Publications

April 2010
Case

George Martin at The Boston Consulting Group (A)

By: Leslie A. Perlow and Kerry Herman

George Martin, managing partner at The Boston Consulting Group, is worried as some of his best performers have recently pulled him aside to discuss the challenges they face managing the demands of their work lives with their desire for more predictable time with their... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Work-Life Balance; Management Teams; Interpersonal Communication; Jobs and Positions; Employees; Consulting Industry; Boston

Article

A Fair Game? Racial Bias and Repeated Interaction between NBA Coaches and Players

By: Letian Zhang

There is strong evidence of racial bias in organizations but little understanding of how it changes with repeated interaction. This study proposes that repeated interaction has the potential to reduce racial bias, but its moderating effects are limited to the treatment... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Bias; Interaction; NBA; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Equality and Inequality; Interpersonal Communication; Sports

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17 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 17

suggests that exploiting the bigotry of others might be a source of competitive advantage. We seek to turn the first literature somewhat on its head by building on insights from the second literature. Specifically, multinationals hold a particularly significant... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

30 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Donors Are Turned Off by Overhead Costs. Here’s What Charities Can Do

administrative expenses. Keenan and her colleagues have spent a lot of time researching ways to do that. Their initial findings indicate that donors are willing to stomach the idea of overhead—as long as... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Spring 2013
Article

Accounting Quality, Stock Price Delay, and Future Stock Returns

By: Jeffrey Callen, Mozaffar N. Khan and Hai Lu

In frictionless capital markets with complete information and rational investors, stock prices adjust to new information instantaneously and completely. However, a substantial body of research studies information imperfections such as asymmetric information and... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Price; Stocks; Asset Pricing; Accounting

November 2004 (Revised July 2006)
Case

Patrimonio Hoy

By: Arthur I Segel, Michael Chu and Gustavo Herrero

Patrimonio Hoy is a program targeting the housing needs of the low-income population by CEMEX, a major Mexican company and a leading global cement producer. Originally conceived as a project to understand the customers in the self-construction segment better, a major... View Details

Keywords: Housing; Construction; Product Design; Globalized Firms and Management; Microfinance; Income; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Entrepreneurship; Construction Industry; Mexico

December 2020 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Responsive Working at PepsiCo UK (A): Streamlining a Turnaround

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Nancy Boghossian Staples

Facing a significant decline in revenues in 2016, David Gwilliam, Head of Transformation at PepsiCo UK introduced a new way of working (“Responsive Working”), which encompasses a set of work practices and some new team structures. The work practices comprise a set of 9... View Details

Keywords: SLAM Teams; Turnaround; Groups and Teams; Employees; Training; Decision Making; Planning; Performance Improvement; Consumer Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United Kingdom; Europe

31 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

When Not to Trust Your Gut

options, you are using System 2 thinking. When you are simply acting on intuition, you are using System 1 thinking. We can all think of instances in which we acted rashly, relying on System 1 thoughts and emotions, as well View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman & Deepak Malhotra

17 Jan 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Deregulation, Misallocation, and Size: Evidence from India

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro & Anusha Chari

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

guidelines. Companies at this stage often wait too long to hire people experts—both human resources managers and experienced recruiters who get the startup-to-scale scene. That's a big mistake. Investing money in these roles early will... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

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

Keywords: Human Capital; P-Will; DISCO; Semiconductors; Self-Managed Organizations; Governance; Human Resources; Selection and Staffing; Management Practices and Processes; Management Systems; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Semiconductor Industry; Japan

September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Hot Wheels at Mattel: Reinventing the Wheel

By: Elie Ofek, Andres Terech and Nicole Tempest Keller

In 2017, Chris Down, Global Brand General Manager for Hot Wheels, and his team from the Advanced Play Group within Mattel, Inc., were considering which innovation path to pursue in order to "future proof" the Hot Wheels franchise going forward. Hot Wheels was the... View Details

Keywords: Toys; Industry Evolution; Innovation Strategy; Product Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Technological Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Decision Making; Digital Transformation

11 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Doing Well by Doing Good? One Industry’s Struggle to Balance Values and Profits

mostly fallow for a few decades: the role of morals in careers. Once a major area of research in the 1950s and 1960s, it has “receded in focus” since then, the authors note, even as these issues have arguably become even more relevant in... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

May 2020
Teaching Note

Baskits Inc.

By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 217-001. Robin Kovitz (MBA 2007) acquired Baskits, a Canadian gift basket company, in October of 2014. The business was highly seasonal with two-thirds of its sales occurring in November and December. Baskits dealt with its seasonality... View Details

Keywords: Operations; Performance Improvement; Canada

14 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Feeling Stressed? Try Sniffing Your Romantic Partner's Shirt

partner’s smell seems to reduce the physiological stress response” It was Collins’ job to turn the t-shirts inside out, fold them, and place them in individual freezer bags with the armpit section facing up. “In general, it’s not as gross... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Article

Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty

By: Ariella S. Kristal, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely

Honest reporting is essential for society to function well. However, people frequently lie when asked to provide information, such as misrepresenting their income to save money on taxes. A landmark finding published in PNAS (Shu, Mazar, Gino, Ariely, and Bazerman,... View Details

Keywords: Morality; Nudge; Policy-making; Replication; Honesty; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Policy

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Article

Small States in an Age of Empires: The Duchy of Parma's Colonial Moment, 1750–1770

By: Arnaud Orain and Sophus A. Reinert

Often thought of as the "Athens of Italy" during the Enlightenment, and as a microcosm of the Italian peninsula and of the eighteenth century alike, the Duchy of Parma played a unique role in the culture and politics of the age. This essay focuses on its "colonial... View Details

Keywords: Duchy Of Parma; French Empire; Internal Colonization; Enlightenment; Political Economy; Small States In World Markets; Guillaume Dutillot; Étienne-François De Choiseul

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October 2013
Case

FasterCures: Removing Barriers to Treatments

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and James Weber

In mid-2013, as FasterCures celebrated its 10th anniversary as a center of the Milken Institute, Executive Director Margaret Anderson thought about what the organization should do to ensure it had even more impact in its next 10 years. FasterCures was a non-profit... View Details

January 1994
Case

Evolving Finance Function: Judy C. Lewent at Merck & Co., Inc.

By: Timothy A. Luehrman

This case examines the career path of Merck's CFO, Judy C. Lewent, as a way of tracing changes over time in Merck's finance function. It describes the adoption of innovative quantitative analytical models, changes in job definitions and in the organization of the... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Mathematical Methods; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Design; Innovation and Invention; Pharmaceutical Industry