Publications

January 2015 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the Tiger Reserve

By: Ryan W. Buell, Ananth Raman and Vidhya Muthuram

Celebrated as one of the world's premiere luxury hotel brands, Oberoi Hotels attracts and serves some of the most quality-sensitive guests in the world. The case considers the challenge of how an organization, with a standardized service model, can repeatedly delight... View Details

Keywords: Service Quality; Service Management; Service Quality Competition; Customer Management; Customer Service Excellence; Employee Empowerment; Employee Engagement; Employee Training; India; Hospitality; Hotel Industry; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Quality; Accommodations Industry; India

17 Sep 2021
Blog Post

Video Blog: My Experience as a Veteran in the HBS/HKS Joint Degree

ultimately, that brought me to Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School. After first arriving at Harvard, I was initially worried that I wasn't going to be able to be a value add in the classroom or on the ecosystem View Details

2023
Working Paper

The Impact of Unionization on Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality: Evidence from Starbucks

By: Isamar Troncoso, Minkyung Kim, Ishita Chakraborty and SooHyun Kim

The US has seen a rise in union movements, but their effects on service industry marketing outcomes like customer satisfaction and perceptions of service quality remain understudied. In this paper, we empirically study the impact on customer satisfaction and... View Details

Keywords: Labor Unions; Customer Satisfaction; Perception; Public Opinion; Employees; Food and Beverage Industry

SSRN

July 2013 (Revised June 2014)
Case

Collaborating for Growth: Duane Morris in a Turbulent Legal Sector

By: Heidi K. Gardner and Annelena Lobb

By the late 2000s, the law firm Duane Morris had transformed itself from a growing U.S. law firm to a significant global player. The firm's uniquely collaborative organizational culture, which featured a transparent, data-driven compensation system, practice-group... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firm; Collaboration; Performance Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Organizational Culture; Performance; Cooperation; Globalized Firms and Management; Compensation and Benefits; Volatility; Growth and Development Strategy; Legal Services Industry; United States

Web

IDEO: Human-Centered Service Design | Information Technology

Featured Case IDEO: Human-Centered Service Design The multimedia case takes viewers behind the scenes of a human-centered design company, IDEO, as they embrace the shifting... View Details

01 Jun 2004
News

Alumni Clubs Click with New Web Services

simplicity and low cost of a tool like this.” The benefits of the new service outweigh the annual $750 fee, says Rogelio Fussa, assistant director and club liaison for Alumni Programs at HBS. View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley; alumni groups; website; Educational Services; Educational Services

March 2019
Technical Note

Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both—Lessons from Retail & Service Chains (Abridged)

By: Tatiana Sandino

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Standards; Employees; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Service Industry; Service Industry

June 2019
Case

Fangda Partners: A Step Ahead

By: Ashish Nanda and Lisa Rohrer

Elite Chinese law firm Fangda Partners has steered Alibaba and other Chinese and international clients through the complex legal, corporate, and regulatory challenges associated with executing international transactions. “Fangda has traveled a long distance in a short... View Details

Keywords: Law Firm; Law Firms; Growth; Legal Industry; Regulation; Professional Services; Law; Leadership; Growth and Development; Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Legal Services Industry; China

July 3, 2020
Article

Delivery Apps Need to Start Treating Suppliers As Partners

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Ian Macomber

Home delivery has shifted from a luxury service aimed at young urban professionals to a core part of many businesses, which is used by almost everyone. That upheaval has strained capacity of many delivery services and changed how they relate to the suppliers that they... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Entrepreneurship

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Web

Usage and Policies - Research Computing Services

and Acceptable Use The HBS research computing environment, composed of a number of servers and services, is a large, shared resource that is often at significant capacity and stores confidential and... View Details

22 Aug 2007
Research & Ideas

The Hedge Fund as Activist

institutional investors as a whole have been effective activists, from the perspective of being able to institute changes that increase shareholder value. Often the reason can be traced to conflicts of... View Details

Keywords: by Robin Greenwood; Financial Services

May 2013
Supplement

Transport Corporation of India (C): Dealing with Shortcomings in Service Quality

By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi

Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details

Keywords: Transportation; Transportation Industry; India