Publications

09 Jun 2022
HBS Case

From Truck Driver to Manager: US Foods’ Novel Approach to Staff Shortages

to restaurateurs as they decide which products to order. During the pandemic, many of these consultants were used to help restaurateurs apply for federal pandemic relief aid via webinars and one-on-one sessions. Once business began to... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

18 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

Hazard Warning: The Unacceptable Cost of Toxic Workers

unlocking the data used in the analysis. Among other services, the consulting company advises clients on how to make better hires by tracking personality traits and skills revealed during the hiring process. Cornerstone usually focuses on... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

2014
Teaching Note

Fine Harvest Restaurant Group

By: Clara X. Chen, Kenneth A. Merchant, Tatiana Sandino and Wim Van der Stede

The Fine Harvest Restaurant Group cases A and B examine a company's design of a new system to evaluate the performance (and determine the bonuses) for its restaurant managers. Fine Harvest had traditionally evaluated restaurant managers based on store margins and had... View Details

Keywords: Incentive Systems; Relative Performance Evaluation; Restaurant Industry; Accounting; Economics; Human Resources; Measurement and Metrics; Labor; Performance; Salesforce Management; Retail Industry; North and Central America

January 1997 (Revised December 1999)
Case

OXO International

By: H. Kent Bowen, Marilyn Matis and Sylvie Ryckebusch

OXO, a kitchen tools and gadgets company, was started by a businessman who had 30 years of experience in the housewares industry. With his wife and son as founders, he creates a new niche in the gadgets industry for high-end gourmet stores. The company has headquarters... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Supply Chain Management; Production; Design; Ownership; Business Startups; Acquisition; Consumer Products Industry; Asia; New York (city, NY); Connecticut

April 2021 (Revised January 2022)
Case

SA Taxi: A Vehicle for Empowerment? (A)

By: Nien-he Hsieh, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and F. Christopher Eaglin

SA Taxi was a vertically integrated business that operated in South Africa’s distinctive taxi industry. Despite being plagued by violence, informal structures, unsafe road practices and lack of government support, the taxi industry had grown to become South Africa’s... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Accountability; Ownership; Ownership Stake; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Equality and Inequality; Race; Situation or Environment; Transportation Industry; South Africa; Africa

16 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

As AI Upends Recruiting, Job Seekers Need a Waze App for Careers

Fuller partnered on the work with scholars at the Project on Workforce including Kerry McKittrick, co-director; Ali Epstein, research project coordinator; and research assistants Sherry Seibel, Cole Wilson, and Vasundhara Dash. The team reviewed more than 350 pieces of... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

2021
Book

Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma

By: Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael Tushman

Why do successful firms find it so difficult to adapt in the face of change—to innovate? In the past ten years, the importance of this question has increased as more industries and firms confront disruptive change. The pandemic has accelerated this crisis, collapsing... View Details

Keywords: Organization Change And Adaptation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Management; Leading Change

March 2012
Article

Performance Pressure as a Double-edged Sword: Enhancing Team Motivation but Undermining the Use of Team Knowledge

By: Heidi K. Gardner

In this paper, I develop and empirically test the proposition that performance pressure acts as a double-edged sword for teams, providing positive effects by enhancing the team's motivation to achieve good results while simultaneously triggering process losses. I... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Behavior; Groups and Teams; Performance

31 Aug 2021
Book

Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

doctor turned social entrepreneur, a Bangladeshi policeman, an American business consultant trying to create change, and a Polish Holocaust survivor—and included both historical examples and contemporary anecdotes about how people have... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

27 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique?

particularly clothing, much more cheaply than in the United States. What the Fungs have accomplished is similar to what Japanese automakers accomplished a generation ago. By strictly adhering to principles of quality control—principles that were espoused by American... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

02 Mar 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is the Government’s Role in US Health Care?

underwriting. Its estimate does not include the costs of sorting out acceptable applicants or denying payments under existing policies, another substantial amount. And it does not include the costs that doctors and hospitals incur in denying applications for payment,... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

18 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Who Really Determines CEO Salary Packages?

contract cause: compensation consultation commonality. A compensation consultant is an independent advisor who helps shareholders decide what to pay their CEO. Compensation View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Consulting

July 2024
Case

Roja Garimella: Developing a Founder's Judgment

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

Roja Garimella’s path to becoming a founder was anything but straight. Setting her sights on a career in medicine since childhood, she committed to medical school with her acceptance to college. And yet, throughout her studies, she continually explored alternative... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Judgments; Financial Services Industry; Health Industry

April 2006
Article

Competitive Advantage and the Value Network Configuration: Making Decisions at a Swedish Life Insurance Company

By: Øystein D. Fjeldstad and Christian H.M. Ketels

When the Swedish Life Insurers Förenade Liv found themselves in difficulties in a rapidly changing market, their response was to call in the consultants. And one of the consultant's first suggestions was to use the Value Network, not the Value Chain, as a new... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Fluctuation; Networks; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Value; Quality; Decision Making; Market Transactions; Performance Effectiveness; Customers; Insurance Industry; Sweden

Read Now

2002
Book

Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs

By: Rakesh Khurana

Corporate CEOs are headline news. Stock prices rise and fall at word of their hiring and firing. Business media debate their merits and defects as if individual leaders determined the health of the economy. Yet we know surprisingly little about how CEOs are selected... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Roles; Selection and Staffing; Personal Characteristics; Experience and Expertise; Investment Activism; Corporate Strategy

05 Jul 2011
First Look

First Look: July 5

Taliban and founded a consultancy in 2004. The case positions Sediqi's experiences against the background of Afghanistan's turbulent history, with a focus on the contested role of women in Afghani society. Purchase this... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2019 (Revised May 2021)
Case

pymetrics: Early Days

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2013, CEO Frida Polli was contemplating the next steps for her start-up business, pymetrics. After receiving her PhD in neuropsychology and MBA from HBS, she was determined to put her scientific and academic knowledge to work to build a business solving real world... View Details

May 2013
Article

How to Negotiate with VCs

By: Deepak Malhotra

VC-entrepreneur partnership agreements often contain flaws that become highly damaging as the parties come up against issues of power, trust, and much more. Yet many of the flaws are systematic and predictable—and hence preventable. The author, a longtime consultant to... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Negotiation Tactics; Entrepreneurship