Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,558)
- Faculty Publications (1,244)
- January 2017
- Case
SoulCycle
By: David Collis, Eric Van den Steen and Ashley Hartman
Co-founders Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler have grown SoulCycle from a business idea in 2006 to a major presence among urban boutique fitness studios in 2015. In March 2015, fitness company Equinox approaches them with an offer to buy them out. Evaluating the offer... View Details
- Article
Deep Down My Enemy Is Good: Thinking about the True Self Reduces Intergroup Bias
By: Julian De Freitas and Mina Cikara
Intergroup bias—preference for one's in-group relative to out-groups—is one of the most robust phenomena in all of psychology. Here we investigate whether a positive bias that operates at the individual-level, belief in a good true self, may be leveraged to reduce... View Details
- Article
Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market
By: Santosh Anagol, Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar
We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents cater to the beliefs of... View Details
Keywords: Advice; Customers; Insurance; Service Operations; Motivation and Incentives; Ethics; India
- December 2016
- Article
Corporate Sponsorship in Culture—A Case of Collaborative Marketing by a Global Bank and a Major Art Museum
By: Ragnar Lund and Stephen A. Greyser
This paper examines cultural sponsorship from a partnership perspective. It studies the collaboration between two international institutions, a bank and a museum, and their value co-creation with customers and audiences. This in-depth case study of a sponsorship... View Details
- November 2016 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in Motion
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott
Evan Siddall, newly appointed CEO of Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation, a governmental organization focused on the residential housing market, is charged with leading change at the organization. The case follows this process of change step by step and looks at the... View Details
Keywords: Leadership, Personal Strategy ＆ Style; Government Organizations; Performance Management; Organizational Change And Transformation; Culture; Leading Change; Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Government Administration; Risk Management; Restructuring; Leadership; Performance; Change Management; Financial Services Industry; Canada
- November 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 11: Using Diagnostic and Interactive Control Systems
By: Robert Simons
This module reading introduces diagnostic and interactive control systems. Diagnostic control systems are the management-by-exception systems that managers use to monitor the achievement of their business strategy. Interactive control systems are the systems that top... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Performance Measurement; Diagnostic Control Systems; Interactive Control Systems; Emergent Strategy; Goal Setting; Incentives; Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Management Systems; Performance Evaluation
- November 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 12: Aligning Performance Goals and Incentives
By: Robert Simons
This module reading explains how managers use performance goals and incentives to ensure that employee actions align with the overall business strategy of the organization. The module begins by discussing how managers use goals to communicate business strategy, the... View Details
- Article
Overcoming the Outcome Bias: Making Intentions Matter
By: Ovul Sezer, Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino and Max Bazerman
People often make the well-documented mistake of paying too much attention to the outcomes of others’ actions while neglecting information about the original intentions leading to those outcomes. In five experiments, we examine interventions aimed at reducing this... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Misaki Capital and Sangetsu Corporation
By: Ian Gow, Charles C.Y. Wang, Naoko Jinjo and Nobuo Sato
Japan’s corporate culture has traditionally prioritized the interests of stakeholders such as customers, employees, and suppliers over those of shareholders. After a decades-long economic slump, Japan’s government has revitalized efforts to improve corporate governance... View Details
- October 2016
- Case
Elon Musk: Balancing Purpose and Risk
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Sarah Mehta
The case is used to illustrate the place of ‘Purpose’ versus financial risk and returns in a founder’s objectives. It also addresses personal risk profile of different founders, and when paired with the Risk Tolerance Exercise, it enables evaluating one’s own appetite... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 6: Evaluating Strategic Profit Performance
By: Robert Simons
This module reading demonstrates how to calculate and analyze the profit generated by different business strategies. Formulas and examples are provided to calculate profit generated by changes in market share, revenue growth, efficiency improvements, and support costs.... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Going Rogue: Choson Exchange in North Korea
By: Sophus A. Reinert, Dawn H. Lau and Amy MacBeath
In mid-2015, the Singapore-based CEO of Choson Exchange Geoffrey See pondered his next move. He had founded Choson Exchange as a non-profit in 2009 to further female entrepreneurship in North Korea by providing business and legal training in the isolated country. Now,... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised February 2017)
- Teaching Note
Alvogen
By: Daniel Isenberg, William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell
Alvogen is an Icelandic pharmaceutical company that makes and sells generic drugs. Founder and CEO Robert Wessman is deciding whether to take on private equity investors willing to buy out all shareholders, merge with a large and publicly-traded US pharmaceutical... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised February 2019)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 5: Building a Profit Plan
By: Robert Simons
This module reading describes how to build a profit plan to reflect the strategy of a business in economic terms. After introducing the profit wheel, cash wheel, and ROE wheel, the module illustrates how to use a profit plan to assess the viability of different... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Profit Planning; Cash Flow Analysis; Asset Utilization; Return On Equity; Business Planning; Testing Strategy; Analyzing Strategic Alternative; Strategy; Asset Management; Cash Flow; Investment Return; Management Systems; Profit
- October 2016
- Article
Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance and Resource Allocation in Science
By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Eva Guinan, Karim R. Lakhani and Christoph Riedl
Selecting among alternative innovative projects is a core management task in all innovating organizations. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of frontier scientific research projects. We argue that the "intellectual distance" between the knowledge embodied in... View Details
- October 2016
- Article
Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity
By: Alan MacCormack and Daniel J. Sturtevant
Technical debt is created when design decisions that are expedient in the short-term increase the costs of maintaining and adapting this system in future. An important component of technical debt relates to decisions about system architecture. As systems grow and... View Details
- 2017
- Article
The Impact of Training Informal Healthcare Providers in India: A Randomized Controlled Trial
By: Jishnu Das, Abhijit Chowdhury, Reshmaan Hussam and Abhijit Banerjee
Health care providers without formal medical qualifications provide more than 70% of all primary care in rural India. Training these informal providers may be one way to improve the quality of care where few alternatives exist. We report on a randomized controlled... View Details
- September 2016 (Revised October 2018)
- Case
Springfield Hospital
By: Susanna Gallani and Robert Kaplan
One of the key roles of costing systems is to support the evaluation of performance and facilitate appropriate resource allocations. Through participation in a comparative cost study, management at Springfield Hospital, known for its heavy focus on operational... View Details
- September 2016 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
Western Technology Investment
By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Nicole Keller
Based in Portola Valley, California, Western Technology Investment (WTI) specialized in a hybrid form of debt and equity financing for early-stage companies. Like traditional venture capital and private equity firms, WTI raised funds from institutional investors and... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Self-Employment Dynamics and the Returns to Entrepreneurship
By: Eleanor W. Dillon and Christopher T. Stanton
Small business owners and others in self-employment have the option to transition to paid work. If there is initial uncertainty about entrepreneurial earnings, this option increases the expected lifetime value of self-employment relative to pay in a single year. This... View Details