Publications

06 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

Latest Isn’t Always Greatest: Why Product Updates Capture Consumers

research suggests that marketers are well aware of the power of calling something “revised” as a means of selling products. A survey conducted by the researchers with former working professionals found that nearly half had worked at a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products; Retail

October 1986 (Revised November 1989)
Case

Becton Dickinson & Co.: VACUTAINER Systems Division

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Concerns negotiations between managers of Becton Dickinson's (BD) VACUTAINER division (which manufactures and sells blood collection products) and managers of a large hospital buying group. Recent changes in the health care industry are the background for the... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Process; Price; Sales; Manufacturing Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Health Industry; United States

August, 2022
Article

Billing and Insurance-Related Administrative Costs: A Cross-National Analysis

By: Barak D. Richman, Robert S. Kaplan, Japees Kohli, Dennis Purcell, Mahek Shah, Igna Bonfrer, Brian Golden, Rosemary Hannam, Will Mitchell, Daniel Cehic, Garry Crispin and Kevin A. Schulman

Billing and insurance-related costs are a significant source of wasteful health care spending in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, but these administrative burdens vary across national systems. We executed a microlevel accounting of these... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Costs; Administrative Costs; Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

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30 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Six Steps for Making Your Threat Credible

else to take your place. To signal your commitment to the threat, you might take the first steps toward creating an in-house IT department, perhaps by purchasing basic hardware and software. Incurring unrecoverable costs can have several... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

January 2019 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Chinese Infrastructure Investments in Sri Lanka: A Pearl or a Teardrop on the Belt and Road?

By: Meg Rithmire and Yihao Li

In 2015, a surprise presidential election result seemed to imperil Chinese investments in Sri Lanka, which were associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build global infrastructure. In the previous decade, China had undertaken two major projects in the... View Details

Keywords: Belt And Road Initiative; Investment; Infrastructure; China; Sri Lanka

July 1994 (Revised April 1995)
Case

San Francisco Bay Consulting

By: George P. Baker III and Karin B Monsler

San Francisco Bay Consulting leads the field of economic consulting and litigation support in the application of powerful computers and cutting edge software to manipulate and analyze large data sets. The transfer pricing system, used to facilitate the purchasing and... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Profit; Marketing; Fluctuation; Consulting Industry; Computer Industry

31 May 2017
What Do You Think?

Can Amazon Do What Walmart Couldn’t, Stop the 'Wheel of Retailing'?

for growth for the company; what would consumers want to purchase online that would fit into a rapid response distribution model? Students rejected numerous options involving lower-value items such as dog food, which would require... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

September 2011 (Revised October 2012)
Case

Sykué Bioenergya

By: Shon R. Hiatt

Sykué Bioenergya (Sykué) was formed in April 2006 with the goal of building four 30 megawatt (MW) bioelectricity power plants in Brazil's Bahia province, 1,500 kilometers north of Sao Paulo. Bahia's savannah-like conditions were perfect for growing elephant grass, a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Entrepreneurship; Energy Industry; Brazil

August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Accounting for Political Risk at AES

By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Suraj Srinivasan

As a global energy generating company, AES frequently faces challenges from political changes and instability. This is exacerbated by the fact that in many instances AES' primary customer is the government, which is also in charge of law-making. For example, AES'... View Details

Keywords: Political Risk; Asset Impairment; Risk Factors; Fair Value; Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Energy Industry; Bulgaria; Dominican Republic; United States; Venezuela

February 2022
Supplement

SpartanNash Company: The Amazon Warrants (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty, E. Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher

As of 12/31/21, Amazon held $22 billion of equity and warrants in related companies. In fact, it often requests a free grant of warrants when it enters into a new commercial agreement with a supplier. Over the past 20 years, Amazon has gotten warrants almost 20... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Value Creation; Consumer Behavior; Negotiation; Distribution; Ownership; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Equity; Distribution Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

Is Performance-Based Pricing the Right Price for You?

individuals responsible for the actual purchase decision do not want to absorb the career risk of overpaying. In our personal lives, if we overpay for a product, we suffer some marginal consequence. In business, it can literally end the... View Details

Keywords: by Benson Shapiro; Manufacturing

Article

Creating Value Together

By: Maxim Sytch and Ranjay Gulati

Conventional wisdom suggests that companies should avoid growing dependent on their business partners. If one company, the thinking goes, grows too dependent on a counterpart by getting the entire input for a particular activity from it and is not able to switch... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Performance Improvement; Partners and Partnerships; Power and Influence; Value Creation

02 Oct 2017
What Do You Think?

Do Bitcoin and Digital Currency Have a Future?

tradable digital currencies that can be used to purchase future goods or services offered by the startup, possibly on more favorable terms than in the real market. According to one report, 140 startups have raised over $2 billion in this... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett; Financial Services

July 2009
Journal Article

Dirty Work, Clean Hands: The Moral Psychology of Indirect Agency

By: Neeru Paharia, Karim Kassam, Joshua Greene and Max Bazerman

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency.... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence

2008
Working Paper

Dirty Work, Clean Hands: The Moral Psychology of Indirect Agency

By: Neeru Paharia, Karim S. Kassam, Joshua D. Greene and Max H. Bazerman

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency.... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence

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17 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Is There Help for the Big Ticket Buyer?

Research to write this essay, I expected to find that consumer decision-making research grappled with the types of tough purchasing and investment decisions that were on my callers' minds. To my surprise, I found that this literature has... View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman

Article

From TV to Web: Content Strategies for Ads That Drive Online Sales

By: Thales S. Teixeira

Consumers have become avid media multitaskers, moving seamlessly between their TVs and digital devices. Shorter TV commercials have reduced both the quantity and quality of consumer attention during prime-time viewing hours. In this new media environment, can TV... View Details

Keywords: TV Advertising; Multitasking; Infotainment; Television; Prime Time; Advertising; Online Advertising; Advertising Industry

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March 2004 (Revised April 2005)
Case

International Rivers Network and the Bujagali Dam Project (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Aldo Sesia

In the summer of 2002, the International Rivers Network (IRN), an environmental NGO located in Berkeley, California, was engaged in what appeared to be the last hours of a three year campaign to stop a $582 million dam and hydropower project at Bujagali Falls in... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Project Finance; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Projects; Developing Countries and Economies; Energy Industry; Uganda

2016
Book

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services that customers want to buy and are willing to purchase at a premium price.... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Consumer Behavior