Publications

October 1989 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Texas Eastman Co.

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The company as part of a commitment to Total Quality Management has installed a computer system that accumulates 30,000 observations on its processes every 2-4 hours. Operating people have found the monthly summaries of financial performance not too useful in this... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Information Technology; Reports; Business or Company Management

March 2001 (Revised April 2002)
Background Note

Word-of-Mouth Referral Module Note

Describes the power of word-of-mouth referral for service organizations. Illustrates a process to help students and/or managers calculate the value of word-of-mouth and develop ways to influence (i.e. increase) it. View Details

Keywords: Marketing Reference Programs; Service Industry

June 2010 (Revised November 2011)
Case

Zensar: The Future of Vision Communities (A)

By: David A. Garvin and Rachna Tahilyani

Zensar is a rapidly growing, mid-sized Indian IT services company with a collaborative management philosophy and innovative HR policies. One of its practices, Vision Communities, is an inclusive forum for innovation and strategy formulation. As the company grows,... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Leadership Style; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Cooperation; Information Technology Industry; India

2019
Chapter

Resource Allocation Theory

By: Joseph L. Bower

This article considers the process of resource allocation, whereby an organization determines how best to apportion its factors of production between the various productive activities in which it wishes to engage. It is suggested that none of the academic approaches to... View Details

Keywords: Resource Allocation

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15 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Rethinking E-Leadership

conjuring up. 3. Emphasize coaching and mentoring over managing the details. Talent is the most important strategic resource for future success, suggests Hargrove. You can't win the talent wars without... View Details

Keywords: by Melissa Raffoni

March – April 2008
Article

Identity Incentives as an Engaging Form of Control: Revisiting Leniencies in an Aeronautic Plant

By: Michel Anteby

Research has long shown that organizations shape members' identities. However, the possibility that these identities might also be desired and that members might benefit from this process has only recently been explored. In a qualitative study of a French aeronautic... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Culture; Identity; Motivation and Incentives; Aerospace Industry; France

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Read Now

Professor Toffel is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management. His research examines how companies are addressing climate change (especially decarbonization) and other environmental and working condition issues in their operations and supply... View Details

June 2000 (Revised October 2017)
Case

IDEO

By: Stefan Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes IDEO, the world's leading product design firm, and its innovation culture and process. Emphasis is placed on the important role of prototyping and experimentation in general, and in the design of the very successful Palm V handheld computer in particular. A... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Innovation Strategy; Business or Company Management; Time Management; Product Design; Product Development; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Practice; Problems and Challenges; Creativity; Hardware

08 Jun 2018
News

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

with one of my coworkers, a manager from a different department. He and I had had a wonderful relationship as I was growing up in the business, but now that I had come back and... View Details

November 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Warner Bros. Entertainment

By: Gary P. Pisano and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Examines the process used by a major motion picture studio to develop and select movie projects. Warner Bros.' strategy is to focus its efforts on a small number of major "event" films (i.e., films with the potential to generate gross box office receipts of $300... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Film Entertainment; Risk Management; Product Development; Strategic Planning; Projects; Sales; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

03 Jan 2023
Book

Confront Workplace Inequity in 2023: Dig Deep, Build Bridges, Take Collective Action

data-id=_/STdeHQndptXujGr22R1f][/div] An associate professor of management at Babson College and founder of the Opie Consulting Group, Opie is Black and Christian. She... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

2022
Book

Private Equity

By: Paul A. Gompers and Steven N. Kaplan

This Advanced Introduction provides an illustrative guide to private equity, integrating insights from academic research with examples to derive practical recommendations. Paul Gompers and Steven Kaplan begin by reviewing the history of private equity then exploring... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment Funds; Value Creation

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August 2019
Case

Bark Gift Shop Ltd.

By: Susanna Gallani, Jan Bouwens and Peter Kroos

This case describes a setting in which the CFO of Bark Gift Shop Ltd., a gift items retailer, discovers an undesired pattern in the performance data suggesting that her shop managers that perform well during the first part of the year, purposely reduce their effort in... View Details

Keywords: Data Analytics; Employees; Behavior; Performance; Management; Goals and Objectives; Motivation and Incentives; Analysis

February 2001 (Revised June 2002)
Case

Customer Value Measurement at Nortel Networks--Optical Networks Division

By: Das Narayandas

Since 1995, Nortel Networks' Optical Networks (ON) division has been incorporating customer satisfaction and loyalty measures into its business practices to increase customer value. Over the years, key process owners in various parts of the organization have become... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Management Teams; Marketing Strategy; Value Creation; Telecommunications Industry

October 2020 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Divesting Harvard's Endowment

By: Daniel Green, Luis M. Viceira and Holly Fetter

By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated—$21 trillion of... View Details

Keywords: Divestment; Harvard University; ESG; Higher Education; Investment Portfolio; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

January 2024
Supplement

Buurtzorg

By: Ethan Bernstein and Tatiana Sandino

As co-founders of home nursing company Buurtzorg, Jos de Blok and Gonnie Kronenberg prized both self-management and organizational learning. Buurtzorg’s 10,000 nurses across 950 neighborhood nursing teams in the Netherlands were empowered to manage themselves, both in... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Management Style; Business Model; Knowledge Dissemination; Learning; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; Netherlands