Publications

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September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Bank of America (A)

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes how Bank of America is creating a system for product and service innovation in its retail banking business. Emphasis is placed on the role of experimentation in some two-dozen real-life "laboratories" that serve as fully operating banking branches and as... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Problems and Challenges; Innovation and Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Change; Failure; Banks and Banking; Learning; Banking Industry

November 2003 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Caja España: Managing the Branches to Sell (A)

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez and Rosario de Albornoz

Juan Luis Rojas, commercial planning manager of a Caja de Ahorros (savings bank), faces the challenge of motivating the branches to sell more long-term mortgages and ponders whether to use transfer prices to achieve his objective. View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Banks and Banking; Resource Allocation; Organizational Design; Performance Improvement; Sales; Motivation and Incentives; Banking Industry

20 Apr 2017
Cold Call Podcast

Making Health Insurance That Consumers Actually Like

Keywords: Re: Regina E. Herzlinger; Insurance; Health

September 2007
Article

Investigative Negotiation

By: Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman

This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Negotiators often fail to achieve results because they channel too much effort into... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Motivation and Incentives; Perspective; Pharmaceutical Industry

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May 2011 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Marshall & Gordon: Designing an Effective Compensation System (A)

By: Heidi K. Gardner and Kerry Herman

CEO Kelly Browne wrestles with the design of a new compensation system to promote the collaboration and cross-selling necessary for supporting her firm's new strategy. Marshall Gordon International, a global public relations (PR) firm, has recently expanded its service... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Customer Relationship Management; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Partners and Partnerships; Motivation and Incentives; Alignment; Public Relations Industry

May 2013
Case

Eureka Forbes Ltd.: Managing the Selling Effort (A) (Photonovel Version)

By: Das Narayandas, Kallol Das and Kerry Herman

The CEO of EFL (India), a direct sales organization, must decide which changes to the sales compensation systems would better motivate his sales reps and improve their sales performance. View Details

December 2016
Article

Impact Investing: A Brief History

By: Brian Trelstad

Over the last decade, impact investing has become an increasingly-discussed topic in the realms of both business and public policy. Impact investors are motived by a desire to advance social or environmental goals and an intuition that pursuing two goals at once -... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Investment; Ethics; Strategy

SSRN

March 23, 2017
Article

Incentives Don't Help People Change, but Peer Pressure Does

By: Susanna Gallani

This article summarizes the findings of a research study that examined the effectiveness of monetary and non-monetary incentives in establishing persistent organizational behavior modifications. The results of the study highlight the interplay between monetary and... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Change Management

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November 2005 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Leading Change at Simmons (A)

By: Tiziana E. Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson, Stacy McManus and Kate Roloff

Explores the challenge of managing large-scale organizational change at Simmons, an old and established company that manufactures and distributes mattresses. The new CEO, Charlie Eitel, hired to turn the organization's performance around, considers whether to implement... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Motivation and Incentives; Leading Change; Employee Relationship Management; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

16 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Can Decades of Military Overspending be Fixed?

States has often turned to cutting-edge technology solutions to solve strategic and operational challenges. “Costs tend to rise in all organizations unless managers and their staffs are skilled in industrial management and strongly View Details

Keywords: by J. Ronald Fox; Service

12 May 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Elusive Safety: The New Geography of Capital Flows and Risk

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Ruth Judson, and Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr

July 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Formosa Plastics Group: Business Continuity Forever

Wang Yung-ching, legendary Taiwanese businessman and philanthropist, passed away in 2008. He left behind an estate worth US $5.5 billion, but did not leave a will. The case discusses the potential motivation for Wang, and uses it to study succession planning for family... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Governance Controls; Management Succession; Family Ownership; Planning; Motivation and Incentives; Chemical Industry; Taiwan

14 Dec 2010
Op-Ed

Tax US Companies to Spur Spending

Recent tax deal-making has relied on conventional instruments of fiscal stimulus. Yet, we live in unconventional times, and more novel approaches suited to the peculiarities of our current economy are required. In particular, the remarkable cash hoards that American... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

January 2005 (Revised July 2010)
Case

Anne Mulcahy: Leading Xerox through the Perfect Storm (A)

By: William W. George and Andrew N. McLean

In 2000, Xerox faces bankruptcy amid a liquidity crisis, collapsed profitability, and an expanding SEC investigation. Traces the career and leadership development of Anne Mulcahy, a former sales executive unexpectedly named COO of the beleaguered company as a last... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Financial Liquidity; Organizational Culture; Crisis Management; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Gender; Corporate Governance

2019
Working Paper

Relative Performance Transparency: Effects on Sustainable Choices

By: Ryan W. Buell, Shwetha Mariadassou and Yanchong Zheng

We study how transparency into the levels and changes of relative sustainability performance affects consumer choices. Our work considers two forms of transparency: process transparency, in which customers receive information about the company's sustainability... View Details

Keywords: Relative Performance Tranparency; Process Transparency; Customer Transparency; Levels; Changes; Reflectiveness; Self-serving Attribution Biases; Sustainability; Consumer Choice

SSRN

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12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Porter’s Perspective: Competing in the Global Economy

Competitive advantage. Corporate strategy. The competitive advantage of nations. All over the world these terms quickly bring to mind the groundbreaking work of HBS professor Michael Porter, whose two decades of research on these and related topics have resulted in... View Details

Keywords: Re: Michael E. Porter

June 1977 (Revised May 1997)
Case

University of Trent

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Focuses on two issues: 1) technical systems that can be employed in nonprofit organizations for control and motivational purposes. Systems discussed range from payroll monitoring systems to zero-base budgeting and 2) the managerial environment needed for serious... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Motivation and Incentives; Business or Company Management; Nonprofit Organizations; Governance Controls; Education Industry