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- Faculty Publications (88)
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- November 2020 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
Community-First Public Safety
By: Mitchell B. Weiss and Sarah Mehta
How many police officer positions to fund? In August 2020, the question facing St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, which might have seemed routine to another mayor at another time in another place, was anything but. A pandemic had rendered the city some $19-$34 million short... View Details
- October 2020
- Case
Michael Phelps: 'It's Okay to Not Be Okay'
By: Boris Groysberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Michael Norris
In 2020, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, with 28 medals in various swimming events, was now retired. As he looked back on his 20+ year athletic career, he considered what had gone into making him the greatest of all time—the highs and lows,... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Novel Risks
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard and Anette Mikes
All organizations practice some form of risk management to identify and assess routine risks in their operations, supply chains, strategy, and external environment. These risk management policies, however, fail in the presence of novelty. Novel risks arise from... View Details
- Working Paper
Rebates in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Evidence from Medicines Sold in Retail Pharmacies in the U.S.
By: Pragya Kakani, Michael Chernew and Amitabh Chandra
Rising list prices are often used to illustrate the burden of prescription drug spending, but payers routinely negotiate rebates from manufacturers that generate differences between list and net prices. List prices are easily available and affect patient cost-sharing,... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Background Note
China Commerce 2020
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and Nathaniel Schwalb
China's digital commerce platforms engage billions of consumers daily across a number of routine tasks from banking, retail purchases, travel, gaming, payments, and more. These platforms are the most sophisticated/informed and highest performing/capable in the world.... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Topic Preference Detection: A Novel Approach to Understand Perspective Taking in Conversation
By: Michael Yeomans and Alison Wood Brooks
Although most humans engage in conversations constantly throughout their lives, conversational mistakes are commonplace— interacting with others is difficult, and conversation re-quires quick, relentless perspective-taking and decision making. For example: during every... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores
By: Ryan Raffaelli
This study examines how community-based brick-and-mortar retailers can achieve sustained market growth in the face of online and big box retail competition. The appearance of Amazon.com in 1995 led to a significant decline in the number of independent bookstores in the... View Details
- Winter 2020
- Article
Unsubstantiated Allegations and Organizational Culture
By: Eugene F. Soltes
When organizations investigate allegations of misconduct, they routinely determine that some allegations are unsubstantiated. A variety of factors may contribute to the conclusion that an allegation does not warrant substantiation, including a lack of supporting... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
The Limitations of Dynamic Capabilities
By: David J. Collis and Bharat Anand
The concept of dynamic capabilities draws its theoretical basis from two classic traditions within the strategy field—the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) (Wernerfelt, 1984) and market positioning (Porter, 1996). A dynamic capability qualifies as a source of... View Details
- September 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Teaching Note
Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation
By: Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John
Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.
This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation (619-018). In August 2017,... View Details
This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation (619-018). In August 2017,... View Details
- March 2019
- Technical Note
Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both—Lessons from Retail & Service Chains (Abridged)
By: Tatiana Sandino
This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Team Learning and Superior Firm Performance: A Meso-Level Perspective on Dynamic Capabilities
By: Jean-François Harvey, Henrik Bresman, Amy C. Edmondson and Gary P. Pisano
This paper proposes a team-based, meso-level perspective on dynamic capabilities. We argue that team-learning routines constitute a critical link between managerial cognition and organization-level processes of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. We draw from the... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation
By: Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John
Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.
In August 2017, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was looking for ways to differentiate itself from competing banks and was also trying to improve the financial well-being of... View Details
In August 2017, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was looking for ways to differentiate itself from competing banks and was also trying to improve the financial well-being of... View Details
- September 2018
- Article
An Exploratory Study of Product Development in Emerging Economies: Evidence from Medical Device Testing in India
By: Budhaditya Gupta and Stefan Thomke
Recent research has studied innovation in emerging economies. However, microlevel product development processes in these economies are relatively unexplored, and the mechanisms by which the emerging economy context might affect such processes are still unclear. In this... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised September 2018)
- Case
Predicting Purchasing Behavior at PriceMart (A)
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
This case follows VP of Marketing, Jill Wehunt, and analyst Mark Morse as they tackle a predictive analytics project to increase sales in the Mom & Baby unit of a nationally recognized retailer, PriceMart. Wehunt observed that in the midst of the chaos that surrounded... View Details
- March 2018
- Teaching Note
Mavi: Fashioning a Path to Brand Growth
By: Jill Avery and Gamze Yucaoglu
Mavi, a leading Turkish apparel retailer, had sales of $419 million in 2015, up 20%. Growth rates like these were becoming routine at Mavi. But, its path to growth was getting more challenging, and Turkven, Mavi’s private equity partner, was planning its exit options... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised March 2019)
- Technical Note
Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both — Lessons from Retail & Service Chains
By: Tatiana Sandino
This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details
- March 2018
- Article
Enacting Knowledge Strategy Through Social Media: Passable Trust and the Paradox of Non-work Interactions
By: Tsedal Neeley and Paul Leonardi
Despite the recognition that knowledge sharing among employees is necessary to enact knowledge strategy, little is known about how to enable such sharing. Recent research suggests that social media may promote knowledge sharing because they allow social lubrication and... View Details
- March 2018
- Article
Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster
By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Rebecca Henderson and Nelson P. Repenning
Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details
- Article
Leadership in Routine Emergencies and Crises: The Deepwater Horizon Incident
By: Arnold M. Howitt, Dutch Leonard and David W. Giles
Leadership in emergencies is a crucial element of becoming a high-performing Coast Guard officer. In this article, we argue that emergency leadership is not a single skill or uniform set of organizational competences. Instead, we identify a spectrum of emergency... View Details