Publications

November 2012
Article

Does Management Really Work?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

HBR's 90th anniversary is a sensible time to revisit a basic question: Are organizations more likely to succeed if they adopt good management practices? The answer may seem obvious to most HBR readers, but these three economists cast their net much wider than that. In... View Details

Keywords: Best Practices; Consulting Firms; Corporations; Cost Control; Employee Training; Executive Ability (Management); Executives—training Of; Hospitals—administration; Industrial Management—research; Productivity Incentives; School Management Teams; Work Environment; Management; Research

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Article

Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand: Impediments to Economic Activity, Market Failures, and Profitability

By: Dennis Yao

In this paper it is argued that failures of the competitive market are necessary conditions for supranormal profitability. Three fundamental causes of these market failures-production economies and sunk costs, transactions costs, and imperfect information-are developed... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Markets; Failure; Profit; Cost; Information; Market Transactions; Competition; Strategy; Production

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Research Summary

Entrepreneurial Management

By: Howard H. Stevenson

Howard H. Stevenson is researching and writing on the need for and consequences of predictability. In work designed for a managerial audience, he is examining the roles played by organizations, cultures, and ethical systems in enabling individuals to predict the... View Details

August 2017 (Revised September 2022)
Case

Fuyao Glass America: Sourcing Decision

By: Willy Shih

In today's global economy, what are the factors that go into production location choice? This case is set in the world's second largest automotive glass producer as it expands from China into the United States. To meet a very aggressive cost target, management is faced... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chains; Globalization Of Supply Chain; Manufacturing Footprint; Manufacturing; Manufacturing Strategy; Global Strategy; Supply Chain; Globalization; Supply Chain Management; Production; Logistics; Strategy; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; China

Web

Dean Datar on the shootings in Atlanta and violence against Asian Americans | About

coronavirus as a China virus, make real the consequences of prejudice and fear-mongering. Let there be no doubt: Harvard Business School condemns racist actions and hateful... View Details

08 Jun 2018
News

My First Job: Selling Shoes, Surviving Black Monday, and Shaped by Chicken Lenses

last minute was the junior cost accounting trainee at an automotives machining plant, wherein I learned the wisdom of going on for further education, the discipline of making sure all the numbers actually add up across View Details

March 1978 (Revised October 1978)
Case

Rosemont Hill Health Center

An administrator of a neighborhood health center is considering changing his cost accounting system from a single cost per visit to a cost per visit for each department in the center. Used to illustrate several issues related to cost accounting in health care:... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

March 2018
Supplement

McKinsey & Company: Early Career Choices (B)

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Nathaniel Schwalb

The (B) case outlines the choices made by the associates in real life and the consequences of such choices. View Details

Keywords: Early Career Experiences; Career Progression; Experiences; Personal Development and Career; Decisions; Outcome or Result; Consulting Industry

January 1986 (Revised July 2006)
Case

Kristen's Cookie Company (A)

The student is starting his or her own business, baking make-to-order cookies. Basic times of each operation are laid out and the student is asked to determine the consequences for the operating system. Serves as an exercise and review of concepts such as capacity,... View Details

Keywords: Production; Business Startups; Food and Beverage Industry

June 15, 2021
Article

Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman

President Joe Biden’s promise to give every American access to affordable health insurance is well-intentioned, but his plan’s policy elements—a public option, a permanent expanded tax credit—require congressional approval and would expend significant political and... View Details

Keywords: Health Insurance; Health Insurance Marketplaces; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Financing; Health Care Industry; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Service Delivery; Cost Management; Health Industry; United States

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15 Dec 2015
News

The Year in Ideas 2015

entrepreneur; your Airbnb host is an entrepreneur; your Etsy craftsperson is an entrepreneur. Because of technology, individuals don’t need to work for a company, and the cost of entry is just plain easier.... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna, Christine Lejeune, Dan Morrell, and April White

Forthcoming
Article

Second Chance: Life with Less Student Debt

By: Marco Di Maggio, Ankit Kalda and Vincent Yao

This paper examines the effect of student debt relief on individual credit and labor market outcomes. We exploit an episode of plausibly random debt discharge due to the loss of paperwork for thousands of borrowers to examine the effects of private student debt relief... View Details

Keywords: Student Debt; Private Student Loans; Legal Settlement; Mobility; Debt Collection; Debt Relief; Personal Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Outcome or Result

SSRN

April 2004 (Revised July 2008)
Case

Showdown on the Waterfront: The West Coast Port Dispute (A)

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Dina R. Pradel

New technology underlies a protracted dispute between West Coast longshoremen and their employers. Severe economic consequences lead to government intervention in the dispute. View Details

Keywords: Economics; Negotiation Process; Business and Government Relations; Labor and Management Relations; Conflict and Resolution; Shipping Industry; Western United States

March 2004 (Revised April 2005)
Case

Midwest Office Products

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Presents an easy introduction to time-driven activity-based costing (ABC) that allows students to build a simple ABC model of order profitability. Midwest's time-driven ABC approach is based on two categories of parameter estimates. The first is the cost per hour of... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Price; Activity Based Costing and Management; Time Management; Financial Reporting; Profit; Performance Improvement; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Performance Evaluation

December 2021
Article

Employee Responses to Compensation Changes: Evidence from a Sales Firm

By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton

What are the long-term consequences of compensation changes? Using data from an inbound sales call center, we study employee responses to a compensation change that ultimately reduced take-home pay by 7% for the average affected worker. The change caused a significant... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Change; Performance; Resignation and Termination; Retention; Analysis