Publications

December 2009
Article

Restructuring Within an Academic Health Center to Support Quality and Safety: The Development of the Center for Quality and Safety at the Massachusetts General Hospital

By: Richard Bohmer, Jonathan David Bloom, Elizabeth Mort MD, Akinluwa Demehin and Gregg Meyer MD

Recent focus on the need to improve the quality and safety of health care has created new challenges for academic health centers (AHCs). Whereas previously quality was largely assumed, today it is increasingly quantifiable and requires organized systems for... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Performance Improvement; Quality; Safety; Massachusetts

Article

Product Positioning in a Two-Dimensional Vertical Differentiation Model: The Role of Quality Costs

By: Dominique Lauga and Elie Ofek

We study a duopoly model where consumers are heterogeneous with respect to their willingness to pay for two product characteristics and marginal costs are increasing with the quality level chosen on each attribute. We show that while firms seek to manage competition... View Details

Keywords: Duopoly and Oligopoly; Customers; Quality; Product Positioning; Competition; Management; Cost; Product

2018
Working Paper

How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections

By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel

Many production processes are subject to inspection to ensure they meet quality, safety, and environmental standards imposed by companies and regulators. Inspection accuracy is critical to inspections being a useful input to assessing risks, allocating quality... View Details

Keywords: Assessment; Bias; Inspection; Scheduling; Econometric Analysis; Empirical Research; Regulation; Health; Food; Safety; Quality; Performance Consistency; Performance Evaluation; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry

SSRN

2020
Article

Humanizing Management and Innovation

By: Hirotaka Takeuchi

This article is an excerpt from The Wise Company book that Ikujiro Nonaka and I published in October 2019 from Oxford University Press. It is a sequel to The Knowledge-Creating Company book we published 25 years ago. As our thinking evolved from information to... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Creation; Knowledge Practice; Phronesis; Practical Wisdom; Ba; Continuous Innovation; Fusion Of Analog And Digital; Management As A Way Of Life; Management Style; Emotions; Innovation and Management

29 Mar 2022
Book

5 Qualities That Help Companies Thrive for Decades—Even Centuries

“Problems happen in family management when there are three or four brothers. All brothers may not be of equal capability and commitment.” Successful family-owned enterprises build mechanisms that over time recognize the value that each... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

June 2020
Article

How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections

By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel

Accuracy and consistency are critical for inspections to be an effective, fair, and useful tool for assessing risks, quality, and suppliers—and for making decisions based on those assessments. We examine how inspector schedules could introduce bias that erodes... View Details

Keywords: Assessment; Bias; Inspection; Scheduling; Econometric Analysis; Empirical Research; Regulation; Health; Food; Safety; Quality; Performance Consistency; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

November 1989 (Revised January 1990)
Case

Paul Revere Insurance Co. (C): Competing For the Baldrige Award--The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Exercise

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award requires firms to submit applications that conform to a rigorous quality-assessment system. This case consists of several parts of a service company's 1988 Baldrige application together with material from the Malcolm Baldrige... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Performance Improvement; Performance Evaluation

Educators

18 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

How New Managers Become Great Managers

who want to take on more and more responsibility over the course of their careers must ask themselves: Am I preparing myself to manage and lead? How Can We Learn To Manage And Lead? Although some of the... View Details

Keywords: by Linda Hill

2019
Article

Can Big Data Improve Firm Decision Quality? The Role of Data Quality and Data Diagnosticity

By: Maryam Ghasemaghaei and Goran Calic

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, despite the large variety of data, the huge volume of generated data, and the fast velocity of obtaining data (i.e., big data), quality of big data is far from perfect. Therefore, many firms defer collecting and integrating big data as... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Analytics and Data Science; Decisions; Quality

July–August 2008
Article

Interview with a Quality Leader: Regina E. Herzlinger on Consumer-Driven Healthcare

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA. She received her bachelor's degree from MIT and her doctorate from the Harvard Business School The first woman to be tenured and... View Details

Keywords: Consumer-driven Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

30 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Earnings Quality and Ownership Structure: The Role of Private Equity Sponsors

Keywords: by Sharon P. Katz; Financial Services

February 2019
Article

Who Benefits Most in Disease Management Programs: Improving Target Efficiency

By: Timothy Simcoe, Maryaline Catillon and Paul Gertler

Disease management programs aim to reduce cost by improving the quality of care for chronic diseases. Evidence of their effectiveness is mixed. Reducing health care spending sufficiently to cover program costs has proved particularly challenging. This study uses a... View Details

Keywords: Health Economics; Target Efficiency; Diabetes; Disease Management; Program Evaluation; Heterogeneity; Economics; Health; Quality; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Health Industry

May 2013
Supplement

Transport Corporation of India (C): Dealing with Shortcomings in Service Quality

By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi

Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details

Keywords: Transportation; Transportation Industry; India

2012
Chapter

Consumer-Driven Health Care: Conquering Health Care Cost and Quality Demons

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Quality; Demand and Consumers; Health Industry

27 Sep 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings

Keywords: by Michael Luca & Jonathan Smith; Education; Information; Publishing

February 2016 (Revised February 2020)
Teaching Note

Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the Tiger Reserve

By: Ryan W. Buell and Ananth Raman

Celebrated as one of the world's premiere luxury hotel brands, Oberoi Hotels attracts and serves some of the most quality sensitive guests in the world. The case considers the challenge of how an organization with a standardized service model can repeatedly delight... View Details

Keywords: Service Quality; Service Management; Service Quality Competition; Customer Management; Customer Service Excellence; Employee Empowerment; Employee Engagement; Employee Training; Hospitality; Hotel Industry; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Training; Quality; Accommodations Industry; India