Publications

July 2001 (Revised December 2001)
Case

WeServeHomes.com

ServiceMaster, a Fortune 500 supplier of home services such as Terminex, Trugreen (lawn care), and MerryMaids, has a 50% interest in an Internet start-up designed to attract new customers to its services and help service providers improve quality and lower costs.... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Internet and the Web; Information Technology; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Service Industry

Article

Excusing Selfishness in Charitable Giving: The Role of Risk

By: Christine L. Exley

Decisions involving charitable giving often occur under the shadow of risk. A common finding is that potential donors give less when there is greater risk that their donation will have less impact. While this behavior could be fully rationalized by standard economic... View Details

Keywords: Charitable Giving; Prosocial Behavior; Altruism; Risk Preferences; Risk and Uncertainty; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Behavior

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June 2018
Case

Forta Furniture: International Expansion

By: John A. Quelch and Karthik Easwar

The Forta Furniture case highlights the need to consider new market expansion to grow a firm. It demonstrates that simply doing what has always been done is not sustainable when other competitors enter the market with differentiated or potentially superior offerings.... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Global Range; Decision Making; Analysis; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Expansion

Kristin Mugford is the Melvin Tukman Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Finance Unit at the Harvard Business School and the Senior Associate Dean for Culture and Community. She previously served as Faculty Chair for field-based learning and... View Details

03 Apr 2019
News

Do Your Experiential Marketing Moves Produce Enough ROI?

03 Nov 2016
News

Here's How Big Government Could Help Small Businesses

November 2000 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Meg Whitman at eBay Inc. (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Maria Farkas

Meg Whitman takes over as CEO of eBay from the founder. She must figure out how to lead the company through a stage of phenomenal growth without compromising eBay's unique external customer culture and internal culture--its key success factors. A rewritten version of... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Success

May 2019 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Walmart's Workforce of the Future

By: William R. Kerr and Jordan Bach-Lombardo

Faced with intense competition from Amazon, Walmart began a transformation of its operations and workforce in 2015. The goal was to create an omnichannel retail experience for customers that seamlessly joined online and offline shopping. This case explores Walmart's... View Details

Keywords: Walmart; Managing The Future Of Work; Workforce; Automation; Ecommerce; Omnichannel Retail; Operations; Transformation; Employees; Training; Information Technology; Infrastructure; Disruption; Competitive Strategy; E-commerce; Information Infrastructure; Retail Industry

15 Oct 2012
News

Pay-as-You-Drive Insurance: Big Brother Needs a Makeover

10 May 2016
News

Meet Health Care's Major Spoilers: Theranos, Valeant, and Turing Pharmaceuticals

Sandra J. Sucher

Sandra Sucher, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, is an internationally recognized trust researcher. The Power of Trust, her third book, is based on two decades of global research on how companies build stakeholder trust and how,... View Details

Keywords: apparel; banking; brokerage; clothing; fashion; financial services; furniture; hotels ＆ motels; retail financial services; retailing; service industry

September 2023
Exercise

Irrationality in Action: Decision-Making Exercise

By: Alison Wood Brooks, Michael I. Norton and Oliver Hauser

This teaching exercise highlights the obstacle of biases in decision-making, allowing students to generate examples of potentially poor decision-making rooted in abundant and unwanted bias. This exercise has two parts: a pre-class, online survey in which students... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making

April 2000 (Revised September 2001)
Case

Peppers and Rogers Group, The

By: John A. Deighton

Can two successful authors build a scalable consulting practice based on their unique view of customer relationship management (CRM)? Should they emphasize strategy or execution? The case describes how Peppers and Rogers grew from two people earning speaker fees to a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Growth and Development; Information Publishing; Going Public; Strategy; Competition; Internet; Consulting Industry

10 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Is Groupon Good for Retailers?

may file for an initial public offering by the end of 2011, according to the New York Times. "Groupon has attracted remarkable interest," says Harvard Business School professor Benjamin G. Edelman. "With the economy... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Advertising; Technology

February 1983
Case

Managing Product Safety: The Case of the Procter & Gamble Rely Tampon

Presents an accounting of Procter & Gamble's handling of a product safety controversy (1980) surrounding its Rely tampon. May be used as part of a series, Managing Product Safety, that provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the social response strategies... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Crisis Management; Product; Consumer Products Industry; Health Industry

Article

The Multidimensional Effects of a Small Gift:: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment

By: Ellen Garbarino, Robert Slonim and Carmen Wang

Using a large natural field experiment, we demonstrate that a small unconditional gift (pen) more than doubled both small (survey) and large (blood donation) responses. We find no evidence that the opportunity for a small response crowded out the larger response;... View Details

Keywords: Reciprocity; Gift Exchange; Blood Donation; Charitable Behavior; Field Experiment; Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

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October 2014 (Revised December 2018)
Case

Jean-Claude Biver (A): The Reemergence of the Swiss Watch Industry

By: Ryan Raffaelli

In the early 1980s, the Swiss watch industry was near collapse after failing to adapt to Japanese competition from battery-powered quartz technology. In 1982, Jean-Claude Biver purchased Blancpain, a watch company that had been out of business since 1961 but had once... View Details

Keywords: Re-emergence; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Transformation; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Switzerland