Publications

March 2016
Supplement

Compass Group: The Ascension Health Decision

By: Ryan W. Buell

In 2012, Compass Group (Compass) was on the verge of closing a $2 billion deal with Ascension Health (Ascension), one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States. Under the deal, Compass would provide foodservice management and cleaning services for 86 of... View Details

Keywords: Operations Strategy; Sectorization; Operational Focus; Customer Compatibility; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Service Industry; Health Industry; United States

October 2019
Article

Making Sense of Recommendations

By: Michael Yeomans, Anuj Shah, Sendhil Mullainathan and Jon Kleinberg

Computer algorithms are increasingly being used to predict people's preferences and make recommendations. Although people frequently encounter these algorithms because they are cheap to scale, we do not know how they compare to human judgment. Here, we compare computer... View Details

Keywords: Recommender Systems; Artificial Intelligence; Interpretability; Information Technology; Forecasting and Prediction; Decision Making; Attitudes

June 1997 (Revised February 2000)
Case

Walker and Company: Profit Plan Decisions

By: Robert L. Simons and Ramsey Walker

Ramsey Walker, a second-year MBA student, must decide how to control a family business as an absentee owner. After providing background details on the publishing industry, the case requires the reader to: 1) make a product segmentation decision; 2) prepare a profit... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Family and Family Relationships; Market Design; Management Systems; Planning; Profit; Performance Evaluation; Segmentation; Corporate Strategy; Investment Return; Publishing Industry

17 Dec 2020
Working Paper Summaries

How Do CEOs Make Strategy?

Keywords: by Mu-Jeung Yang, Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and Jan Rivkin

February 2006
Teaching Note

Alternative Choice Decision Analysis (TN)

By: David F. Hawkins, V.G. Narayanan, Michele Jurgens and Jacob Cohen

Keywords: Decision Making

March 2025
Supplement

Nashton Partners and Its Search Fund Process (B)

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Pre-abstract: Instructors should consider the timing of making videos available to students, as they may reveal key case details. View Details

October 1980 (Revised April 1981)
Background Note

Structure of the U.S. Government Decision-Making Process

By: J. Ronald Fox

Keywords: Decision Making; Government and Politics; United States

2002
Chapter

Research on Interactions among Management Decisions

By: Jan W. Rivkin

Keywords: Decisions; Management Systems; Research

August 2018 (Revised September 2018)
Case

National Storage Affiliates: The REIT IPO Decision

By: Charles F. Wu, Max de la Bruyére and Gregory D. Himmel

In 2015, two years after founding National Storage Affiliates (NSA), Arlen Nordhagen and Tamara Fischer had an important decision to make. Should they proceed with NSA’s IPO? Although they had targeted to receive $15–17 a share, it was now apparent that the figure was... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Problems and Challenges; Decision Making; Real Estate Industry

January 1991 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Decision Analysis and the Risk Profile

By: Paul A. Vatter

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making

April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Backchannelmedia: Making Television 'Clickable'

By: Sunil Gupta, Kavita Shukla and Zachary Scott Clayton

Backchannelmedia (BCM), a three-year-old start-up, intended to completely disrupt the world of advertising by transforming the way Americans watched television. BCM had developed a technology to make television "clickable," enabling viewers to interact with the content... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investment; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Marketing Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Competition

04 Feb 2010
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Way to Make Careful Decisions?

instead concentrate on ways to make our own decision-making processes more transparent to others and to ourselves. Edward Hare put it this way: "Openness and honesty are the sunlight that's needed to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

March 2016 (Revised February 2020)
Teaching Note

Compass Group: The Ascension Health Decision

By: Ryan W. Buell

In 2012, Compass Group (Compass) was on the verge of closing a $2 billion deal with Ascension Health (Ascension), one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States. Under the deal, Compass would provide foodservice management and cleaning services for 86 of... View Details

Keywords: Operations Strategy; Sectorization; Operational Focus; Customer Compatibility; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Service Industry; Health Industry; United States

August 1994
Case

Saturn Corp.'s Module II Decision

In the Spring of 1994, Saturn Corp. was setting sales records by attracting more than 25,000 buyers per month. Saturn officials believed there was a long-term opportunity to sell 400,000 to 500,000 cars per year in the United States and selected international markets.... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Production; Expansion; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Retail Industry; Tennessee; United States

03 Nov 2016
Cold Call Podcast

You're Fired: Managing Gray-Area Decisions

Keywords: Re: Joseph L. Badaracco

Article

Decisions about Medication Use and Cancer Screening across Age Groups in the United States

By: Kathleen M. Fairfield, Bethany S. Gerstein, Carrie A. Levin, Vickie Stringfellow, Heidi Wierman and Mary McNaughton-Collins

Objective
To describe decision process and quality for common cancer screening and medication decisions by age group.

Methods
We included 2941 respondents to a national Internet survey who made at least one decision about colorectal, breast,... View Details

Keywords: Screening; Decision Making; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials

2025
Working Paper

Choosing and Using Information in Evaluation Decisions

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman, Scott Kostyshak and Perihan O. Saygin

We use a controlled experiment to study how information acquisition impacts candidate evaluations. We provide evaluators with group-level information on performance and the opportunity to acquire additional, individual-level performance information before making a... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Beliefs; Stereotypes; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Selection and Staffing; Performance Evaluation

Read Now

August 2000
Case

Microsoft's Vega Project: Matt MacLellan's Decision

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Meg Glinska

Supplements the case. Designed as an in-class handout. View Details

Keywords: Decisions