Publications

15 Jan 2013
News

Dell: From PC King to Buyout Fodder

October 1996 (Revised January 1997)
Case

AT&T Resource Link: Revisioning the Managerial Workforce

Resource Link is an in-house temporary firm, supplying managers and technical workers to the 26 business units of AT&T on a contract basis. The challenge facing Resource Link is how to grow, since an increasing number of managers are eager to use variable workers to... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Organizational Design; Personal Development and Career; Employment Industry; Telecommunications Industry

June 2025
Article

Who Benefits from Online Gig Economy Platforms?

By: Christopher T. Stanton and Catherine Thomas

Online labor platforms for short-term, remote work have many more job seekers than available jobs. Despite their relative abundance, workers capture a substantial share of the surplus from transactions. We draw this conclusion from demand estimates that imply workers'... View Details

Keywords: Gig Economy; Knowledge Workers; Online Platforms; Job Search; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Wages; Demand and Consumers

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Article

The Effects of Product Line Breadth: Evidence from the Automotive Industry

By: Antonio Moreno and Christian Terwiesch

Using a detailed data set from the U.S. automotive industry, we enrich the existing literature on product line breadth with new results that highlight previously unexplored operational aspects of its benefits and costs. We find that expanding product line breadth has a... View Details

Keywords: Variety; Pricing; Automotive Industry; Marketing/operations Interface; Platforms; Empirical Operations Management; Product Marketing; Production; Management; Auto Industry

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February 2018
Article

Auctions versus Posted Prices in Online Markets

By: Liran Einav, Chiara Farronato, Jonathan Levin and Neel Sundaresan

Auctions were very popular in the early days of internet commerce, but today online sellers mostly use posted prices. We model the choice between auctions and posted prices as a trade-off between competitive price discovery and convenience. Evidence from eBay fits the... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Auctions; Price

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May 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Airbnb During the Pandemic: Stakeholder Capitalism Faces a Critical Test

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Allison 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: COVID-19 Pandemic; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Leadership; Digital Platforms; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Value Creation; Decision Making; Goals and Objectives; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Travel Industry; Tourism Industry; Service Industry; United States

15 Jun 2016
News

Why Sourcing Local Food Is So Hard for Restaurants

December 2018 (Revised June 2021)
Supplement

Bulb 2017: Launch

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

On August 21, 2015, Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood, co-founders of Bulb Ltd. (Bulb) launched a new business to supply energy to the United Kingdom’s 27 million residential homes with a promise of 100% renewable electricity at affordable prices. By the end of March 2017,... View Details

December 2008
Case

JBS Swift & Co.

By: David E. Bell and Cathy Ross

Brazilian meat packer JBS surprised many in the U.S. beef industry when it acquired Swift & Co.—a company more than five times its size—in 2007, then moved to acquire the U.S.'s fourth and fifth largest beef producers in 2008. The new JBS Swift slashed costs and... View Details

Keywords: Animal-Based Agribusiness; Mergers and Acquisitions; Restructuring; Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Global Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States; Brazil

12 PM – 1 PM EST, 09 Feb 2017
Webinars: Career

Leading Diversity: What Top Managers Need to Know

Workforce diversity is a reality. If you are not addressing the challenges of a diverse workforce today, then demographic change, globalization, the purchasing power and demands of diversity markets, as well as the advantages of a diverse workforce mean that you will... View Details

February 2019 (Revised January 2022)
Case

The U.S. – China Trade War

By: Alberto Cavallo, Mariana Cal and Anne Laski

On December 1, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s Leader Xi Jinping faced each other across a dinner table during a G20 meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After what Trump called an “amazing and productive meeting,” the two leaders announced a truce in the... View Details

Keywords: Trade War; Trump; Current Account; NAFTA; Balance Of Payments; Intellectual Property Protection; Trade; Macroeconomics; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; International Relations; United States; China

Jon M. Jachimowicz is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches the Leadership and Organizational Behavior course (LEAD) in the Required Curriculum. He studies... View Details

Teaching Interest

Managing Turbulence

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Even before the global pandemic, businesses and their leaders struggled with the extraordinary challenges of technological change, rapidly evolving consumer tastes, and a reconfiguration of the global economic order. COVID-19 added further turbulence, disrupting... View Details

A Radical Treatment for Insulin Pricing

In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first interchangeable biosimilar for long-acting insulin, which many hoped would be substantially cheaper than the reference branded product. I explain why prices have barely changed, and argue that a... View Details

08 Dec 2016
HBS Seminar

Joel Waldfogel, University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management

June 1990 (Revised January 1994)
Case

Desktop Printer Industry in 1990

The desktop printer industry in 1990 is characterized by significant uncertainty about new technologies and about the types of features customers may demand in the next decade. The case looks at the positions of Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Kodak, Xerox, and IBM enabling... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Change Management; Competition; Hardware; Computer Industry

2010
Book

Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads

By: Srikant M. Datar, David A. Garvin and Patrick Cullen

"Business Schools Face Test of Faith." "Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?" As these headlines make clear, business education is at a major crossroads. For decades, MBA graduates from top-tier schools set the standard for cutting-edge business knowledge and skills. Now... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Business Education; Curriculum and Courses; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Problems and Challenges

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August 1999 (Revised May 2000)
Case

E Ink

By: Teresa M. Amabile and Susan Archambault

E Ink is a high-technology start-up attempting to revolutionize print communication through electronic ink displays. The founders and top managers of this two-year-old firm are striving to translate a technological breakthrough into a working prototype, move from... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; Organizational Structure; Commercialization; Technology; Information Technology Industry