analytic technologies to... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 13 Platform Systems vs. Step Processes—The Value of Options and the Power of Modularity
This is the first chapter in Part 3. Its purpose is to contrast the value structure of platform systems with step processes from a technological perspective. I first review the basic technical architecture of computers and argue that every computer is inherently a... View Details
- January 2019
- Case
Accenture's Code of Business Ethics
By: Eugene Soltes
Leaders of Accenture’s compliance and ethics program are seeking to design a new code of business ethics for its global workforce of over 400,000 employees. The case explores the decision-making process that went into the design process and ultimately how they created... View Details
- 2018
- Article
Insight into Gender Differences in STEM: Evidence from Peer Reviews in an Engineering Class
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Bruce Ankenman and Seyed Iravani
As the service industry moves toward self-service, peer feedback serves a critical role in this shift for educational services. Peer feedback is a process by which students provide feedback to each other. One of its major benefits is that it enables students to become... View Details
Keywords: Peer Review; Peer Feedback; STEM Education; Anonymity; Education; Gender; Education Industry
- November 2018
- Case
frog design
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
The case follows the genesis and development of Palo, a radical urban communications hub designed to replace payphone booths on Manhattan’s city streets, through a joint venture between frog design and a venture-backed firm LQD WiFi. The case explores the complexity of... View Details
- Article
Considering Concessions: A Survey Experiment on the Colombian Peace Process
By: Aila M. Matanock and Natalia Garbiras-Díaz
Designing peace agreements that can be signed and sustained can be difficult in civil conflict. Many recent cases of successful settlements include electoral provisions, often for rebel groups to participate as political parties. Engaging the electoral process,... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
P-Will at DISCO
By: Ethan Bernstein, Naoko Jinjo and Yuna Sakuma
From the outside, DISCO—a Japan-based manufacturer of precision tools for semiconductor production devices—appeared to be a rather ordinary company that had achieved rather extraordinary success: it had simultaneously achieved 70% global market share, had lifted its... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised November 2018)
- Case
Careem: Base Camp or Mountain Peak? Designing an OS for Scaling
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Gamze Yucaoglu and Alpana Thapar
This case focuses on designing a fast growing organization. It is part of a two-case set that is taught together to cover the scaling journey.
Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service aimed to ‘simplify and improve the lives of people, and build an awesome... View Details
Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service aimed to ‘simplify and improve the lives of people, and build an awesome... View Details
- April 2018
- Teaching Note
InsideSales.com (A) and (B)
By: Frank Cespedes
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 817-018 and 817-042. InsideSales.com (ISC) has been successful selling its software to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB). But for various reasons, the founders see “the next stage of growth” as building a scalable sales and service... View Details
- November 2017
- Case
Outrageous Ambition: Duke University
By: William C. Kirby and Yuanzhuo Wang
Duke University had grown from a one room schoolhouse in rural North Carolina in 1859 to one of the leading research universities in the U.S. and the world. Since the late 1950s, Duke’s leaders had consciously used the process of strategic planning to guide the... View Details
Keywords: Duke University; University Governance; Internationalization; Duke Kunshan University; Interdisciplinarity; Higher Education; Interdisciplinary Studies; Global Strategy; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business History; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Education Industry; United States; China; Singapore
- Article
An Invitation to Market Design
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Alexander Teytelboym and Vincent P. Crawford
Market design seeks to translate economic theory and analysis into practical solutions to real-world problems. By redesigning both the rules that guide market transactions and the infrastructure that enables those transactions to take place, market designers can... View Details
Keywords: Matching; Trading; Scrip; Liquidity; Efficiency; Equity; Allocation Rules; Marketplaces; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Auctions
- 2017
- Working Paper
Shopping for Confirmation: How Disconfirming Feedback Shapes Social Networks
By: Paul Green Jr., Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats
Many organizations employ interpersonal feedback processes as a structured means of informing and motivating employee improvement. Ample evidence suggests that these feedback processes are largely ineffective, and despite a wealth of prescriptive literature, these... View Details
- August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
VTS
By: Mark Roberge and Michael Roberts
The case raises issues around sales force deployment and management issues in the SaaS industry. Specifically, VTS sells a software product to the real estate industry and has designed a Go-to-Market strategy for what the founders perceive to be the unique... View Details
- August 2017 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
Flex Hungary: Launching Production (A)
By: Willy Shih
This case examines design choices in the construction of flow lines. Flow lines are a popular way of arranging production because they are simple and inherently efficient. Equipment or workstations are arranged according to the sequence of steps in which a product is... View Details
Keywords: Manufacturing; Line-balancing; Flow Line; Conveyor-paced Line; Consumer Goods; Consumer Products; Production Management; Production Planning; Production Scheduling; Operations; Production; Management; Supply Chain; Design; Analysis; Goods and Commodities; Consumer Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; European Union
- July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
Propel
By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra
In 2014, Jimmy Chen, a former product manager at Facebook, founded the start-up Propel to build software for low-income Americans. After conducting in-depth behavioral research, Chen and his small team in New York City began to develop technology to address the... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Govtech; Food Stamps; EBT; Mobile App; User Research; Financial Services Referrals; Grocery Marketing; Customer Discovery; Social Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Model; Research; Social Enterprise; Poverty; Welfare; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Industry; United States
- 2017
- Working Paper
Business History, the Great Divergence and the Great Convergence
By: Geoffrey Jones
This working paper provides a business history perspective on debates about the Great Divergence, the rise of the income gap between the West and the Rest, and the more recent Great Convergence, which has seen a narrowing of that gap. The literature on the timing and... View Details
- June 2017 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Sales Misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank
Set in early 2017, this case examines widespread sales misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank. Wells Fargo's governance and controls are described in the lead up to the September 2016 announcement that Wells Fargo had settled with regulators for $185 million in... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Lawsuits and Litigation; Crisis Management; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Design; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Crime and Corruption; Business Organization; Business Model; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Governance Compliance; Policy; Compensation and Benefits; Resignation and Termination; Laws and Statutes; Legal Liability; Business or Company Management; Risk Management; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Failure; Agency Theory; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Salesforce Management; Public Opinion; Banking Industry; North and Central America
- June 2017 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Becton Dickinson: Innovation and Growth (A)
By: Raffaella Sadun, Michael Beer and James Weber
In late 2015, CEO Vince Forlenza was reviewing Becton Dickinson’s transformation efforts designed to enable the company to innovate and grow in a changing environment. Becton Dickinson had been a successful medical device company for over 100 years. In recent years,... View Details
Keywords: Transformation; Change Management; Innovation Leadership; Mergers and Acquisitions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Health Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States
- June 2017
- Article
Creating Reciprocal Value Through Operational Transparency
By: Ryan W. Buell, Tami Kim and Chia-Jung Tsay
We investigate whether organizations can create value by introducing visual transparency between consumers and producers. Although operational transparency has been shown to improve consumer perceptions of service value, existing theory posits that increased contact... View Details