Publications

October 2011
Case

Raleigh & Rosse: Measures to Motivate Exceptional Service

By: Robert Simons and Michael Mahoney

In January 2010, U.S. luxury goods retailer Raleigh & Rosse is being sued by its employees for encouraging "off the clock" hours. At the center of the class action lawsuit is the famous Raleigh & Rosse performance measurement system previously thought to be the core of... View Details

Keywords: Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Goal Setting; Compensation; Incentives; Motivation; Sales Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Growth Management; Lawsuits and Litigation; Organizational Culture; Management Systems; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Retail Industry; United States

14 May 2013
First Look

First Look: May 14

of investing at home than those where external managers are involved. At the same time, SWFs with external managers tend to invest in lower P/E industries, which see an increase in the P/E ratios in the year after the investment. By way... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Google: To TVC or Not to TVC?

By: William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg

In late 2018, evidence emerged that many of Google’s temporary help agency workers, vendors, and independent contractors (“TVCs”) were unhappy with the company. TVCs, who reportedly made up 49.95% of Google’s 170,000-person global workforce, had raised concerns of... View Details

07 Jul 2010
First Look

First Look: July 7

Stephan Heblich, and William R. Kerr Abstract We identify the impact of local firm concentration on incumbent performance with a quasi natural experiment. When Germany was divided after World War II, many firms in the machine tool... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

12 May 2009
First Look

First Look: May 12, 2009

(Studies 3 and 4), we find that dishonest behavior increased moral disengagement and motivated forgetting of moral rules. Such changes did not occur in the case of honest behavior or consideration of the behavior of others. In addition, increasing moral saliency View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2020
Case

Guild Education: Unlocking Opportunity for America's Workforce

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael D. Smith, Nicole Tempest Keller and Alpana Thapar

Founded in 2015, Guild Education is an education marketplace that connects employers and universities to provide employees with ‘education as a benefit.’ The Denver-based company is transforming traditional tuition assistance programs by facilitating direct payment by... View Details

Keywords: Education; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Employees; Social Enterprise; Education Industry; Technology Industry; Colorado

October 2009
Article

Managing Risk in the New World

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Anette Mikes, Robert Simons, Peter Tufano and Michael Hofmann Jr.

Five experts gathered recently to discuss the future of enterprise risk management: Kaplan, the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, who with his colleague David Norton developed the balanced scorecard; Mikes, an assistant professor at HBS who studies... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Capital Structure; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Risk Management

Find at Harvard

22 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: November 22

PublicationsCompeting through Business Models Authors:Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart Publication:In Handbook of Research on Competitive Strategy, edited by Giovanni Battista Dagnino. Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming An... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

05 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 5

categorization effect persisted regardless of whether the rewards were presented using a gain or loss frame. Using both moderation and mediation analyses, we found that categorizing rewards had these positive effects on motivation by... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 3, 2018

assumptions that countries can accumulate reserves and borrow internationally using their own currency. As opposed to traditional sovereign-debt models, asset-valuation effects occasioned by currency fluctuations act to absorb global... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

June 2020
Case

Agile Consumer Product Innovation with Alibaba's Tmall Innovation Center

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Consumer products companies were beset by changes on all sides during the 2010s. Customers were increasingly turning to ecommerce platforms rather than shopping in-store. Meanwhile, nimble, digitally-savvy competitors were gaining market share by capitalizing on the... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Retail; Ecommerce; Alibaba; Consumer Products; Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; China

15 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 15

performance to provide quantitative insight into the link between a firm's business model choices and its profit consequences. The method is applied to Walmart by building a qualitative representation of its business model and mapping... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

07 May 2013
First Look

First Look: May 7

service quality in the past. Furthermore, we show that it is the high quality incumbent's most profitable customers who are the most attracted by superior quality alternatives. Our results appear to have long-run implications whereby... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 2021
Supplement

What Went Wrong with Boeing’s 737 Max? (B)

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

Following the March 10, 2019, crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, en route to Nairobi, Kenya and the October 29, 2018, downing of Lion Air flight 610 as it took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, Boeing’s 737 Max jet, the model flown in both instances, was grounded by... View Details