Publications

Educators

May 26, 2021
Article

The Challenge of Rebuilding U.S. Domestic Supply Chains

By: Willy C. Shih, Robert S. Huckman and James Wyner

Massachusetts-based Shawmut scrambled to expand production to meet the soaring demand for N95 masks and hospital gowns during the pandemic. Its experience illustrates a crucial point that policymakers should take to heart: Once a country loses its industrial commons... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Health Pandemics; Production; Management; United States

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Article

Predictions, Prophets, and Restarting Your Business

By: Frank V. Cespedes

The first task of crisis management is a reasonably accurate view of the current situation and how it might evolve. There are many predictions about so-called “new normal” as a result of the semi-enforced social distancing necessitated by the coronavirus. But most are... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Strategic Planning

10 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

COVID's Surprising Toll on Careers of Women Scientists

Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. That gap is becoming increasingly apparent across professions worldwide, for all kinds of working women as the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in the United States and around... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health; Health; Health

September 2022
Teaching Note

Yummy: Delivering Value to Venezuela

By: Ayelet Israeli, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Carla Larangeira

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-034. View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Health Pandemics; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion

Article

Moving Forward from COVID-19: Organizational Dimensions of Effective Hospital Emergency Management

By: Mariam Krikorian Atkinson, Nicholas Cagliuso, John Hick, Sara Singer, Elizabeth Bambury, Tuna Cem Hayirli, Masha Kuznetsova and Paul Biddinger

Federal investment in emergency preparedness has increased notably since the 9/11 attacks, yet it is unclear if and how U.S. hospital readiness has changed in the 20 years since then. In particular, understanding effective aspects of hospital emergency management... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Hospital Preparedness/response; Urban/rural Hospitals; Emergency Management; National Strategy; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Performance Effectiveness; Governance; Policy; United States

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April 5, 2021
Article

Defining a Post-Pandemic Channel Strategy

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Companies have experienced a surge of online orders during the pandemic. As the crisis eases, leaders need to decide whether the shift to e-commerce is a permanent “new normal” or a temporary increase. Across sectors, forecasts aimed at answering this question form the... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Marketing Channels; Strategy; Resource Allocation; E-commerce

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19 Jan 2022
In Practice

7 Trends to Watch in 2022

for consumers. So it’s also likely that NFTs will help (finally!) take crypto mainstream. Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration. Robert S. Huckman: Flexibility in health care could... View Details

Keywords: by HBS News

2023
Working Paper

Scapegoating and Discrimination in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Airbnb

By: Michael Luca, Elizaveta Pronkina and Michelangelo Rossi

We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian names experienced a 20 percent decline in guests relative to hosts... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Behavioral Economics; Market Design; Health Pandemics; Prejudice and Bias; Digital Platforms; Design

2022
Working Paper

Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups

By: Shai Bernstein, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu

Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals’ job search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even... View Details

Keywords: Startup Labor Market; Flight To Safety; COVID-19; Recession; Business Startups; Human Capital; Business Cycles; Health Pandemics

SSRN

January 2021
Article

Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Mitigates Self-Serving Bias in Resource Allocation During the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Karen Huang, Regan Bernhard, Netta Barak-Corren, Max Bazerman and Joshua D. Greene

The COVID-19 crisis has forced healthcare professionals to make tragic decisions concerning which patients to save. Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis has foregrounded the influence of self-serving bias in debates on how to allocate scarce resources. A utilitarian... View Details

Keywords: Self-serving Bias; Procedural Justice; Bioethics; COVID-19; Fairness; Health Pandemics; Resource Allocation; Decision Making

2020
Other Unpublished Work

An Operating Model for the Next Normal: Lessons from Agile Organizations in the Crisis

By: Christopher Handscomb, Deepak Mahadevan, Lars Schor, Marcus Sieberer, Euvin Naidoo and Suraj Srinivasan

Companies with agile practices embedded in their operating models have managed the impact of the COVID-19 crisis better than their peers. Here’s what helped them cope. View Details

Keywords: Operating Model; Agile Practices; Health Pandemics; Business Model; Crisis Management

Article

The Case for a COVID Vaccine Lottery

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok

Even the smartest distribution plans are complicated by a stubborn fact: We won't have enough for everyone right away. View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccine; Distribution; Health Pandemics

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February 2022
Case

Leading The UK Vaccine Task Force

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Claudia Pienica

This case describes the first six months of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, under the leadership of Kate Bingham. With a career spent in the private sector as a biotech investor, Bingham’s appointment within the government was considered unusual. The overarching brief given... View Details

Educators

July 2024
Case

Replika AI: Alleviating Loneliness (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

Eugenia Kuyda launched Replika AI in 2017 as an empathetic digital companion to combat loneliness and provide emotional support. The platform surged in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering non-judgmental support to isolated users. By 2023, Replika boasted... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Health Pandemics; AI and Machine Learning; Well-being; Technology Industry

Educators

2023
Working Paper

No Mask, No Service: Customer Reaction to Walmart’s 2020 National Mask Mandate

By: Innessa Colaiacovo

Multi-location firms face a complex series of economic tradeoffs when deciding whether to implement standard processes or allow processes to vary across establishments. One element of this tradeoff is customer response. This paper explores customer reaction to a... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Geographic Location; Policy; Health Pandemics; Retail Industry; United States

2020
Working Paper

EMEs and COVID-19: Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms

By: Laura Alfaro, Oscar Becerra and Marcela Eslava

Emerging economies are characterized by an extremely high prevalence of informality, small-firm employment and jobs not fit for working from home. These features factor into how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the economy. We develop a framework that, based on... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Emerging Economies; Informality; Firm-size Distribution; Health Pandemics; Developing Countries and Economies; Economy; System Shocks; Latin America

01 May 2020
In Practice

COVID-19’s Hard Lessons Might Prepare Business for Climate Change

The coronavirus pandemic caught the business world by surprise, but the catastrophe might force companies to face a crisis that has been unfolding in plain sight: climate change. We asked faculty members affiliated with the Business and... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

August 2021
Teaching Note

Fair Park Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Site (A) and (B)

By: Willy Shih

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 622-003 and 622-004. View Details

Keywords: Operations Improvement; Operations And Processes; Toyota Production System; Operations; Service Operations; Health Pandemics; Service Delivery; Problems and Challenges; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Health Industry; United States