Publications

Read Now

18 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Career Advice: Transforming the Energy Industry

Tell us about what you were doing before HBS and what brought you to HBS. Prior to HBS, I spent six years in the oil and gas industry working primarily on taking technologies in the energy space from the lab to the field. Being exposed to... View Details

Article

Cooks Make Tastier Food When They Can See Their Customers

By: Ryan W. Buell, Tami Kim and Chia-Jung Tsay

While existing theory suggests that increased contact between customers and employees diminishes efficiency, recent research demonstrates that when employees can see their customers, the beneficiaries of their efforts, the quality and efficiency of the service they... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Service Management; Service Industry

Read Now

2011
Chapter

Teams and Team Effectiveness in Health Services Organizations

By: Bruce J. Fried, Sharon Topping and Amy C. Edmondson

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Performance Effectiveness; Health; Health Industry

October–December 2005
Article

Medicine's Service Challenge: Blending Custom and Standard Care

By: Richard Bohmer

Keywords: Health; Problems and Challenges; Health Industry

18 Dec 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Concentration Levels in the U.S. Advertising and Marketing Services Industry: Myth vs. Reality

Keywords: by Alvin J. Silk & Charles King III; Advertising

September 2018
Article

Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services

By: Maria Ibanez, Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats

Work-scheduling research typically prescribes task sequences implemented by managers. Yet employees often have discretion to deviate from their prescribed sequence. Using data from 2.4 million radiological diagnoses, we find that doctors prioritize similar tasks... View Details

Keywords: Discretion; Scheduling; Queue; Healthcare; Learning; Experience; Decentralization; Operations; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity; Decisions; Time Management; Cost vs Benefits; Health Industry

SSRN

2003
Casebook

Professional Services: Text and Cases

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Ashish Nanda

DeLong and Nanda's Professional Services: Text and Cases is the first casebook to be published on the management of professional service firms (law firms, architecture, financial services, consulting). It includes a comprehensive selection of case studies that... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Management; Cases

Web

Data Tips & Toolkits - Research Computing Services

Package Wordcloud R Package Web Scraping Please remember that before embarking on a web scraping project, you should check the university guidance on web scraping and the... View Details

12 Oct 2016
News

Undermining Value-Based Purchasing — Lessons from the Pharmaceutical Industry

01 Sep 2017
News

The Biggest Industry You’ve Never Heard Of

Denmark known as Bjergsen. Several thousand people are watching him play LoL, as the game is known, right now on the streaming service Twitch, and tens of thousands more will watch the video of the game later. To guarantee that Bjerg, a... View Details

Keywords: April White; illustration by Brian Stauffer; esports; Twitch; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries

June 2012 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Business-driven Research at IBM Research India

By: Willy Shih, Margaret Pierson, Pankaj Agarwal, Diego Medicina and Juan Prajogo

What is the right mix between business-driven and pure research? This case considers the question in the setting of IBM Research India, where a management push for balance between exploratory research and the fulfillment of business needs meets some resistance from... View Details

Keywords: R＆D; Computer Services Industries; IT R＆D; Internet; Web-enabled Application; Technological Planning; Emerging Technologies; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Research and Development; Projects; Practice; India

Educators

October 1993 (Revised July 1997)
Case

Measure of Delight: The Pursuit of Quality at AT&T Universal Card Services (A)

By: Roy D. Shapiro and Michael D. Watkins

AT&T's Universal Card Services (UCS) has been extremely successful during its short lifetime. Dedicated to improving service quality and customer satisfaction, chief quality officer Rob Davis and his quality team have designed and put into place an unusual measurement... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Policy; Compensation and Benefits; Performance Evaluation; Quality; System; Telecommunications Industry

Educators

May 2013
Supplement

Transport Corporation of India (C): Dealing with Shortcomings in Service Quality

By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi

Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details

Keywords: Transportation; Transportation Industry; India

March 2013 (Revised October 2013)
Supplement

Growing Integrated Services at Jones Lang LaSalle (2008) (C)

By: Ranjay Gulati and Luciana Silvestri

This case describes the strategic and organizational challenges that Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) faced between 2005 and 2008. Having dismantled its long-standing service-line-oriented structure, JLL created two interdependent groups: Accounts and Markets. Accounts housed... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Strategy; Integration; Real Estate Industry; North America; South America; Central America