Publications

May 2007
Article

Aspects of Endowment: A Query Theory of Value Construction

By: Eric Johnson, Gerald Häubl and Anat Keinan

How do people judge the monetary value of objects? One clue is provided by the typical endowment study (D. Kahneman, J. L. Knetsch, & R. H. Thaler, 1991), in which participants are randomly given either a good, such as a coffee mug, that they may later sell ("sellers")... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Forecasting and Prediction; Theory; Valuation; Loss; Ownership; Decision Choices and Conditions

November 2007
Article

Measuring Consumer and Competitive Impact with Elasticity Decompositions

Marketing investments are designed to change consumer behavior in ways that help goods compete in the marketplace. Previous research has focused on using elasticity decompositions to measure how these investments affect either consumer decision making or competing... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Measurement and Metrics; Mathematical Methods; Competitive Advantage

Read Now

December 1992 (Revised May 1993)
Case

Porsche AG

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Describes the financial management of the research and development departments of an automobile manufacturer and technology supplier. Existing cost systems measure accurately the costs incurred by department and by project. But little formal information is provided... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Cost Accounting; Research and Development; Machinery and Machining; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

June 2011 (Revised December 2013)
Case

FIJI Water: Carbon Negative?

By: Francesca Gino, Michael W. Toffel and Stephanie van Sice

Seeking to go beyond global best practices in reducing environmental impacts, FIJI Water, a premium artesian bottled water company in the United States, launched a Carbon Negative campaign that would offset more greenhouse gas emissions than were released by the... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Footprint; Carbon Offsetting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Brands and Branding; Negotiation Tactics; Business and Government Relations; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Fiji

April 2010 (Revised March 2011)
Case

Tata Nano The People's Car

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Bharat N. Anand and Rachna Tahilyani

The case explores how Tata Motors, India's largest automobile company, developed the Nano, the world's cheapest car. The case focuses on the translation of Ratan Tata's (chairman of Tata Motors) vision of a safe affordable car for the masses by Ravi Kant, managing... View Details

Keywords: Price; Globalized Firms and Management; Disruptive Innovation; Emerging Markets; Business Processes; Quality; Competition; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; India

October 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

DO & CO: Gourmet Entertainment

By: Juan Alcácer and Esel Çekin

This case is about a global catering, restaurant, and hospitality company, DO & CO, growing geographically with its existing businesses while also adding new brands to its portfolio. The company had $1 billion in revenues in 2015 from its three divisions: airline... View Details

July 2016 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Cyber Breach at Target

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Lynn S. Paine and Neeraj Goyal

In November and December of 2013, Target Corporation suffered one of the largest cyber breaches to date. The breach that occurred during the busy holiday shopping season resulted in personal and credit card information of approximately 110 million Target customers... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Credit Cards; Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Governing and Advisory Boards; Crisis Management; Retail Industry

June 1990 (Revised August 1994)
Case

Sorrell Ridge: Slotting Allowances

By: John A. Quelch

Management is attempting to penetrate the California retail grocery market with the company's line of all-fruit preserves. Substantial up-front fees (slotting allowances) have been requested by the chains. Management must decide how to respond. View Details

Keywords: Food; Distribution; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; California

April 2001
Supplement

Russell Reynolds Associates

By: Tarun Khanna

Features a presentation by Managing Directors Peter Drummond-Hay and Steve Scroggins of Russell Reynolds, to a class of MBA students at the Harvard Business School about the challenges of developing institutions of management and the labor market. View Details

Keywords: Management; Labor; Markets; Problems and Challenges

19 Nov 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Lazy Prices

Keywords: by Lauren Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy, and Quoc Nguyen; Financial Services

January 1998 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Lincoln Electric: Venturing Abroad

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Jamie O'Connell

Lincoln Electric, a 100-year-old manufacturer of welding equipment and consumables based in Cleveland, Ohio, motivates its U.S. employees through a culture of cooperation between management and labor and an unusual compensation system based on piecework and a large... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Restructuring; Transformation; Construction; Compensation and Benefits; Management; Market Entry and Exit; Labor and Management Relations; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Manufacturing Industry; Ohio

14 May 2020
Research & Ideas

What Leaders Can Do to Fight the COVID Fog

deftly: “How to most effectively communicate with all employees remotely and show empathy, while running around with [my] hair on fire trying to save the current business while at the same time trying to shape the future of the company in a 'new normal' environment.”... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

January 1989 (Revised February 1993)
Supplement

Warner Cable (B)

Describes the view of corporate officers regarding the changes made by General Manager Bruce McKinnon. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Telecommunications Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

06 Jan 2012
Op-Ed

Where Green Corporate Ratings Fail

impossible feat, claimed by a growing number of companies, is achieved by calculating the greenhouse-gas emissions of the organization's operations, investing in energy efficiency and other methods to reduce... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Toffel & Auden Schendler; Information; Publishing

H. Kent Bowen

Professor Kent Bowen's current research and teaching is in the field of operations and technology management. He has served as course head for the required first year MBA course, Technology and Operations Management, two advanced level courses, Running and Growing... View Details

28 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 28, 2010

leverages shared user relationships. We build upon the traditional view of bundling for economies of scope and price discrimination and extend this view to include the strategic management of a firm's user network. Envelopers capture... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Jun 2000
Research & Ideas

Presentation Round-Up

implications. Professor Alan K. McAdams from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell presented the "All Fiber Network" scenario, with a play-by-play of old and new technologies and telecomm competitors rising, contending and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace & Kenneth Liss; Technology; Communications; Telecommunications

June 2012
Article

Consequence-Cause Matching: Looking to the Consequences of Events to Infer Their Causes

By: Robyn A. LeBoeuf and Michael I. Norton

We show that people non-normatively infer event causes from event consequences. For example, people inferred that a product failure (computer crash) had a large cause (widespread computer virus) if it had a large consequence (job loss), but that the identical failure... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Product; Forecasting and Prediction; Motivation and Incentives; Failure

December 2016
Article

Industry Window Dressing

By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Dong Lou

We explore a new mechanism by which investors take correlated shortcuts and present evidence that managers undertake actions—in the form of sales management—to take advantage of these shortcuts. Specifically, we exploit a regulatory provision wherein a firm’s primary... View Details

Keywords: Investor Shortcuts; Industry Classification; Opportunistic Managerial Behavior; Discontinuity; Management Practices and Processes; Investment; Sales