Publications

2025
Chapter

Leapfrog Leaders: Accelerating Systems Leadership Skills

By: Laura Cabrera, Derek Cabrera and Hise O. Gibson

We need leaders who can execute at the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical (SOT) levels. But, research shows it takes time for skills to develop at all three levels—too much time. Why does it take too much time? First, because expertise is borne of experience. An... View Details

Keywords: DSRP; VCML; Strategy; Operations; Leadership Development; Decision Making; Organizational Structure

February 2023 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Ronald Reagan: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case traces the rise of Ronald Reagan from small town Illinois to two-term president of the United States. An unlikely candidate for the world’s most powerful job, the case describes the different roles that Reagan filled over his life: radio announcer, Hollywood... View Details

Keywords: Politics; Entertainment; Personal Characteristics; Business And Government; Values And Beliefs; Mission And Purpose; Decision Making; Government Administration; Management Style; Power and Influence; United States

September 1993 (Revised January 1994)
Case

Habitat for Humanity International

Habitat for Humanity, a not-for-profit, volunteer-based home builder, is coping with years of rapid growth and success. They now face a series of options to continue their successful course and must make corresponding organizational adjustments. Teaching objectives... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth Management; Housing; Service Industry; United States

Teaching Interest

Negotiation

By: Kevin P. Mohan

Managerial success requires the ability to negotiate. Whether you are forging an agreement with your suppliers, trying to ink a deal with potential customers, raising money from investors, managing a conflict inside your firm, or resolving a dispute that is headed... View Details

2008
Book

Managing Up

By: Linda A. Hill

Managing up is not political game playing. Rather, it's a conscious approach to working with your supervisor toward goals that are important to both of you. Through managing up, you build a productive working relationship with your boss and create a way to use the... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Employees; Managerial Roles; Alliances; Value Creation

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18 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas, April 18

March 27, 2017 Harvard Business Review How the Water Industry Learned to Embrace Data By: Cespedes, Frank V., and Amir Peleg Abstract—Most current talk about “big data” seems View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

May 25, 2016
Comment

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

By: John A. Quelch

Healthcare and education are two issues in which citizens around the world, rich and poor, are passionately interested. It has long been appreciated that the way that a society treats its youngest and oldest members says much about its moral maturity. Economic... View Details

03 Oct 2016
Working Paper Summaries

The Skills Gap and the Near-Far Problem in Executive Education and Leadership Development

Keywords: by Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu; Education

20 Jun 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Fame, Faith, and Social Activism: Business Lessons from Bono

To Nancy F. Koehn, the history of the Irish rock band U2 has it all as a business case study: teamwork, leadership, creative destruction, branding, and strategy. Koehn's case "Bono and U2", co-written with Katherine Miller and Rachel K.... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Entertainment & Recreation

August 2007
Article

Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India

By: A. Banerjee, Shawn A. Cole, E. Duflo and L. Linden

This paper presents the results of two randomized experiments conducted in schools in urban India. A remedial education program hired young women to teach students lagging behind in basic literacy and numeracy skills. It increased average test scores of all children in... View Details

Keywords: Literacy; Teaching; Performance Improvement; Competency and Skills; India

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Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Michael W. Toffel

Professor Toffel teaches the required first-year MBA course Technology and Operations Management (TOM).

He also coordinates and teaches the Doctoral Seminar in Technology and Operations Management to help... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Government Legislation; Non-Governmental Organizations; Multinational Firms and Management

Article

Contextual Intelligence

By: Tarun Khanna

The author has come to a conclusion that may surprise you: trying to apply management practices uniformly across geographies is a fool's errand. Best practices simply don't travel well across borders. That's because conditions not just of economic development but of... View Details

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19 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

Climbing the Great Wall of Trust

economy, it's getting more essential that global executives learn their way around Chinese cultural customs in order to be successful in that country. While every country has its version of the "old... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

21 Jun 2016
News

MAP Policy Enforcement in an Omnichannel World

March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
Exercise

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades is an exercise in which students are asked to analyze and make a recommendation on the basis of simulated experimental data. The setting is a hypothetical restaurant review company called RestaurantGrades (RG), which shows... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Digital Marketing

April 2004 (Revised November 2004)
Background Note

Why Complex Systems Fail

Operationally excellent organizations create competitive opportunities for themselves that are not available to their peers. One view of the manager's competitive dilemma is to pick the right position for his organization, differentiating it, for example, as a... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Complexity

July 2001 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., The

By: Andre F. Perold and Austin K Scee

NASDAQ's mission "to facilitate capital formation" is threatened by the emergence of Electronic Communication Networks, which are not as heavily regulated by the SEC. This case reviews the development of NASDAQ and its evolution from a loose network of broker-dealers... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Stocks; Financial Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Innovation Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Perspective