Publications

September 2024 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Epic: The Future of Health Information Technology

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Brian L. Walker

How should the founder and leadership team of a health IT company with more than 45 years of market leadership prepare for the future, while navigating founder transitions and industry changes? Founded by Judy Faulkner in the late 1970s, Epic pioneered electronic... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Private Ownership; Customer Focus and Relationships; Information Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Health Industry; Electronics Industry; Information Technology Industry

March 2021 (Revised January 2023)
Case

The Trouble with TCE

By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella and Galit Goldstein

Trichloroethylene, or TCE, was a chemical used by tens of thousands of businesses in the United States. It was an affordable tool for many. Yet, TCE had been associated with important health risks, including cancer and autoimmune disease. TCE potentially posed other... View Details

Keywords: Trichloroethylene; Toxicity; Lobbying; Chemicals; Health Disorders; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Ethics; Business and Government Relations; Chemical Industry; United States

March 2018
Article

In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions

By: Eva Ascarza, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce Hardie, Aurelie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David T. Neal, Foster Provost and Rom Schrift

In today’s turbulent business environment, customer retention presents a significant challenge for many service companies. Academics have generated a large body of research that addresses part of that challenge—with a particular focus on predicting customer churn.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Retention; Churn; Customer Relationship Management; Measurement and Metrics

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Article

(Mis)perceptions of Inequality

By: Oliver P. Hauser and Michael I. Norton

Inequality is arguably the defining societal issue of the 21st century. The debate over “who gets what’ underlies policy debates ranging from taxation to health care to wages and permeates society at all levels, attracting increasing interest from policymakers,... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Wealth and Poverty; Perception; Society; Policy

Summer 2016
Article

Open Content, Linus' Law, and Neutral Point of View

By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu

The diffusion of the Internet and digital technologies has enabled many organizations to use the open-content production model to produce and disseminate knowledge. While several prior studies have shown that the open-content production model can lead to high-quality... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Internet and the Web; Balance and Stability; Operations; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Dissemination

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2014
Article

Models of Caring, or Acting as if One Cared, About the Welfare of Others

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper surveys the theoretical literature in which people are modeled as taking other people's payoffs into account either because this affects their utility directly or because they wish to impress others with their social-mindedness. Key experimental results that... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

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2012
Working Paper

Private and Public Decisions in Social Dilemmas: Evidence from Children's Behavior

Substantial research with adult populations has found that selfish impulses are less likely to be pursued when decisions are publicly observable. To the best of our knowledge, however, this behavioral regularity has not been systematically explored as potential... View Details

Keywords: Research; Age Characteristics; Behavior; Decisions; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Announcements; Situation or Environment

2010
Working Paper

Disagreement about the Team's Status Hierarchy: An Insidious Obstacle to Coordination and Performance

By: Heidi K. Gardner

Hierarchies are pervasive in groups, generally providing clear guidelines for the dominance and deference behaviors that members are expected to show based on their relative ranks. But what happens when team members disagree about where each member ranks on the... View Details

Keywords: Performance Effectiveness; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Conflict and Resolution; Perception; Status and Position; Cooperation

January 2008 (Revised March 2011)
Case

Henry J. Kaiser and the Art of the Possible

By: Anthony J. Mayo, Mark Benson and David Chen

From his humble beginnings as a local salesman in New York, Henry J. Kaiser rose to become one of the leading industrialists of 20th century America. Though he had no technical engineering training, Kaiser mastered the management and execution of plans for several... View Details

Keywords: History; Mission and Purpose; Transition; Management Practices and Processes; Construction; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Leadership Style; Business History; Business Growth and Maturation; Civil Society or Community; Business Strategy; Planning; Construction Industry; Shipping Industry; United States

Why do some companies succeed in defeating stronger rivals, while others fail? This is a question that, sooner or later, all ambitious competitors must face. Whether you’re a tiny start-up taking on industry giants or a giant moving into markets dominated by... View Details

23 Mar 2023
Blog Post

Arla Foods: How Sustainable Can A Dairy Company Be?

impact, the incentive model will reward the farmers leading the cooperative on sustainable dairy production. In parallel, Arla HQ is offering technical assistance and support for farmers, sharing resources and best practices so that... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

Having grown up in a developing country, Professor Sikochi’s research focus is driven by a desire to understand how capital flows to firms and entrepreneurs with the ultimate goal to help build capital markets in the developing economies. To this end, he conducts... View Details

John C. Mulliken

Strategy consultant, former CTO & CPO, public & private company board member, retail & climatetech entrepreneur, early stage investor. Father of two, husband, sailor, hiker, and aspirational road biker.

John is a senior lecturer in the... View Details

06 Nov 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, November 6, 2018

environment. Using a unique longitudinal sample of 1,069 leading public firms in 35 countries and 24 industries, I find that the effect of gender diversity on performance varies significantly across countries and industries due to... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

05 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 5, 2019

case describes how Robert Fadel, CEO and chairman of ABC, one of Lebanon’s leading retail and real estate groups, professionalized the family business. Robert was the second son of the company’s founder, Maurice Fadel, who had run it... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Research Summary

Transition Leadership

Michael Watkins is developing frameworks, programs, and e-performance tools for helping leaders to take charge in new senior management roles. New leaders' actions during their first few months on the job have a disproportionate impact on their ultimate success or... View Details

Research Summary

Impact of Technology on Industry Structure and Competitive Strategy

By: Stephen P. Bradley

Stephen Bradley’s research has focused for several years on the impact of technology on industry structure and competitive strategy. In particular he has been studying the convergence of information technology and telecommunications and how this convergence is... View Details

June 2025
Case

Parque del Sendero: Repositioning in the Death Care Industry in Chile

By: Jill Avery, Andres Cuneo and Marco Bertini

Facing changing consumer behavior and shifting industry conditions, Parque del Sendero, one of largest networks of cemeteries in Chile, considers repositioning its products to appeal to a broader swath of Chilean customers to fuel growth and a more profitable business... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Positioning; Branding; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Service Industry; Real Estate Industry; Chile