Publications

November 1989 (Revised January 1990)
Case

Paul Revere Insurance Co. (C): Competing For the Baldrige Award--The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Exercise

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award requires firms to submit applications that conform to a rigorous quality-assessment system. This case consists of several parts of a service company's 1988 Baldrige application together with material from the Malcolm Baldrige... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Performance Improvement; Performance Evaluation

10 Dec 2009
Working Paper Summaries

State Owned Entity Reform in Absence of Privatization: Reforming Indian National Laboratories and Role of Leadership

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury & Tarun Khanna

February 3, 2020
Article

Should Your Family Business Have a "No In-Laws" Policy?

By: Christina R. Wing and Rohit K. Gera

Should in-laws, even if they’re highly qualified, work in the family business? While there’s no “one-size-fits-all” guideline, if you are considering involving in-laws in the family business, it’s important to think through some general policies in advance. Document a... View Details

Keywords: Family and Family Relationships; Family Business; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure

October 1991 (Revised October 2004)
Case

Hilton Manufacturing Company

By: William J. Bruns Jr.

A professional manager is hired by a small manufacturing company after the president discovers he made poor decisions. One product appears to be unprofitable, whereas the product sold in highest volume is under competitive price pressure. A crude cost accounting system... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Asset Pricing; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Decisions; Governance Controls; Performance Effectiveness; Business Strategy; Two-Sided Platforms; Fair Value Accounting; Manufacturing Industry

October 1998 (Revised December 1999)
Case

Gene Research, the Mapping of Life and the Global Economy

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Juan Enriquez-Cabot

A new firm is being created to speed up the process of mapping humans, animals, and plants by combining gene technology with rapid gene identification to improve the health and well being of the human population and the productivity of crops and animals. How does one... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Technological Innovation; Business Processes; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Productivity; Welfare; Agribusiness; Genetics; Science-Based Business; Biotechnology Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

2010
Working Paper

Multinational Strategies and Developing Countries in Historical Perspective

By: Geoffrey Jones

This working paper offers a longitudinal and descriptive analysis of the strategies of multinationals from developed countries in developing countries. The central argument is that strategies were shaped by the trade-off between opportunity and risk. Three broad... View Details

Keywords: History; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Business and Government Relations

Read Now

24 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

How Cost Accounting is Improving Healthcare in Rural Haiti

activity-based costing (TDABC), which combines two basic measures: the cost of each resource used to perform an activity, and the time it takes to perform it. The case illustrates how TDABC makes it possible... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

11 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

Is Amazon a Retailer, a Tech Firm, or a Media Company? How AI Can Help Investors Decide

and retail online. So I think that's where a lot of portfolio managers started seeing misalignment in performance among stocks supposedly belonging to the same GICS sector resulting in big losses on their... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consumer Products; Real Estate; Financial Services; Retail

15 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 15

case:http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/310071-PDF-ENG George Martin at The Boston Consulting Group (A) Leslie A. Perlow and Kerry HermanHarvard Business School Case 410-112 George Martin, managing partner at The Boston Consulting... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

21 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Faculty Research Looks to Latin America

With its abundance of complex management issues in a rapidly changing environment, Latin America offers a rich landscape for in-depth academic investigation. Some of the research work currently underway by HBS faculty is already earmarked... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

26 Apr 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Assessing the Quality of Quality Assessment: The Role of Scheduling

Keywords: by Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel; Service; Food & Beverage

12 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

One Report: Integrated Reporting for a Sustainable Strategy

What a company externally reports shapes how it behaves internally. The key question is, "What should companies report?" A new reporting practice--"integrated reporting," which integrates measures of financial and non-financial View Details

Keywords: by Robert Eccles; Accounting

April 2008
Module Note

Improvement with Customer-Operators

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Taught as the third module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations: Understanding the Customer Operating Role (606-092). Explores how firms can systematically leverage their customer-operators in the organizational improvement process is... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Performance Improvement; Customer Focus and Relationships; Framework; Employees; Business Model; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Design

January 22, 2020
Article

Making Honest Conversations the Norm

By: Michael Beer

Much admired companies like Boeing and Wells Fargo sacrifice their competitive advantage. Some make huge ethical blunders. As a result, shareholders suffer huge losses in value while employees, customers, and society lose trust and confidence in the institution. Based... View Details

Keywords: Honesty; Interpersonal Communication; Framework; Organizational Culture; Trust; Performance Effectiveness

Read Now

October 2010
Article

Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams

By: Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman and Charles A. O'Reilly III

This article empirically explores the relations between alternative organizational designs and a firm's ability to explore as well as exploit. We operationalize exploitation and exploration in terms of innovation streams—incremental innovation in existing products as... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Innovation and Invention; Management Teams; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement

Find at Harvard

05 Sep 2006
First Look

First Look: September 5, 2006

helping intentions; in other words, those participants who did not dehumanize outgroup victims were the individuals most likely to report volunteering for hurricane relief efforts. Internet Companies' Growth Strategies: Determinants of Investment Intensity and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Sep 2019
Book

6 Steps to Building a Better Workplace for Black Employees

American customers, company officials tapped black employees for their insight, which helped signal that race is important, the authors say. 6. Be mindful of the “mini me” phenomenon Managers should also check themselves when they... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Article

Administrative Costs Associated with Physician Billing and Insurance-Related Activities at an Academic Health Care System

By: Phillip Tseng, Robert S. Kaplan, Barak D. Richman, Mahek A. Shah and Kevin A. Schulman

The federal government mandated adoption of certified electronic health record systems (EHR), at least in part, to reduce administrative costs for physicians. This study used time-driven activity-based costing to determine the administrative costs associated with... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Insurance; Problems and Challenges

Find at Harvard

March 2004
Case

L.L. Bean: A Search for Growth

By: Rajiv Lal, Walter J. Salmon and James Weber

In mid-2003, CEO Chris McCormick felt L.L. Bean was in a good position to begin to grow again. For nearly 90 years, the company sold clothing and gear for outdoor enthusiasts through its catalogs and a single retail store in Freeport, Maine. In the three decades prior... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Restructuring; Growth and Development Strategy; Cost Management; Sales; Performance Improvement; Diversification; Distribution Channels; Resignation and Termination; Retail Industry; Web Services Industry