Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(117,244)
- Faculty Publications (293)
- August 2012
- Case
ARISE: A Destination-for-a-Day Spa
By: Michael Beer and Lynda St. Clair
A new Dallas-based health and beauty spa aims to use a highly distinctive human resource system as the foundation of its competitive strategy. By encouraging employees to act as "personal wellness coaches" (PWCs) with high commitment and broad responsibilities, the... View Details
- June 2012
- Case
Aman Resorts (Abridged)
By: Eugene Soltes and Aldo Sesia
This case describes the operating model and philosophy of this high-end set of global properties. Aman relies on employees taking considerable initiative to deliver the highest quality personalized service in the hospitality industry. The case also highlights Aman's... View Details
- June 2012 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
Great Western Hospital: High-risk Pregnancy Care
By: Michael E. Porter, Emma Stanton and Samuel Takvorian
Great Western Hospital (GWH) is a community hospital in Wiltshire, South West England and one of England's largest maternity providers; responsible for delivering over 9,000 babies per year. The case discusses the efforts of Dr. Harini Narayan, consultant obstetrician... View Details
- April 2012
- Case
Pret A Manger
By: Frances X. Frei, Rick Goldberg and Stephanie van Sice
Pret A Manger, a London-based chain of sandwich shops, was known for its fast, genuine service and pre-packaged sandwiches prepared on-site daily. Instructed by its board to grow at 15 percent per year, Pret considered opening "twin" shops in locations too small to... View Details
Keywords: Customer Service Excellence; Growth Planning And Management; Employee Performance Management; Information Management; Production Planning; Employee Attitude Development And Empowerment; Employee Retention; Leadership Development And Career Planning; Service Delivery; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Employees; Performance; London
- December 2011 (Revised December 2011)
- Case
Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Scaling the Mother Standard of Care
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Matthew Bird
The CEO of a private and growing national network of specialty care hospitals focusing on advanced-stage and complex cancer treatments reflected on the firm's past phase of growth before meeting with the company's Chairman and founder to discuss how to further scale... View Details
- Article
Market Heterogeneity and Local Capacity Decisions in Services
By: Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei
We empirically document factors that influence how local operating managers use discretion to balance the tradeoff between service capacity costs and customer sensitivity to service time. Our findings, using data from one of the largest financial services providers in... View Details
- November 2011
- Case
WrapItUp: Developing a New Compensation Plan
By: W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Rachel Shelton
A restaurant chain based in California offers made-to-order sandwich wraps using fresh, healthy ingredients. The founders of the company take a very active role in day-to-day business and tightly control every aspect of the restaurant operation from hiring store... View Details
Keywords: Empowerment; Middle Management; Human Resource Management; Compensation; Incentives; Motivation; Motivation and Incentives; Change Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Service Delivery; Entrepreneurship; Employees; Compensation and Benefits; Service Industry; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; California
- September 2011 (Revised February 2013)
- Case
Cleveland Clinic: Improving the Patient Experience
By: Ananth Raman and Anita L. Tucker
Healthcare has traditionally focused on medical outcomes and financial performance. The big question is always, "How much is it going to cost?" What would happen, though, if healthcare also considered the question of "How does the patient feel?" This case looks at the... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
How to Solve the Cost Crisis in Health Care
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Michael E. Porter
Existing health care costing systems have serious flaws that make it impossible to measure costs accurately at the individual patient and medical condition level. This gap has severely limited meaningful cost reduction throughout the system. The paper describes a new... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom 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... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Non-Audit Services and Financial Reporting Quality: Evidence from 1978-1980
By: Kevin Koh, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We provide evidence for the long-standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978 to 1980. Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Think Customers Hate Waiting? Not So Fast...
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
Managers typically look for ways to reduce wait time to increase customer satisfaction. New research suggests there's a better approach: showing customers a representation of the effort, whether literal or not, being expended on their behalf while they wait. (The... View Details
- April 2011
- Case
Porcini's Pronto: "Great Italian cuisine without the wait!"
By: James L. Heskett and Richard Luecke
Porcini's Inc. operates a chain of 23 full-service restaurants located near shopping malls and downtown areas in the northeastern United States. Known for providing excellent service, Porcini's serves high-quality Italian cuisine made from fresh ingredients. Looking... View Details
Keywords: Franchising; Syndication; Quantitative Analysis; Performance Measurement; Human Resource Management; Incentives; Motivation; Consumer Behavior; Measurement and Metrics; Quality; Customer Value and Value Chain; Selection and Staffing; Expansion; Business Growth and Maturation; Service Delivery; Franchise Ownership; Customer Focus and Relationships; Product Marketing; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; Northeastern United States
- 2011
- Working Paper
The Impact of Forward-Looking Metrics on Employee Decision Making
By: Pablo Casas-Arce, F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and V.G. Narayanan
This paper analyzes the effects of providing forward-looking metrics on employee decision making. We use data from a southern European bank that, in April 2002, started providing its branch managers with customer lifetime value (CLV) information about mortgage... View Details
- March 2011
- Case
Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership
By: Rohit Deshpande
On November 26, 2008, heavily armed terrorists launched a series of attacks throughout the western-Indian city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). One of the locations attacked was the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, which was occupied by the terrorists for over three days,... View Details
- February 2011 (Revised September 2013)
- Case
Sound Group China: Urban Waste Entrepreneurs
By: John D. Macomber, Chad M. Carr and Fan Zhao
Private sector entrepreneur in China with advanced solid waste management capability competes with state owned enterprises and also government policies supporting a rival technology. Wen Yibo has used engineering expertise and political savvy to build a major privately... View Details
- December 2010
- Supplement
Rackspace Hosting (2000)
By: W. Earl Sasser, James L. Heskett and Tom Ryder
The leadership team of Rackspace, faced with accommodation of its service offering and dwindling financial reserves, decides to make customer focus the rallying cry of its new strategy. View Details
- November 2010 (Revised January 2011)
- Case
The Tzu Chi Foundation's China Relief Mission
By: Herman B. Leonard and YiKwan Chu
Tzu Chi is one of the largest charities in Taiwan, and one of the swiftest and most effective relief organizations internationally. Rooted in the value of compassion, the organization has many unusual operating features -- including having no long term plan. This case... View Details
- November 2010 (Revised January 2011)
- Case
Computerized Provider Order Entry at Emory Healthcare
By: Richard G. Hamermesh, F. Warren McFarlan, Mark Keil, Andrew Katz, Michael Morgan and David LaBorde
The Computerized Provider Order Entry at Emory Healthcare case presents one hospital system's efforts to implement computerized provider order entry (CPOE) across all of its hospitals and the challenges they faced in doing so. Issues such as standardization of care,... View Details
- November 2010 (Revised April 2011)
- Case
Aman Resorts
By: Eugene Soltes and Aldo Sesia
This case describes the operating model and philosophy of this high-end set of global properties. Aman relies on employees taking considerable initiative to deliver the highest quality personalized service in the hospitality industry. The case also highlights Aman's... View Details