Publications

October 1993 (Revised July 1997)
Case

Measure of Delight: The Pursuit of Quality at AT&T Universal Card Services (A)

By: Roy D. Shapiro and Michael D. Watkins

AT&T's Universal Card Services (UCS) has been extremely successful during its short lifetime. Dedicated to improving service quality and customer satisfaction, chief quality officer Rob Davis and his quality team have designed and put into place an unusual measurement... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Policy; Compensation and Benefits; Performance Evaluation; Quality; System; Telecommunications Industry

Educators

28 Jun 2016
News

US consumers remain resilient, even as UK uncertainty swirls, retail execs say

15 May 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Money or Knowledge? What Drives Demand for Financial Services in Emerging Markets?

Keywords: by Shawn Cole, Thomas Sampson & Bilal Zia; Financial Services

May 2022
Case

What to Propose?

By: David G. Fubini

Two audit and financial services firms, one of which your consulting firm has supported extensively, have merged to create one of the largest audit firms in the world. The audit firm's Executive Team has requested proposals aimed at re-evaluating their internal... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Professional Services; Governance; Presentations; Organizational Structure; Transition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Consulting Industry

Educators

2021
Working Paper

Multiple Team Membership, Turnover, and On-Time Delivery: Evidence from Construction Services

By: Hise O. Gibson, Bradely R. Staats and Ananth Raman

Firms who want to compete in dynamic markets are finding that they must build more agile operations to ensure success. One way for a firm to increase organizational agility is to allocate employees to multiple project teams, simultaneously—a practice known as multiple... View Details

Keywords: Multiple Team Membership; Turnover; Fluid Teams; Project Management; Groups and Teams; Projects; Management; Performance

18 Jan 2021
Book

How Thinking Like a Startup Helps Governments Solve More Problems

discussed other key points from the book: Martha Lagace: What do you mean by “possibility government”? Mitchell Weiss: Possibility government is the pursuit of novel programs and services by public officials... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2004
Chapter

The Globalization of Stock Markets and Convergence in Corporate Governance

By: Gerald F. Davis and Christopher Marquis

Keywords: Globalized Markets and Industries; Financial Markets; Corporate Governance; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

10 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Amazon Web Services Changed the Way VCs Fund Startups

cloud-based software and service companies, which could take advantage of AWS to decrease costs, versus others like biotechs that were less impacted by the new technologies. “The goal was to try and understand whether VCs were allocating... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services; Financial Services; Financial Services

23 Oct 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Opportunistic Returns and Dynamic Pricing: Empirical Evidence from Online Retailing in Emerging Markets

Keywords: by Chaithanya Bandi, Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe, and Zhiji Xu; Service

04 Dec 2023
Blog Post

My Summer of Joy with the National Parks Service

Hi all, my name is Rhea! I was lucky enough to work for the National Park Service this summer as a business management intern with the Submerged Resources Center (SRC). The SRC is the NPS national dive program, responsible for... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

April 2015
Case

Dutch Bros. Coffee: A Compelling Future

By: Joshua Margolis and Christine Snively

Travis Boersma, co-founder and President of the Dutch Bros. coffee chain, faces three operational decisions that will shape the company's growth trajectory and distinctive culture. First, should they offer a specialty coffee at a subset of their stores in one region... View Details

Keywords: Culture And Community; Service Management; Retail; Food; Managing Growth; Family Business; Small Business; Leadership; Culture; Food and Beverage Industry; Oregon

Educators

July 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Supplement

Airbnb Emerges from the Pandemic: Lessons for Stakeholder Governance (B)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Allison M. Ciechanover

As the COVID pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the sudden... View Details

Keywords: Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Leadership; Two-Sided Platforms; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Value Creation; Decision Making; Goals and Objectives; Service Industry; Service Industry; Service Industry; United States

Web

Managing and Innovating in Financial Services - Course Catalog

HBS Course Catalog Managing and Innovating in Financial Services Course Number 1509 Professor David Scharfstein Spring; Q3Q4; 3.0 credits 27 Sessions Exam Course Content Financial services firms play a... View Details

Web

Business, Government & the International Economy Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

Business, Government & the International Economy Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students 2025 Rawi E. Abdelal : Received the 2025 HBS Student Association Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching.... View Details

Web

The New Role for Government & NGOs - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

For example, the Kenyan government modified banking regulations, which supported the launch and expansion of a revolutionary mobile phone-based money transfer and loan service for low income people. While... View Details

December 2022
Article

The Contribution of Price Growth to Pharmaceutical Revenue Growth in the United States: Evidence from Medicines Sold in Retail Pharmacies

By: Pragya Kakani, Michael Chernew and Amitabh Chandra

Context: To what extent does pharmaceutical revenue growth depend on new medicines versus increasing prices for existing medicines? Moreover, does using list prices, as is commonly done, instead of prices net of confidential rebates offered by manufacturers, which are... View Details

Keywords: Revenue; Price; Policy; Business Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry

Find at Harvard

2019
Working Paper

The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance

By: Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Compatibility; Satisfaction; Profitability; Customer Relationship Management; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Retail Industry; Retail Industry

SSRN

2014
Case

Microfinance Services in Rural Areas--Farmers' Self-reliance Branch of CFPA Microfinance in Shangyi County

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Siqun Yang and Meihua Shen

Microfinance is introduced into China in the 1990s. It had gone through 3 phases since the beginning, namely the pilot phase when all Microfinance practices are sponsored by charity funds based on projects, the promotion phase when the government subsidized some... View Details

Keywords: Rural Entrepreneurship; Value Added; China; Risk Management; Microfinance; China

2015
Working Paper

Do-gooders and Go-getters: Career Incentives, Selection, and Performance in Public Service Delivery

By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and Scott S. Lee

We study how career incentives affect who selects into public health jobs and, through selection, their performance while in service. We collaborate with the Government of Zambia to experimentally vary the salience of career incentives in a newly created health worker... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Health Industry; Zambia