Publications

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May 16, 2016
Article

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

By: Dina Gerdeman and John A. Quelch

Chipotle Mexican Grill’s ongoing struggle to win customers back months after a contaminated food crisis highlights the challenges companies face with keeping food safe.

Chipotle has seen its shares tumble and recently reported its first-ever quarterly loss... View Details

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October 1991 (Revised January 2000)
Case

Workplace Safety at Alcoa (A)

By: Kim B. Clark and Joshua D. Margolis

Examines the challenge facing the managers of a large aluminum manufacturing plant in its drive to improve workplace safety. The CEO of the company has made safety a top priority. The plant has made good progress in reducing the injury rate, but now confronts the need... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Safety; Problems and Challenges; Change Management; Operations; Resignation and Termination; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Manufacturing Industry; United States

20 Oct 2020
Working Paper Summaries

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

Keywords: by Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu

May 18, 2012
Article

Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss

By: David I Levine, Michael W. Toffel and Matthew S. Johnson

Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We... View Details

Keywords: Regulation; Occupational Safety; Evaluation; Regression; Matching; Difference In Differences; Safety; Health; Working Conditions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competitive Advantage; Performance; Manufacturing Industry; California

February 2011
Case

Chegg: Textbook Rental Takes Flight

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, William A. Sahlman and Evan W. Richardson

In late 2010, Silicon Valley-based Chegg, the leading online college textbook rental company, is scaling rapidly. The case recounts Chegg's history from its origins as a distant competitor to Craigslist in college classified listings through a pivot into textbook... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Books; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Service Operations; Renting or Rental; Online Technology; Education Industry; Service Industry; California

January 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk (A)

By: Clayton M. Christensen

Hewlett-Packard decided that, to grow more rapidly, it needed to design a revolutionary disk drive product that would create an entirely new market or application for magnetic recording technology. The company followed most of the "rules" good managers follow in such... View Details

Keywords: Management; Information Infrastructure; Innovation and Management; Product Development; Computer Industry; United States

19 Jan 2021
Cold Call Podcast

Engaging Community to Create Proactive, Equitable Public Safety

Keywords: Re: Mitchell B. Weiss; Public Administration

09 May 2018
Research & Ideas

A Simple Way for Restaurant Inspectors to Improve Food Safety

Restaurant inspectors can be the last line of defense between you and moldy bread. (HighLaZ) Simple tweaks to the schedules of food safety inspectors could result in hundreds of thousands of currently... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Food & Beverage; Service

December 1999 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Workplace Safety at Alcoa (B)

At the May 1996 annual shareholders meeting, Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill reported that Alcoa was making great progress toward becoming a world-class leader, both in terms of workplace safety and profitability. This validated of O'Neill's decade-long emphasis on safety as... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Working Conditions; Quality; Cost; Profit; Management Systems

14 Jun 2023
Research & Ideas

Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need

Perks like remote work or unlimited vacation time might be nice, but when it comes to true fulfillment in a post-pandemic workscape, psychological safety is essential. Harvard Business School Professor Amy... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

2008
Chapter

Overcoming Barriers to Collaboration: Psychological Safety and Learning in Diverse Teams

By: A. Edmondson and Kate Roloff

We review research on psychological safety and team learning to identify core ideas and findings in these closely related literatures and to propose a model in which a negative relationship between team member diversity and team collaboration is moderated by... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Groups and Teams; Social and Collaborative Networks; Performance Improvement; Learning; Diversity

October 2017 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Improving Worker Safety in the Era of Machine Learning (A)

By: Michael W. Toffel, Dan Levy, Jose Ramon Morales Arilla and Matthew S. Johnson

Managers make predictions all the time: How fast will my markets grow? How much inventory do I need? How intensively should I monitor my suppliers? Which potential customers will be most responsive to a particular marketing campaign? Which job candidates should I... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Policy Implementation; Empirical Research; Inspection; Occupational Safety; Occupational Health; Regulation; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Policy; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Safety; Manufacturing Industry; Construction Industry; United States

16 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Advancing Black Talent: From the Flight Ramp to 'Family-Sustaining' Careers at Delta

At the end of 2020—seven months after COVID-19 had sent the airline industry into a tailspin and five months after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police provoked nationwide protests for racial justice—Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian was moved View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Air Transportation

Article

From Orientation to Behavior: The Interplay Between Learning Orientation, Open-mindedness, and Psychological Safety in Team Learning

By: Jean-François Harvey, Kevin J. Johnson, Kathryn S. Roloff and Amy C. Edmondson

Do teams with motivation to learn actually engage in the behaviors that produce learning? Though team learning orientation has been found to be positively related to team learning, we know little about how and when it actually fosters team learning. It is obviously not... View Details

Keywords: Emergent States; Goal Orientation; Open-mindedness; Psychological Safety; Team Learning; Teams; Groups and Teams; Learning; Goals and Objectives

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June 17, 2016
Comment

Companies Need to Start Marketing Security to Customers

By: John A. Quelch

Recent events in Orlando underscore an important marketing truth: consumer safety and security are mission critical. A popular nightclub, Pulse, known as a safe place for the LGBT community, is put out of business at least temporarily by a terrorist act. Not far away... View Details

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February 2021
Case

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (A)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh, Sarah McAra and Christian Godwin

In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook debuted the iPhone 6S with enhanced security measures that enflamed a debate on privacy and public safety around the world. The iPhone 6S, amid a heightened concern for privacy following the 2013 revelation of clandestine U.S. surveillance... View Details

18 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

New Hires Lose Psychological Safety After Year One. How to Fix It.

punishment.” And: “Caregivers feel free to question the decisions or actions of those with more authority.” Three rounds of surveys were conducted from 2017 to 2021, allowing the researchers View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

January 2014 (Revised June 2014)
Supplement

Dumb Ways To Die: Advertising Train Safety (C)

By: John Quelch

The case series focuses on Melbourne Trains' viral advertising campaign to improve safe behaviors around trains among young people. This iconic, low budget campaign swept the Cannes Lions advertising awards in 2013 and became a social media sensation. View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Marketing Communication; Viral Advertising; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing Strategy; Digital Marketing; Advertising Industry; Public Administration Industry; Transportation Industry; Oceania; Europe

January 2014 (Revised June 2014)
Supplement

Dumb Ways To Die: Advertising Train Safety (B)

By: John Quelch

The case series focuses on Melbourne Trains' viral advertising campaign to improve safe behaviors around trains among young people. This iconic, low budget campaign swept the Cannes Lions advertising awards in 2013 and became a social media sensation. View Details

Keywords: Marketing Channels; Marketing Communication; Viral Advertising; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Public Sector; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Digital Marketing; Advertising Industry; Public Administration Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Oceania; Europe