Publications

19 Jan 2010
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing the Economic Crisis

across the board, but rather weed out less effective initiatives and consolidate good ones. Effective programs that serve the community in a compelling way, and that also demonstrate a strong potential to influence the business, must be... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

30 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Tuning Jobs to Fit Your Company

hours of operation, merchandising displays, and pricing. By contrast, the span of control for managers at corporate headquarters who oversee merchandising and other core operations is set at "wide." They are responsible for implementing best practices and... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

20 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 20, 2007

Consolidation and the Institutional Contingency of Professional Counter-Mobilization in US Banking Authors:Christopher Marquis and Michael Lounsbury Periodical:Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming) Abstract In this paper, we... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 1996 (Revised July 1996)
Case

Service Corporation International

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Craig F Schreiber

The CFO of a high-growth company in the low-growth and fragmented funeral services industry must decide how to optimize capital structure and earnings growth while maximizing the company's market value. View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Value Creation; Business Growth and Maturation; Consolidation; Industry Growth; Capital Structure; Expansion; Service Industry; United States; North and Central America

February 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Pharmaceutical Industry, The: Challenges in the New Century

By: Stephen P. Bradley and James Weber

Provides a broad overview of the numerous internal and external forces that were driving change in the global pharmaceutical industry in 2003. These forces--including downward price pressures, political and social pressures, increased development costs, new... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Change; Cost; Price; Globalization; Government and Politics; Brands and Branding; Industry Growth; Society; Competition; Consolidation; Technology; Pharmaceutical Industry

September 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Santander Consumer Finance

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull, Elena Corsi and Andrew Barron

A Spanish company has to decide if they should expand into the fragmented European consumer finance market and has to make important organizational strategy decisions in the midst of the world economic downturn that followed the 2007 U.S. credit crunch. Since 2002, the... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Financial Markets; International Finance; Personal Finance; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Financial Services Industry; European Union; Spain

02 Apr 2014
What Do You Think?

Has the Post-Capitalist Economy Finally Arrived?

one possible future scenario: "A key part of capitalism is consolidation. Current business trends are pushing consolidation to extremes The long-term result is a world of winners and losers, where the few survivors of the massive... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Service

03 Aug 2009
Research & Ideas

Corporate Social Responsibility in a Downturn

social responsibility evolving during the current recession? A: There is no doubt that corporations are engaging in less philanthropy, but that is not necessarily bad as long as they cut the ineffective ones and consolidate those that are... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

June 1987 (Revised August 1988)
Case

American Bank

By: Robert S. Kaplan

American Bank is developing a new system to compute product costs. The deregulated, more competitive environment for commercial banks has created both problems and opportunities for banking operations. In order to price existing products and assess the desirability of... View Details

Keywords: System; Consolidation; Commercial Banking; SWOT Analysis; Fair Value Accounting; Cost Management; Price; Banking Industry; North and Central America; United States

07 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 7

bankruptcy. While initial ownership concentration is important for coordination of a prearranged bankruptcy filing, it is consolidation of ownership during bankruptcy-and specifically consolidation of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Jan 2007
First Look

First Look: January 3, 2007

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=207077 Framedia Harvard Business School Case 207-057 Examines an acquisition in the highly competitive new media advertising industry in China in late 2005. The transaction leads to eventual View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Advertising: It’s Not ‘Mad Men’ Anymore

years: unbundling of agency services, the problem of competing clients sharing a common agency, and concern over consolidation with the growth of holding companies. To understand them, it's first important to appreciate how advertising... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Advertising

03 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Marketing Your Way Through a Recession

where growth prospects are strong, companies are in a battle for market share and, in some cases, survival. Knowing your cost structure can ensure that any cuts or consolidation initiatives will save the most money with minimum customer... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

April 1996 (Revised June 2001)
Case

Partners HealthCare System, Inc. (B): Cardiac Care Improvement

By: Gary P. Pisano and Maryam Golnaraghi

Explores the challenges confronting the CEO at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in the wake of radical changes in the health care environment. As pressures have risen for cost containment in health care, the hospital has embarked on a series of reengineering efforts to... View Details

Keywords: Consolidation; Health Care and Treatment; Mergers and Acquisitions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Management Teams; Operations; Innovation and Invention; Cost Management; Health Industry; Massachusetts

26 May 2009
Research & Ideas

Improving Market Research in a Recession

based on fewer expenditures. For example, combining data sets may reveal new leading indicators of changes in consumer behavior. Tracking studies may have an edge over one-off projects. CMOs who trim costs by consolidating their budgets... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

07 Jan 2008
Research & Ideas

Pursuing a Deadly Opportunity

entrepreneurial venture. The paper, which offers a rare glimpse into an area where little consolidated data is available, is forthcoming in the journal Social Science & Medicine. "This study happens to focus on cadavers, but it... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

11 Apr 2000
Research & Ideas

Financial Services 24/7

routine part of most people's lives, there is no doubt that technology—especially Internet technology—is having a huge impact on the financial services industry. With much hype and headlines, Web trading has revolutionized the securities business, and the rapidly View Details

Keywords: by Susan Young

January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Supplement

MoviePass: The 'Get Big Fast' Strategy

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

In August 2017, MoviePass dramatically lowered its subscription price from $50 per month to just $10 for up to one movie per day. The idea was to rapidly scale the business to the point where they could generate incremental revenue streams form related businesses... View Details