Publications

19 Mar 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Lone Wolves in Competitive Equilibria

Keywords: by Ravi Jagadeesan, Scott Duke Kominers, and Ross Rheingans-Yoo

April 2005 (Revised February 2007)
Case

American Outsourcing

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Alexander Veytsman

Covers the phenomenon of outsourcing jobs from the United States. Reviews the evolution of Mexico's Maquiladoras, manufacturing special economic areas in China, and information technology and service-sourcing in India. Also reviews exports/imports, exchange rates,... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Employment; Emerging Markets; Wages; Trade; United States; Mexico; China; India

December 1981 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Mike Miller (A)

Mike Miller, Harvard MBA '78, resigned his first job out of HBS within six months because he believed his personal values and learning objectives could not be accommodated. Students may discuss the problems of anticipating corporate culture, learning the ropes,... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Values and Beliefs; Jobs and Positions; Organizational Culture; Personal Development and Career; Personal Characteristics

05 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles and Working Papers 2008

shape strategy. We excerpt a portion on advice for new CEOs, written with HBS faculty Jay W. Lorsch and Nitin Nohria. 3. Why Don't Managers Think Deeply? Professor Jim Heskett poses this provacative question to HBS Working Knowledge readers. 4. Steve View Details

Keywords: by Staff

2024
Working Paper

Displacement or Complementarity? The Labor Market Impact of Generative AI

By: Wilbur Xinyuan Chen, Suraj Srinivasan and Saleh Zakerinia

Generative AI is poised to reshape the labor market, affecting cognitive and white-collar occupations in ways distinct from past technological revolutions. This study examines whether generative AI displaces workers or augments their jobs by analyzing labor demand and... View Details

Keywords: Generative Ai; Labor Market; Automation And Augmentation; Labor; AI and Machine Learning; Competency and Skills

2022
White Paper

Building from the Bottom Up: What Business Can Do to Strengthen the Bottom Line by Investing in Front-line Workers

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Manjari Raman

A significant number of American workers—44%—are employed in low wage jobs at the front line of industries. Despite undertaking some of the most tedious, dirtiest, and most dangerous jobs, low-wage workers are—and have long been—the most likely to be overlooked by... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Labor Market; Low-wage Workers; Worker Welfare; Churn/retention; Morale; Jobs and Positions; Employees; Wages; Retention; Well-being; Human Resources

April 2000 (Revised April 2004)
Case

TixToGo: Financing a Silicon Valley Start-up

Describes TixToGo, a Silicon Valley start-up company that offers online solutions to individuals and organizations that want to offer activities and/or collect registration fees for events over the Internet. A serial entrepreneur and his partner started the company in... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Technology; Financing and Loans; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; San Francisco

March 1969 (Revised August 1997)
Case

Fabritek Corp.

Describes a large-volume automotive parts contract in a high-quality machine work company. Quality and delivery problems arise when one of the four men on the job is replaced with a high producer who cannot earn a substantial bonus because of machine interference. View Details

Keywords: Production; Performance Productivity; Auto Industry

Article

Exposure to Harmful Workplace Practices Could Account for Inequality in Life Spans Across Different Demographic Groups

By: Joel Goh, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Stefanos A. Zenios

The existence of important socioeconomic disparities in health and mortality is a well-established fact. Many pathways have been adduced to explain inequality in life spans. In this article we examine one factor that has been somewhat neglected: people with different... View Details

Keywords: Occupational Health; Inequality; Life Expectancy; Socioeconomic Issues; Health

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March 2008 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Ashdown Contracting

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Firas Alkhatib

Ashdown's "growth" plan called for Mustafa Khalaf to leave his job as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Ashdown Contracting and to focus his attention on the growth of a separate business entity, Ashdown Pipeline, where Ashdown believed the greatest potential for the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Succession; Market Entry and Exit; Business Strategy

2022
Chapter

Capitalism and the Environment

By: Geoffrey Jones

Capitalism drove the environmental decimation of the planet. The environment was seen as a free good, while the consequences of dirty industrial and agricultural processes were seen as external to the firm. Public policies largely allowed this to happen, as politicians... View Details

Keywords: History; Environment; Sustainability; Capitalism; Ethics; Business History; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Climate Change

Teaching Interest

The Startup Toolkit

This SIP is an abridged version of Startup Bootcamp and is for students who want to develop the skills they need to understand their customer pain points, jobs to be done and a cursory exploration of the core elements of getting a startup off the ground. View Details

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

strategy to engage a broad audience through telling an interesting and important story being played out in twenty-first-century organizations. Q: What makes a CIO job the most volatile, high-turnover job in... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2024
Chapter

Broadening Ownership for a Responsible Digital Revolution

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

The chapter explores how broadening ownership of business enterprises provides a response to three concerns raised by the digital revolution. The first is the potential for widespread job displacement and unemployment due to automation. The second relates to the harms... View Details

Keywords: Digital; Industrial Policy; Work; Ownership; Technology Adoption; Job Cuts and Outsourcing

2016
Book

Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (without Money or Muscle)

By: Deepak Malhotra

Some negotiations are easy. Others are more difficult. And then there are situations that seem completely hopeless. Conflict is escalating, people are getting aggressive, and no one is willing to back down. And, to top it off, you have little power or other resources... View Details

Keywords: Dealmaking; Diplomacy; Conflict; Dispute Resolution; Strategy; Conflict Management; Negotiation

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29 Oct 2024
Cold Call Podcast

Can a Coffee Shop in Utah Help Solve Underemployment for People with Disabilities?

Keywords: Re: Richard S. Ruback

20 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

When Predicting Other People's Preferences, You're Probably Wrong

themselves, only 39.3 percent of the observers predicted their partners would make that choice. The observers did a better job of predicting their partners’ alternate preferences when the choices were relatively similar. In the fourth... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

December 2023 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Monsters in the Machine? Tackling the Challenge of Responsible AI

By: Paul M. Healy and Debora L. Spar

In November of 2022, the small tech company OpenAI released ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot which quickly captured the public’s imagination—becoming the world’s fastest-growing consumer application within months of its release. Though observers from across... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Technology Adoption; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Technology Industry; United States; European Union; China