Publications

July 1999 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Chrysler and BMW: Tritec Engine Joint Venture

By: H. Kent Bowen and Courtney Purrington

A gifted project leader lacks significant new product development experience. The case highlights the issues and procedures related to defining the project strategy: organizing senior management approvals and support for creating a "heavyweight" team; aligning the... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Joint Ventures; Projects; Business Strategy; Management Teams; Groups and Teams; Machinery and Machining; Design; Business Processes; Product Design; Product; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Auto Industry

February 2013 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization

By: Linda A. Hill, Anthony J. Mayo and Dana M. Teppert

Iz-Lynn Chan, assistant director of retail business group and service quality and vice president of Far East retail consultancy for Far East Organization, a private real estate developer group in Singapore, raises service standards in the company's hospitality... View Details

Keywords: Hospitality; Organizational Change And Transformation; Leadership; Leading Change; Change Management; Service Industry; Singapore

Program

Value Creation Through Effective Boards

improving corporate board effectiveness, the program helps you master global governance challenges, build productive relationships with the CEO and management team, and implement efficient processes that... View Details

August 2018 (Revised September 2018)
Supplement

Predicting Purchasing Behavior at PriceMart (B)

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

Supplements the (A) case. In this case, Wehunt and Morse are concerned about the logistic regression model overfitting to the training data, so they explore two methods for reducing the sensitivity of the model to the data by regularizing the coefficients of the... View Details

Keywords: Data Science; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Customers; Household; Forecasting and Prediction

01 May 2013
What Do You Think?

Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?

interesting take on this notion: " there is a great deal of ambiguity in defining what strong leadership means interestingly, the 'servant' concept is not considered 'weakness' when applied to a company's relationship with clients... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

01 Mar 2024
News

3-Minute Briefing: Ilana D. Weinstein (MBA 1995)

Weinstein: Standing tall and seeing all of the strategic possibilities in a highly competitive industry. I grew up in New York City and worked in every store along our 10-block radius. I learned how to sell and negotiate at a young age. There’s a scrappiness and... View Details

Keywords: Edited by Julia Hanna; Photo by Chris Sorensen; search firm; entrepreneurship; hedge funds

Research Summary

Research Thrust

By: Rakesh Khurana

I am trained in organizational sociology and my main areas of interest lie in macro-organizational theory and the dynamics of executive labor markets. To date, my research has focused on two themes. The first revolves around understanding the forces that govern the... View Details

21 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 21

customized web sites for overseas markets? How would she maintain the detail and attention she had put into so many aspects of the company as Nasty Gal grew? As Amoruso's time was limited and management... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel & Sean Silverthorne

02 Feb 2016
First Look

February 2, 2016

relationships with customers, the Bansals immediately drafted an apology and terminated the seller's agreement with Flipkart. Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/516017-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 516-049... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2022
Teaching Plan

Pacesetters

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Mel Martin

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 322-019. City Sealcoating CEO Keith Chaney had just publicly called out the Boston Chamber of Commerce for their slow progress on their supplier diversity program, Pacesetters. Established in 2018 by regional business leaders,... View Details

Keywords: Minority-owned Businesses; Procurement; Racial Wealth Gap; Diversity; Small Business; Restructuring; Contracts; Goals and Objectives; Performance Improvement; Performance Evaluation; United States; Massachusetts

October 2001 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Blethen Family and the Seattle Times Company (A), The

By: John A. Davis and Cathy Quinn

Frank Blethen, the fourth-generation publisher of The Seattle Times, ponders the challenges facing this family business. This case reviews the long history of this business and family and asks whether family ownership and management are in the interests of both the... View Details

Keywords: History; Management; Business or Company Management; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; Family Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Journalism and News Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

16 Dec 2020
Blog Post

Faculty Books Published in 2020

business models, or developing new products, even the most experienced managers often get it wrong. They discover that intuition, experience and big data alone don’t work. What does work? Running disciplined business experiments. And what... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

August 1996 (Revised October 1996)
Case

Suzanne de Passe at Motown Productions (A1)

By: Linda A. Hill and Jaan Elias

Illustrates: 1) the impact of a manager's leadership style on corporate culture, direction, and performance; 2) the concept of fit between leadership style and the requirements of situations in which managers find themselves; and 3) the need for managers to adapt their... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Race; Organizational Culture; Success; Leadership Style; Gender; Management Teams; Change Management; Situation or Environment; Creativity; Relationships; Music Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

15 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 15, 2008

industry and home region, (2) the size of the investment syndicate, (3) target company maturity, and (4) the density of relationships among the other members of the syndicate. Entrepreneurship: Field of Dreams? Authors:Olav Sorenson and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

February 2010 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Arup: Building the Water Cube

By: Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson and Dilyana Karadzhova

Arup, an engineering firm, collaborated with PTW Architects and China Construction Design Institute to develop a design for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Aquatics Center design competition. Their winning concept for the Water Cube combined elements of Chinese... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Environmental Sustainability; Design; Construction; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Projects; Groups and Teams; Real Estate Industry; Sports Industry; Beijing; Sydney

December 2012
Article

Evidence on the Use of Unverifiable Estimates in Required Goodwill Impairment

By: Karthik Ramanna and Ross L. Watts

SFAS 142 requires managers to estimate the current fair value of goodwill to determine goodwill write-offs. In promulgating the standard, the FASB predicted managers will, on average, use the fair value estimates to convey private information on future cash flows. The... View Details

Keywords: Goodwill Impairment; Fair-value Accounting; FASB; SFAS 142; Fair Value Accounting; Standards; Cash Flow; Agency Theory; Motivation and Incentives; Forecasting and Prediction; Goodwill Accounting

SSRN

Find at Harvard

30 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Computer Security is For Managers, Too

Companies need to have smart technicians who stay abreast of emerging digital threats and defenses, of course, but the technicians shouldn't be calling the shots. General managers need to take the lead in building processes that will... View Details

Keywords: by Robert D. Austin & Christopher A.R. Darby

March 2006
Background Note

Customer-Introduced Variability in Service Operations

By: Frances X. Frei

Presents a typology of customer-introduced variability and offers guidance on how to manage each type. Central to the ideas developed is how to mitigate the effects of the apparent trade-off between reducing variability and diminishing the service experience or... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Six Sigma; Consumer Behavior; Service Operations; Performance Efficiency