Publications

March 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

China: To Float or Not To Float? (E)- ABB Investment in China

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

In July 2005, China revalued its currency by 2.1% and adjusted its exchange rate regime toward a more market-based system. ABB, a global power and automation technologies company based out of Switzerland with operations in China, was among those companies confronted... View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; International Relations; Problems and Challenges; Value Creation; China; Switzerland

September 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Forecasting Climate Risks: Aviva’s Climate Calculus

By: Mark Egan and Peter Tufano

In late 2021, Ben Carr, Director of Analytics and Capital Modeling at Aviva Plc (Aviva)—a leading insurer with core operations in the UK, Ireland and Canada,—was preparing for an upcoming presentation before the company's board which included its CEO, Amanda Blanc,... View Details

Keywords: Climate Risk; Climate Finance; Forecasting; Insurance; Risk Measurement; Climate Change; Risk Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Insurance Industry; United States

Profile

Rocio Parra

term, I'm looking forward to working in an operational role where I get to share in the management of a brand and strategy execution. I look forward to both the analytical and creative aspects of my job as... View Details

Keywords: Retail

05 Dec 2022
News

5 Companies Where Employees Move Up the Ladder Fast

11 Apr 2024
News

Why Progress on Immigration Might Soften Labor Pains

2015
Working Paper

Build It, Buy It or Both? Rethinking the Sourcing of Advertising Services

By: Alvin J. Silk and Marta M. Stiglin

This paper provides an update on the current state of in-house agencies. Whereas traditional consideration of internalizing advertising services was framed as a binary choice of build or buy, today's advertisers frequently pursue hybrid policies of build and buy to... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Advertising

SSRN

Read Now

February 2000 (Revised February 2002)
Case

Owens & Minor, Inc. (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

A forward-thinking manager at Owens & Minor (O&M), a large national medical and surgical distribution company, enlisted the help of both logistics and cost managers to develop an innovative pricing schedule based on the customer's activities instead of the price of the... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Logistics; Distribution; Price; Supply Chain Management; Customer Relationship Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Distribution Industry

June 1994
Background Note

Scope and Challenge of Business-to-Business Marketing

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Identifies six key linkages that distinguish business-to-business marketing; three with respect to the external environment (i.e., derived demand, complex buying process, and concentrated customer base) and three with respect to the internal organization (emphasis on... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Customers; Demand and Consumers; Organizational Structure; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Technology

June 1989 (Revised July 1994)
Case

Ito Yokado

By: Walter J. Salmon

Describes the means by which management has empowered the sales clerks and part time employees of this chain of 131 department stores. They are responsible for all sales and inventory management. This empowerment has led to fewer stockouts, higher sales, lower... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Management; Distribution; Supply Chain Management; Sales; Japan

14 Jun 2023
Op-Ed

Every Company Should Have These Leaders—or Develop Them if They Don't

We’ve long known that organizations require so-called flexible leaders to respond to rapid market fluctuations; the last couple of years have only emphasized that necessity. The environment we operate in—shaped by the pandemic, social... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson

July 2020
Case

King's College Hospital in Crisis

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

On December 11, 2017, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (King’s), one of London’s leading teaching hospital groups, was put into “special measures” by NHS Improvement (NHSI), the financial regulator of England’s National Health Service (NHS). The future of... View Details

Keywords: Hospitals; Financing; Health Care and Treatment; Financial Condition; Crisis Management; Organizational Structure; Transformation; Strategic Planning; United Kingdom

September 2011 (Revised February 2013)
Case

Trucost: Valuing Corporate Environmental Impacts

By: Michael W. Toffel and Stephanie van Sice

Trucost provided corporate environmental performance data and analysis to institutional investors and corporate managers, but after operating for a decade had yet to achieve profitability. Trucost was struggling to effectively differentiate its high quality products... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Distribution Channels; Investment; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Information; Value; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Services Industry

September 2018 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Zebra Medical Vision

By: Shane Greenstein and Sarah Gulick

An Israeli startup founded in 2014, Zebra Medical Vision developed algorithms that produced diagnoses from X-rays, mammograms, and CT-scans. The algorithms used deep learning and digitized radiology scans to create software that could assist doctors in making... View Details

Career Coach

Kristen Fitzpatrick

Kristen (HBS '03) is Managing Director, HBS Career and Professional Development. In this role, she coaches alumni and MBA students. Through her interactions with recruiters over the past decade, Kristen is familiar with many industries... View Details

Keywords: Education; Manufacturing; Consumer Products; Social Enterprise

Michael Lingzhi Li

Keywords: health care; insurance industry

31 Jul 2012
First Look

First Look: July 31

improvement in operating performance aggravates the impact of internal disruptions but not external disruptions. By taking advantage of an exogenous policy shock regarding corporate disclosure rules, we also find that View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

09 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 9, 2019

demonstrates the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of an intervention even without perfectly predicting a firm’s response still has enormous value for setting policy. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55959 2019 The Oxford Handbook of... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2016
Working Paper

CEO Personality and Firm Policies

By: Ian D. Gow, Steven N. Kaplan, David F. Larcker and Anastasia A. Zakolyukina

Based on two samples of high quality personality data for chief executive officers (CEOs), we use linguistic features extracted from conferences calls and statistical learning techniques to develop a measure of CEO personality in terms of the Big Five traits:... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Personal Characteristics; Management Teams