Publications

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14 Dec 2022
Blog Post

Creating Emerging Markets Sustainability Series - Reducing Plastic Pollution on a Global Scale

Creating Emerging Markets Sustainability Series – Reducing Plastic Pollution on a Global Scale Cover image features Anand Burman (left) and María Emilia Correa (right). A recent article in the Boston Globe describes the disheartening... View Details

01 Jan 2021
News

Avoiding a Plastic Pandemic: The Future of Sustainability in a Post COVID-19 World

Keywords: Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing; Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing

23 May 2008
News

Plastic makes it too easy for consumers to spend more than they planned

1995
Working Paper

Notes on Modularity in Design and Innovation in Advanced Ceramics and Engineering Plastics

By: K. B. Clark

June 2001
Book Review

Review of Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America, by Alison J. Clarke

By: Nancy F. Koehn

Keywords: Consumer Products Industry; United States

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July 1990 (Revised July 1990)
Teaching Note

Minneapolis Plastic Packaging Ban (A) and (B) & Waste Reduction in Taiwan, Teaching Note

By: George C. Lodge

06 Mar 2025
Blog Post

IFC India 2025: Sustainability in Action: Inside Hindustan Unilever’s Public Sanitation and Plastic Recycling Facilities

our visit to Hindustan Unilever (HUL), a subsidiary of Unilever. We visited a community sanitation facility in Dharavi, one of the world’s largest slums, and a plastic recycling facility (Material Recovery Facility, or MRF). These sites... View Details

Article

Sadness, Identity, and Plastic in Over-shopping: The Interplay of Materialism, Poor Credit Management, and Emotional Buying Motives in Predicting Compulsive Buying

By: Grant Edward Donnelly, Masha Ksendzova and Ryan Howell

A comprehensive study is currently lacking to explain why material values strongly influence compulsive buying. The goal of the current study is to test if money management, buying motivations for improving mood and identity, and self-transformation expectations... View Details

Keywords: Credit Cards; Consumer Behavior; Identity; Emotions

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2011
Teaching Note

Juner New Materials: On the Road to IPO (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donglin Xia, Ning Jia and Ziqian Zhao

Juner New Materials (Juner) is a private China-based company that develops, produces, and distributes modified plastic compounds. Founded in 1995 by female serial entrepreneur Xiaomin Chen, Juner has exhibited strong performance and growth potential in the past fifteen... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Entrepreneurship; Financial Statements; IPO; Valuation; Women Executives; China; Plastics; China

September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Algramo

By: Michael Chu, Monica Silva and Mariana Cal

Founded in 2013 by José Manuel Moller in Chile, Algramo first became known for addressing the “poverty tax” (the surcharge paid by lower income families for staples sold in smaller sizes) through specially-designed dispensers in low-income neighborhood grocery stores... View Details

Keywords: Packaging-as-a-wallet; Plastic Waste; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Reusable Packaging; Alliances With FMCGs To Meet ESG Goals; Social Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Value Creation; Goals and Objectives; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Latin America; South America; Chile

February 2013 (Revised March 2015)
Case

The LEGO Group: Publish or Protect?

By: Willy C. Shih and Sen Chai

Senior managers at the LEGO Group are faced with a quandary: Should they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work, should they keep them as trade secrets, or should they publish them so that they would go into the public domain and... View Details

Awards

Financial Times Responsible Business Education Award

Winner of the 2023 Financial Times’ Responsible Business Education Award for “The Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Accelerating a Circular Economy for Plastic Packaging” (Michigan Ross School of Business Case #9-550-406, WDI, 2020) with Alexandra Carr, Zhili Chen, Austin... View Details

08 Jun 2021
News

Plexiglass Is Everywhere, With No Proof It Keeps Covid at Bay

February 2003 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Asociacion Colombiana de Industrias Plasticas (Acoplasticos)

By: Michael E. Porter and Willis M. Emmons III

Acoplasticos was established in 1961 as a lobbying group for Colombia's major plastics manufacturing companies. In the early 1980s, the organization shifted its focus toward improving the productivity of the Colombian plastics and rubber cluster, which also included... View Details

Keywords: Cooperation; Information Technology; Alliances; Research and Development; Business and Government Relations; Performance Productivity; Developing Countries and Economies; Manufacturing Industry; Chemical Industry; Colombia

26 Nov 2019
News

The FOOD Episode!

26 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Baker Library's Latest Collection: Little Black Library

When Cathy Chukwulebe (MBA 2021) set up a plastic bin with books about antiracism and the Black experience in the Harvard Business School Schwartz Pavilion in the summer of 2020, she never imagined that the collection would grow to sites... View Details

September 1990 (Revised March 1993)
Case

General Electric Plastics: Organizing the Marketing Function

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Describes the rapid growth of General Electric Plastics for over the last decade to a $5 billion (sales) company. The accompanying organizational transitions are described. The task is to design a marketing organization for the coming decade given the anticipated... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Marketing Strategy; Organizational Design; Growth and Development Strategy