decision making - Publications - Faculty & Research

August 2017 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Hilti (A): Fleet Management?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Oliver Gassmann and Roman Sauer

This case explores the strategic decision-making process of premium power tools manufacturer Hilti in 1999, when the company was considering implementing a fleet management system in the construction industry. Fleet management would involve a shift from selling power... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

September 2002
Case

Align Technology, Inc.: Matching Manufacturing Capacity to Sales Demand

By: H. Kent Bowen and Jonathan P Groberg

Align Technology is a four-year-old medical products company that has invented a new product requiring new manufacturing processes. Demand for the new product has grown more slowly than initial forecasts predicted, and the cost structure is preventing the company from... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Problems and Challenges; Product; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Strategy; Sales; Demand and Consumers; Production; Health Industry

Citation

Educators

Purchase

29 Oct 2000
Research & Ideas

Building a Powerful Prestige Brand

started their business, their product line enjoyed little consumer awareness outside New York City. But the couple was determined to build a large market for premium cosmetics. One of the earliest and most important decisions that the... View Details

Keywords: by Nancy F. Koehn; Beauty & Cosmetics; Consumer Products; Retail

15 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

The Founding CEO’s Dilemma: Stay or Go?

investors. VCs, in particular, often make the assumption that the person who started the company is going to have to be replaced along the way, and may therefore have a quicker "trigger finger" than the founder-CEO wants. But... View Details

12 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 12, 2019

traditionally faced the decision to make the input themselves or buy it through the market. However, rapidly decreasing information costs allow firms to harness external communities that are neither... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Right from the Start: Common Traps for the New Leader

authority until people feel like they know you." Coming In With The Answer New leaders who show up with a single answer for complex organizational problems usually do so out of arrogance or insecurity, or because they believe they must appear View Details

Keywords: by Dan Ciampa & Michael D. Watkins

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

aspects, such as the availability of content, are also relevant. Music from Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, or Radiohead, for example, has been available on p2p networks since Napster's time but is yet to make it to iTunes. Record companies... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

29 Oct 2000
Research & Ideas

The Entrepreneurial Venture: A Conversation

who enter an industry at precisely the wrong time end up suffering too badly: resilience and decision making on the fly are two traits we try to inculcate in students before they graduate. Describe your... View Details

Keywords: by Susan Young

26 Mar 2013
First Look

First Look: March 26

individuals within the organization. Using unique data on lending decisions made by employees in a highly decentralized financial services organization, we show that a monitoring system that captures soft information for vertical... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

Why Business IT Innovation is so Difficult

but that makes firms vulnerable to innovative upstarts over the long haul. Would this trend also hold true for companies engaging in business processs innovation? McElheran wondered—a question not much studied by researchers. To find out,... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

30 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Measuring the Efficacy of the World’s Managers

organizational management practices all over the world. The project was borne of a widely perceived gap in economic research. In business academia, there is an optimistic tendency to assume that managers generally make View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

23 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 23

paper uses data from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances to test the relationship between the banks' market power and households' self-reported levels of credit constraints. The 1983 Survey was the last to identify households' geographic location, View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

21 Dec 2009
Research & Ideas

Good Banks, Bad Banks, and Government’s Role as Fixer

the failure of many other large institutions. Most of the 600 institutions recapitalized by the federal government over the last year do not satisfy either criterion. A lot of bailout decisions were made ad hoc without a clear rationale.... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Banking; Financial Services

15 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

A Mass Crisis Can Overwhelm Health Care. Liberia Found a Solution.

Response to Covid-19 (Harvard Business Review) What Quarantine Can Teach You About Spending and Happiness (Wall Street Journal) Read COVID-19 coverage from Working Knowledge The health care system in the US is larger and far more complex, and the virus is already... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

01 Aug 2019
What Do You Think?

Has the Twitter Age Left the Case Method Behind?

up in class.” But Jan G countered, “With proper facilitation, the learning you mention, of valuing diverse experiences, thought patterns and viewpoints for the corporation, should naturally happen Which makes all of us realize it is not... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Education

06 Sep 2017
What Do You Think?

Summing Up: What Are the Limits of CEO Activism?

still makes a statement.” Referring to the specific action of Ken Frazier, CEO of Merck, who resigned from a presidential appointment in protest, hollidsu said, “Frazier was showing true leadership. He should be commended even if the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

11 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Politicians Benefited From Using Toxic Loans

according to the researchers. About 43% used toxic loans More than 72 percent of the 300 largest local governments in France used structured loans, according to the researchers. And of those loans, 40 percent can be classified as toxic. "To View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

23 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 23, 2019

managers have to learn how to lead others rather than do the work themselves, to win trust and respect, to motivate, and to strike the right balance between delegation and control. Many fail to make the transition successfully. In this... View Details