Publications

January 2022
Technical Note

Ethical Analysis: Well-Being and Rights

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Christopher Diak

This note introduces students to two central concepts for ethical analysis: well-being and rights. It illustrates ways in which they figure in managerial decisions and challenges that arise, including how to frame trade-offs across individual well-being and... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Analysis; Rights; Well-being; Management Practices and Processes; Decision Making

August 1988 (Revised September 1988)
Case

Productivity and Performance Systems: A Comparative Analysis of Northern Telecom and United Parcel Service

Explores the issue of measuring and improving service quality and productivity by examining the radically different approaches of Northern Telecom and United Parcel Service. View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; Performance Evaluation; Service Industry; United States

November 1994
Background Note

Why Bad Things Happen to Good Companies

By: Benson P. Shapiro, Adrian J. Slywotsky and Richard S. Tedlow

Describes the Darwinian internal and external processes that lead to poor performance from a previously well performing company. Demonstrates why any business design eventually fails and the role of organizational calcification and poor leadership in the failure. Also... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Design; Failure; Performance

October 1992 (Revised October 1993)
Case

MCI Communications Corporation: National Accounts Program (Condensed)

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Concerns the early stages of a major-account program at MCI, a telecommunications firm seeking to penetrate the corporate-account market. Among the issues are: 1) coordination of field sales efforts with national account selling efforts; 2) sales strategy for major... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Decision Choices and Conditions; Training; Compensation and Benefits; Management Practices and Processes; Marketing Strategy; Groups and Teams; Sales

Find at Harvard

05 May 2010
What Do You Think?

Is Denial Endemic to Management?

Bullard suggested that "Ruthless realism is, itself, pathological . The professional pilot denies a crash is inevitable until a second before impact, and that ability to believe one can save the ship is critical to the attitude of actually saving it."... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

May 2001 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Infosys Technologies

By: Ashish Nanda and Thomas J. DeLong

Creating and sustaining a third-world-based technology company to compete globally (i.e. in the first-world) poses many challenges. Such challenges are examined through the genesis and progression of Infosys Technologies Ltd. Key decisions made by Chairman N.R.... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business or Company Management; Management Practices and Processes; Business Strategy; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Planning; Technological Innovation; Emerging Markets; Information Technology Industry

02 Apr 2010
What Do You Think?

Why Are Fewer and Fewer U.S. Employees Satisfied With Their Jobs?

focus on employees and more on business and profitability." Phil Clark posited that knowledge work that deals with intangible results and hard-to-pinpoint accomplishments "just isn't as satisfying" as work used to be. John Alexander said, "When... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

December 1999 (Revised December 2012)
Background Note

Measuring Interim Period Performance

By: David F. Hawkins

Covers interim period accounting objectives, theories, and practices. Special financial analysis concerns related to this topic are discussed. A rewritten version of an earlier note. View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Business Ventures; Policy; Management Practices and Processes; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Evaluation

May 1996 (Revised October 2001)
Case

BAE Automated Systems (B): Implementing the Denver International Airport Baggage-Handling System

By: Lynda M. Applegate, H. James Nelson, Ramiro Montealegre and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Describes the negotiations between the City of Denver officials, airlines, consulting companies, and BAE for the construction of a backup baggage system to enable the Denver International Airport (DIA) to open. When DIA finally opens in February 1995, 16 months behind... View Details

Keywords: Performance Effectiveness; Management Practices and Processes; Projects; Negotiation; Outcome or Result; Problems and Challenges; Air Transportation Industry; Construction Industry; Colorado

23 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

Putting the Project Puzzle Together

critical. Q: Most large organizations manage their portfolios as a collection of projects, rather than as an integrated portfolio. Yet, as you write, the practice of using investment portfolio View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

The Landscape of Integrated Reporting: An E-Book

midst of emerging ideas and to provide support and momentum for ideas that are a little ahead of their time. By being at the leading edge of the movement, we can have real influence, bringing not just management thinking and theory but... View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria; Accounting

25 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Studying Japan from the Inside

Harvard Business School started its Japan Research Office in December 2001—smack in the middle of an incredibly turbulent time for the country's economy. The boom years of the 1970s and 1980s—when Japanese management View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

March 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Deworming Kenya: Translating Research into Action (A)

By: Nava Ashraf, Neil Buddy Shah and Rachel Gordon

Karen Levy and her colleague, Margaret Ndanyi, have spent the last six months planning and preparing for a national Kenyan program to target school children most at risk for parasitic worm infection. One week after its launch, the program seemed to be going well but... View Details

Keywords: Planning; Risk and Uncertainty; Mission and Purpose; Performance Efficiency; Programs; Problems and Challenges; Research; Policy; Health Care and Treatment; Management Practices and Processes; Kenya

11 Aug 2006 - 15 Aug 2006
Conference Presentation

A Match Made in Heaven? Joining Leadership Competencies to the Process of Organizational Change

By: Julie Battilana, M.J. Gilmartin, A.-C. Pache, M. Sengul and J. Alexander

Keywords: Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change; Management Practices and Processes

February 2003 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Accel Partners' European Launch

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Josh Lerner

In spring 2001, with the venture market crashing all around, the London office of Accel Partners, a major west coast venture capital firm, needs to make a decision about investing in an Irish software company. As the first investment of the new European operation, the... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Venture Capital; Global Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Expansion; Management Practices and Processes; Partners and Partnerships; Financial Services Industry; London; United States

August 2016 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Videojet (A)

By: Raffaella Sadun, Bharat Anand and Eric Van den Steen

In 2005 Craig Purse, the CEO of Videojet, a company recently acquired by the conglomerate Danaher, is dealing with the unexpected failure of a new high-tech printer just launched in the market. The new product exemplified the first real instance in which the Videojet... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Processes; Conglomerates; Relational Contracts; Corporate Strategy; Business Conglomerates; Diversification; Management Practices and Processes; Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; United States

Summer 2014
Article

Delegation in Multi‐Establishment Firms: Adaptation vs. Coordination in I.T. Purchasing Authority

By: Kristina Steffenson McElheran

This paper conducts one of the first large-scale, establishment-level empirical studies of delegation within firms. Recent contributions to a rapidly growing theory literature have focused on the tradeoff between adaptation and coordination in determining... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Adaptation