Publications

SSRN

Research Summary

Overview

By: Srikant M. Datar

Professor Datar has several research and course development interests. His initial areas of research interest were in cost management and management control, strategy implementation and governance. Over the last few years his areas of interest are management education,... View Details

February 2014
Case

BGI: Data-driven Research

By: Willy Shih and Sen Chai

BGI has the largest installed gene-sequencing capacity in the world, and to Zhang Gengyun, general manager of the Life Sciences Division, this represented an opportunity to apply his training as a plant breeder and his early career work as a biochemist to improving... View Details

Jon M. Jachimowicz is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches the Leadership and Organizational Behavior course (LEAD) in the Required Curriculum. He studies... View Details

February 1998 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Airborne Express

By: Jan W. Rivkin

In the wake of a highly successful quarter, senior managers of Airborne Express, the third largest player in the express mail industry, review the firm's competitive position. Airborne has survived, and recently prospered, in an industry with significant economies of... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Business Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Global Strategy; Rank and Position; Service Industry

30 Apr 2012
News

India's Ambitious National Identification Program

Article

Conversational Receptiveness: Expressing Engagement with Opposing Views

By: M. Yeomans, J. Minson, H. Collins, H. Chen and F. Gino

We examine “conversational receptiveness”—the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then... View Details

Keywords: Receptiveness; Natural Language Processing; Disagreement; Interpersonal Communication; Relationships; Conflict Management

29 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Is There a Method to Musk’s Madness on Twitter?

and even foolhardy. Some in tech suggest there’s more of a “move fast, break things” strategy to it than perhaps meets the eye. How does it look to you? Wu: We shouldn’t be surprised by the management style that Musk is taking to Twitter.... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Technology

Article

Predictions, Prophets, and Restarting Your Business

By: Frank V. Cespedes

The first task of crisis management is a reasonably accurate view of the current situation and how it might evolve. There are many predictions about so-called “new normal” as a result of the semi-enforced social distancing necessitated by the coronavirus. But most are... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Strategic Planning

December 2014
Article

The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization

By: Nicholas Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

Empirical studies on information communication technologies (ICT) typically aggregate the "information" and "communication" components together. We show theoretically and empirically that this is problematic. Information and communication technologies have very... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Information Technology; Organizational Structure

February 1986 (Revised June 1988)
Supplement

Donna Dubinsky and Apple Computer, Inc. (E)

Presents a description of two management style assessment questionnaires that were completed by Donna Dubinsky: the Influence Style Questionnaire and the Leadership Practices Inventory. Dubinsky's results are summarized and presented in two exhibit graphs. This data... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Computer Industry; United States

2020
Book

The Power of Experiments: Decision-Making in a Data-Driven World

By: Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman

Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of changes to an... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; Randomized Controlled Trials; Organizations; Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

2011
Working Paper

The Impact of Forward-Looking Metrics on Employee Decision Making

By: Pablo Casas-Arce, F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and V.G. Narayanan

This paper analyzes the effects of providing forward-looking metrics on employee decision making. We use data from a southern European bank that, in April 2002, started providing its branch managers with customer lifetime value (CLV) information about mortgage... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mortgages; Employees; Information; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Service Delivery; Banking Industry; Europe

February 1994 (Revised May 1999)
Case

Manville Corp. Fiber Glass Group (C)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Sarah Gant

Manville Corp.'s senior managers are surprised when Japanese government officials advise them not to go forward with their plan to add a cancer warning label to diatomaceous earth (DE) products sold in Japan. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has ruled... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Ethics; Conflict of Interests; Health; Safety; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Policy; Japan

Bill Vrattos is a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School, where he teaches Investment Strategies, a course on public market investing in the elective curriculum. He also co-teaches Private Equity Projects and Ecosystems, where he mentors student groups on... View Details

2017
Chapter

Are Founder CEOs Good Managers?

By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Megan Lawrence and Raffaella Sadun

We investigate the management practices adopted by firms where the founders are also the CEOs using data from the World Management Survey. We find that founder CEO firms have the lowest management scores of any owner-manager pair type and that this difference is... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance

Summer 2013
Article

Analyzing Performance of Service Organizations: Balanced Benchmarking Can Identify Best Practices That Are Often Hidden

By: H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Just as sports teams have increasingly relied on rigorous quantitative analyses, so have many businesses. In particular, a growing number of service organizations have been investigating the use of a sophisticated linear programming technique called DEA, or data... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Benchmarking; Management

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April 1998 (Revised June 1999)
Case

Bausch & Lomb, Inc.: Pressure to Perform

By: Robert L. Simons, Alex C. Sapir '97 and Indra Reinbergs

Bausch & Lomb is the subject of press attacks and experiences a sharp fall in stock price when management practices are exposed. Aggressive goal setting, supported by financial market expectations, is discussed as a precursor to a series of events that results in... View Details

Keywords: Performance Expectations; Management Practices and Processes; Ethics; Financial Markets; Financial Statements; Business and Shareholder Relations

February 2008 (Revised September 2008)
Case

Indesit Company: Does Global Matter?

By: Joseph L. Bower

In 2007, the leadership of the Indesit Company is focused on long-term corporate strategy. After 3 decades, the company has emerged as the number 2 home appliance producer in Europe. Should they invest further to be number 1, or should they focus on the global market,... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Global Strategy; Growth and Development; Business or Company Management; Brands and Branding; Markets; Problems and Challenges; Corporate Strategy; Consumer Products Industry