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Publications
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(10,085)
- Faculty Publications (3,828)
- October 1988 (Revised December 1994)
- Supplement
Major Home Appliance Industry in 1988
By: David J. Collis and Nancy Donohue
Updates developments in the industry. Included among these are GE's reinvestment program, GE and Whirlpool's bidding war for Roper, Sears' expansion into selling brand names, Whirlpool's expansion into the European markets, and a number of other examples of this kind... View Details
- August 1988 (Revised February 1992)
- Case
Norton Group PLC: To Be or Not to Be in the Motorcycle Business (A)
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Jon Skofic
Norton, a once famous motorcycle manufacturer, soundly beaten by Japanese competition, turns its attention to developing rotary engines. The company is acquired by Norton Group PLC, which is headed by a dashing entrepreneur. The new management must decide what... View Details
- Article
Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand: Impediments to Economic Activity, Market Failures, and Profitability
By: Dennis Yao
In this paper it is argued that failures of the competitive market are necessary conditions for supranormal profitability. Three fundamental causes of these market failures-production economies and sunk costs, transactions costs, and imperfect information-are developed... View Details
Keywords: Economics; Markets; Failure; Profit; Cost; Information; Market Transactions; Competition; Strategy; Production
- 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
- April 1988 (Revised October 1996)
- Case
Home Depot, Inc., The
Home Depot, founded in 1978, pioneered the warehouse retailing concept in the home center industry. The company's niche strategy resulted in rapid growth in sales. By 1986, however, the company began experiencing deteriorating profitability. Students are asked to... View Details
- February 1988
- Case
Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc. (Condensed)
By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Richard S. Rosenbloom
A condensed version of Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc. The principal changes are the elimination of details about the early history of the company and condensation of the final section, Outlook for the Future. View Details
- November 1987 (Revised June 1988)
- Case
ServiceMaster Industries, Inc.
By: James L. Heskett
The CEO of ServiceMaster Industries has convened an internal task force to come up with ideas for reorganizing the company to accommodate unusually fast growth. In developing both alternatives and criteria for appraising them, the task force has to keep in mind the... View Details
- October 1987 (Revised November 1994)
- Case
Boston Fights Drugs (A): Designing Communications Research
Describes in detail the research mounted by five individuals with a $20,000 budget to combat drug abuse among Boston's school-going population. Using the focus group methodology they discover that most of the current anti-drug advertising is useless. They create their... View Details
- September 1987 (Revised October 1987)
- Background Note
The Job of the General Manager
By: James L. Heskett
Describes elements of the job of the general manager that are addressed in the Management Policy and Practice course at the Harvard Business School. These include: 1) establishing strategic direction, 2) setting goals and managing standards of performance, 3)... View Details
- July 1987 (Revised May 1993)
- Case
Atlas Copco (A): Gaining and Building Distribution Channels
Atlas Copco, a Swedish company, holds the highest market share for air compressors worldwide. However, its attempts to enter U.S. markets have been unsuccessful. The case describes a series of strategic distribution maneuvers implemented by the company which enable it... View Details
- July 1987 (Revised October 1995)
- Case
Phillips 66: Controlling a Company Through Crisis
The downstream operations subsidiary of a major U.S. petroleum company is faced with major restructuring decisions and responds by developing an Executive Information System (EIS) which allows for increased responsiveness, wider span of control, and higher levels of... View Details
- June 1987 (Revised August 1988)
- Case
American Bank
By: Robert S. Kaplan
American Bank is developing a new system to compute product costs. The deregulated, more competitive environment for commercial banks has created both problems and opportunities for banking operations. In order to price existing products and assess the desirability of... View Details
- 1987
- Book
Banking and Oil
By: Geoffrey Jones
This is the second of two volumes of a business history of a major British bank in the Middle East. Volume 1 traces the history of the bank from its foundation in 1889 as The Imperial Bank of Persia, through the years it was the state bank of Iran, and its... View Details
- spring 1987
- Article
Second-Sourcing and the Experience Curve: Price Competition in Defense Procurement
By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao
We examine a dynamic model of price competition in defense procurement that incorporates the experience curve, asymmetric cost information, and the availability of a higher cost alternative system. We model acquisition as a two-stage process in which initial production... View Details
- December 1986 (Revised January 1988)
- Case
Hewlett-Packard: Manufacturing Productivity Division (C)
By: Benson P. Shapiro and Lawrence B. Levine
Focuses on the development of a "market driven" culture at Hewlett-Packard (HP); the conflict between autonomous, well integrated divisions making products responsive to their own markets and a greater degree of systems integration at the corporate level; and the... View Details
- September 1986
- Background Note
Dilemmas of Developing and Communicating Strategy
- August 1986 (Revised June 1987)
- Case
Lotus Development Corporation: Entering International Markets
By: David B. Yoffie and John J. Coleman
Lotus 1-2-3 exploded on the American market in the spring of 1983. Nine months later Jim Manzi, vice president of marketing, hired Chuck Digate to develop an international strategy for Lotus. Case explores Lotus' rapid rise to the top of the software market in the... View Details
- July 1986 (Revised April 1989)
- Background Note
Note on Sources of Comparative Advantage
By: David B. Yoffie and John J. Coleman
After Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin's propositions about the sources of comparative advantage were empirically challenged by Wassily Leontief, scholars set out to explain the "Leontief paradox" by developing alternative theories on the sources of comparative... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Advantage
- May 1986 (Revised February 1991)
- Case
Wilson Lumber Co.
By: Thomas R. Piper
The Wilson Lumber Co. is faced with a need for increased bank financing due to its rapid sales growth and low profitability. Students must determine the reasons for the rising bank borrowing, estimate the amount of borrowing needed, and assess the attractiveness of the... View Details
- April 1986 (Revised May 1989)
- Case
Alloy Rods Corp.
In July of 1985 the managers of Alloy Rods (who recently purchased the company through a leveraged buyout arrangement) find that their chief competitor (a company more than 6 times as large as Alloy Rods) has introduced a new product clearly aimed at Alloy's most... View Details