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- 2007
- Working Paper
Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm
This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager 'interpersonal authority' over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Thomas J. Watson, IBM and Nazi Germany
By: Geoffrey Jones, Grace Ballor and Adrian Brown
Considers the strategy of U.S.-owned IBM, then a manufacturer of punch cards, in Nazi Germany before 1937. Opens with IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson meeting Adolf Hitler in his capacity as President of the International Chamber of Commerce. IBM had acquired a German company... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals
By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman
We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details
- May 2007 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Dollar General (A)
By: Willy Shih, Stephen P. Kaufman and Rebecca McKillican
Dollar General Corporation (DG) operates one of the leading chains of extreme value retailers in the United States. 2006 revenues reached $9.2 billion, making DG the 6th largest mass retailer in the country. With revenues growing at 9% annually over the five-year... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised May 2012)
- Case
PRG-Schultz International
By: Paul W. Marshall and James Weber
PRG-Schultz will run out of cash within a couple of months unless the new CEO can reduce costs and restructure the company's debt. PRG was the dominant market leader in the audit recovery industry. The industry consisted of firms which employed accounting professionals... View Details
- February 2007 (Revised March 2007)
- Case
UBS and Climate Change--Warming Up to Global Action?
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Forest L. Reinhardt and Elizabeth Raabe
Marco Suter, Executive Vice-Chairman, UBS Board of Directors, carefully studied the chart on his desk. It showed the public commitment of major financial institutions to help mitigate global warming. Evidently, UBS lagged behind its competitors. The graph was part of a... View Details
- January 2007 (Revised August 2007)
- Case
Lobbying for Love? Southwest Airlines and the Wright Amendment
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis A. Yao, Libby Cantrill and Patricia Wu
The fall of 2004 brought exciting news to Love Field, the Texas headquarters of Southwest Airlines. Delta Airlines, one of Southwest's main competitors, had announced that it would dramatically decrease service from the nearby Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)... View Details
- August 2006 (Revised November 2007)
- Background Note
A Framework for Pursuing Diversity in the Workplace
By: Thomas J. DeLong and Michael Brookshire
Assesses the costs and benefits of pursuing diversity and pinpoints the primary barriers to creating diverse workplaces. It also proposes some options for advancing diversity in an organization. View Details
- August 2006
- Case
Dreyer's Slow Churned(TM) Ice Cream
By: Noel H. Watson, Steven C. Wheelwright and Brian DeLacey
Examines capacity forecasting and planning in a complex new product introduction scenario. The introduction at Dreyer's, a large dairy snack manufacturer, involves not only a new product but a new manufacturing process and product package, thus implying a significant... View Details
- August 2006 (Revised July 2008)
- Case
Rwanda and the Thousand Hills Coffee Co.: Breaking New Grounds
By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Michelle McDonald
Examines the strategies of a Boston-based start-up to market Rwandan coffee. Describes the history of the coffee industry, the era of cartelization and the International Coffee Agreement, and the subsequent collapse in producer prices after 1989. Also describes the... View Details
- July 2006 (Revised December 2007)
- Case
Strategic Outsourcing at Bharti Airtel Limited
By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, V.G. Narayanan and Michele Jurgens
Faced with exponential growth and a competitive telecom environment, Bharti looks for ways to better manage its capital expenditures for telecommunications and information technology. One option is to hand over management of its telecom and IT networks to its vendors.... View Details
- June 2006 (Revised April 2007)
- Case
Nephila: Innovation in Catastrophe Risk Insurance
By: Kenneth A. Froot and Michael Heinrich
At the cross-section of capital markets and the catastrophe insurance space stands the hedge fund Nephila. Nephila must decide how best to take advantage of the newly presented market opportunities post hurricanes Katrina, Wilma, and Rita. Nephila has a plethora of... View Details
- March 2006 (Revised February 2007)
- Case
Massive Incorporated (A)
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Clark Gilbert and Victoria Winston
How do you go to market with a brand new product in a new industry? How does a business develop an opportunity and then adapt its strategy to ensure success? Who are the early adopters and how does a business work with them? Katherine Hays, chief operating office at... View Details
- March 2006 (Revised December 2013)
- Case
Hexcel Turnaround — 2001 (A)
By: Paul W. Marshall, James Quinn and Reed Martin
Hexcel's new CEO is faced with deciding how to "take out" $60 million in cash costs in fiscal 2002, as two of the company's end markets—electronics and commercial aerospace—are expected to decline precipitously. Options include closing plants, exiting a business, or... View Details
- February 2006 (Revised October 2006)
- Case
Veridian: Putting a Value on Values
By: Rakesh Khurana, Joel Podolny and Jaan Margus Elias
David Langstaff, the CEO of Veridian, a defense company, struggles with the decision of selling the company. Langstaff has concerned himself with inculcalating his organization with the values necessary for superior achievement over the long term. But as a fiduciary,... View Details
- October 2005 (Revised March 2006)
- Case
Strategic Inflection: TiVo in 2005
By: David B. Yoffie, Pai-Ling Yin and Barbara Mack
In the late 1990s, TiVo pioneered the digital video recorder (DVR), a new consumer electronics category. By 2005, the company was the clear leader in technology and installed base. It had also built extraordinary loyalty among its customers. However, TiVo lost a half... View Details
- October 2005 (Revised June 2007)
- Case
Apollo Hospitals--First-World Health Care at Emerging-Market Prices
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Tarun Khanna and Carin-Isabel Knoop
The Apollo Hospitals Group, one of Asia's premier health care organizations, had come to rival the best health care organizations on the globe. Apollo offered advanced medical procedures, such as cardiac surgery using the beating heart technique, at very high levels of... View Details
- September 2005 (Revised July 2008)
- Case
Rancho Cucamonga
By: Arthur I Segel and David Robert Cotterman
Mikey Jones must decide what type of senior housing to develop, whether he should operate the facility himself, and what financing option he should pursue. View Details
- August 2005 (Revised April 2006)
- Case
Kemps LLC: Introducing Time-Driven ABC
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Kemps is making a strategy shift: from being focused on fulfilling customer requests to becoming the best cost dairy producer in the industry. Its existing manufacturing cost system, however, fails to capture the costs associated with handling special flavors, small... View Details
- July 2005 (Revised July 2006)
- Case
Icebreaker: The US Entry Decision
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Dan Heath
Jeremy Moon, CEO of Icebreaker, merino wool, outdoor apparel manufacturer, believed the company could be a big hit in the United States, despite the presence of entrenched rivals. But Icebreaker clearly needed a new distribution approach. One option was to position... View Details