Publications

November 2000 (Revised May 2002)
Case

FleetBoston Financial: Online Banking

By: Frances X. Frei and Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar

As the ninth largest bank holding company in the United States in 2000, FleetBoston Financial Corp. provided a myriad of financial services, including retail banking, loan origination, and brokerage accounts. This case explores how FleetBoston responded to the Internet... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Borrowing and Debt; Cost Management; Banks and Banking; Consumer Behavior; Service Operations; Competition; Online Technology; Banking Industry; United States

May 2017 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at Gap

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big... View Details

July 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Supplement

Airbnb Emerges from the Pandemic: Lessons for Stakeholder Governance (B)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Allison M. Ciechanover

As the COVID pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the sudden... View Details

Keywords: Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Leadership; Two-Sided Platforms; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Value Creation; Decision Making; Goals and Objectives; Travel Industry; Tourism Industry; Service Industry; United States

June 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Supplement

Vanguard Retail Operations (B)

By: Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno

The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or... View Details

Keywords: Pooling; Generalist Model; Specialist Model; Service Operations; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States

November 2010
Article

Which of These People Is Your Future CEO?

By: Boris Groysberg, Andrew Hill and Toby Johnson

Americans have long believed that U.S. military officers-trained for high-stakes positions, resilience, and mental agility-make excellent CEOs. That belief is sound, but the authors' analysis of the performance of 45 companies led by CEOs with military experience... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Training; Leadership Style; Managerial Roles; Situation or Environment; United States

Find at Harvard

08 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 8, 2008

finding is that societies that depend heavily on oil, and perhaps natural resources more generally, will experience a heavier demand for government intervention. We argue that this is one aspect that the good design of policies on the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

10 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Too Nice to Lead? Unpacking the Gender Stereotype That Holds Women Back

gender. “Gender-specific expectations can really start to matter when we think about backlash and image concerns. If I’m a woman, I might be expected to be nicer, and then if I’m not nicer, I might face more backlash than a man would,” Exley cautions. You Might Also... View Details

Keywords: by Shalene Gupta

September 2008 (Revised April 2009)
Supplement

Wyoff and China-LuQuan: Negotiating a Joint Venture (B)

By: James K. Sebenius and Cheng (Jason) Qian

Through stalled joint venture talks between Pennsylvania-based Wyoff Corp. and Jinan-based China-LuQuan, strategic and cross-cultural negotiation challenges are explored both from American and Chinese perspectives. Wyoff, a leading U.S. chemical company, has been... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Chemical Industry; China; Pennsylvania

September 2017 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand

By: Shelle Santana, Jill Avery and Christine Snively

The launch of the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card was enthusiastically received by millennial consumers, a cohort that had previously eluded JPMorgan Chase and its competitors. With the one-year anniversary of the launch approaching, managers are focused on... View Details

February 2023 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Graphic Packaging: Project Cowboy (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and E. Scott Mayfield

In July 2019, Graphic Packaging CEO Michael Doss was proposing a $600 million investment in a new machine to produce coated recycled board (CRB), a type of paper packaging used for consumer products (cups, cereal boxes, beverage boxes, etc.) that utilized recycled... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Growth Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Value Creation; Supply and Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; North America

27 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

How the FBI Reinvented Itself After 9/11

on the United States, killing nearly 3,000 people with four hijacked airliners—and throwing the FBI’s structure and identity into question. Since its founding in 1908, the organization had focused primarily on solving domestic crimes and... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

30 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Can AI Predict Whether Shoppers Would Pick Crest or Colgate?

commercially available version of GPT-3 to elicit thousands of simulated customer responses and found that AI can produce demand patterns that resemble those of human studies. “Utilizing this tool, which is in some ways a consumer... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

29 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 29, 2008

the role of observable (to us) boundaries between individuals in structuring communications inside the firm? We measure three general types of boundaries: organizational boundaries (strategic business unit and function memberships),... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

14 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 14, 2010

countries, but also especially within countries. Much of the poorer average management quality in countries like Brazil and India seems to result from a long tail of poorly managed firms, which barely exist in the United States. Some... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2021
Article

Consumers—Especially Women—Avoid Buying from Firms with Higher Gender Pay Gaps

By: Tobias Schlager, Bhavya Mohan, Katherine DeCelles and Michael I. Norton

We document a unique driver of consumer behavior: the public disclosure of a firm’s gender pay gap. Four experiments provide causal evidence that when firms are revealed to have gender pay gaps, consumers are less willing to pay for their goods, a reaction driven by... View Details

Keywords: Pay Gap; Perceived Wage Fairness; Purchase Intention; Gender; Wages; Fairness; Perception; Consumer Behavior