Publications

September 1989
Case

Steve Shirley

By: Shoshana Zuboff

Traces the career development of a well-known British entrepreneur who, as a young girl, was forced to flee the Nazi's occupation of Central Europe. Details her early work experiences in the heavily male dominated workplace of post-war Britain and follows the... View Details

Keywords: Work-Life Balance; Entrepreneurship; Gender; Great Britain

1989
Chapter

Model of Franchiser Market Penetration in an Area of Dominant Influence

By: V. K. Rangan and Patrick J Kaufmann

Keywords: Franchise Ownership; Market Participation; Power and Influence

May 1988 (Revised March 1990)
Case

Matsushita Electric Industrial (MEI) in 1987

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal

Describes the development of Matsushita's international operations and the building of its dominant competitive position in the consumer electronics industry. Picks up the major challenges facing the company in 1987 as both its product focus and geographic posture are... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Goods and Commodities; Product Positioning; Problems and Challenges; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Value; Electronics Industry

1988
Article

The Struggle for Dominance in the Automobile Market: The Early Years of Ford and General Motors

By: Richard S. Tedlow

Keywords: Production; Markets; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Auto Industry; United States

September 1987
Background Note

What Do Venture Capitalists Do?

By: William A. Sahlman

Presents the results derived from 49 responses to a questionnaire mailed to 100 venture capitalists in late 1984. The purpose of the survey was to shed light on the relationship between venture capitalists and their portfolio companies. The survey revealed that the... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Venture Capital; Investment Portfolio; Recruitment; Surveys; Managerial Roles; Service Operations; Relationships; Service Industry

January 1987 (Revised January 1990)
Case

The World VCR Industry

By: David B. Yoffie

In the 1980s Japan dominated the world industry for video cassette recorders. This case looks at the evolution of the technology and competition in VCRs, the battles between VHS and Beta, and the emerging threats to Japanese dominance. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Competition; Technology Industry; Electronics Industry; Japan

May 1985 (Revised November 1990)
Case

Spinnaker Software Corp.

By: Howard H. Stevenson

Describes the problems faced by a company that has experienced remarkable growth, but growth which is below projections. The management must evaluate the company's position in the turbulent software industry. The two partners must then decide whether to cut back to... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Borrowing and Debt; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Profit; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Software; Information Technology Industry

February 1985 (Revised September 1988)
Case

Caterpillar Tractor Co.

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Describes the structure and evolution of the earth moving equipment industry worldwide in the post war era, particularly focusing on developments in the 1960s and 1970s. Describes Caterpillar's strategy in becoming the dominant worldwide competitor (industry market... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

January 1985 (Revised November 1985)
Background Note

Note on the Microcomputer Software Industry--January 1982

By: William A. Sahlman

Contains a history of the microcomputer software industry from the mid-1970s through early 1982. During that period growth was explosive. Many new companies were formed. However, the eventual structure of the industry was not yet clear. No truly dominant firms had... View Details

Keywords: Industry Growth; Business Strategy; Software; Computer Industry

June 1983
Article

A Comparison of Tournaments and Contracts

By: Jerry R. Green and Nancy Stokey

Tournaments, reward structures based on rank order, are compared with individual contracts in a model with one risk-neutral principal and many risk-averse agents. Each agent's output is a stochastic function of his effort level plus an additive shock term that is... View Details

Keywords: Tournaments; Contracts

February 1980 (Revised April 1981)
Case

Poland Spring Bottling Corp.

By: Benson P. Shapiro

Poland Spring is a small domestic bottler of mineral water trying to compete in a rapidly expanding market against Perrier, the dominant brand, and 20 other foreign and domestic waters. Company management must decide how to position and promote its product with limited... View Details

Keywords: Product Marketing; Product Positioning; Competition; Globalized Markets and Industries; Food and Beverage Industry; Distribution Industry; United States

1978
Article

An Incentive Compatible Planning Procedure for Public Good Production

By: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont

It is only recently that economic theorists have faced the fact that the proposed allocation mechanisms in economies with public goods might have bad incentive properties. In this paper we introduce a new planning procedure such that truthful revelation of the marginal... View Details

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August 1977
Article

Weak Versus Strong Domination in a Market with Indivisible Goods

By: A. E. Roth and A. Postlewaite

Keywords: Markets; Goods and Commodities

Article

Characterization of Satisfactory Mechanisms for the Revelation of Preferences for Public Goods

By: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont

Social decision mechanisms that admit dominant strategies and result in Pareto optima are characterized by the class of mechanisms proposed by Groves. The concept of decision mechanisms is generalized and the characterization is shown to extend to these cases. View Details

Keywords: Decision Mechanisms; Game Theory; Economics

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November 1976
Article

Partial Equilibrium Approach to the Free-Rider Problem

By: Jerry R. Green, Elon Kohlberg and Jean-Jacques Laffont

Groves and others have shown that truthful answers concerning preferences for public goods can be elicited as dominant strategies if appropriate tax-subsidies rules are applied. This paper studies the statistical properties of the total revenues generated by one of the... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges