Publications

2020
Case

Building Transparency within the Sustainable Apparel Coalition: The Road to Successful Pre-Competitive Collaboration

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) was founded in 2010 to develop a common set of sustainability standards for the apparel, footwear, and home textile industries. The organization was an example of pre-competitive collaboration, a strategy in which companies... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Cooperation; Social Issues; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Evaluation; Apparel and Accessories Industry

July 2022
Supplement

General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (B)

By: Debora L. Spar and Alicia Dadlani

Jeff Harmening, CEO of General Mills, one of the world's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereals and packaged foods, was deeply disturbed and instantly aware that he and General Mills would need to respond. George Floyd, an African-American man who had been accused... View Details

Keywords: Race; Decisions; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Consumer Products Industry; Minneapolis; Minnesota; United States

July 2022
Case

General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (A)

By: Debora L. Spar and Alicia Dadlani

Jeff Harmening, CEO of General Mills, one of the world's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereals and packaged foods, was deeply disturbed and instantly aware that he and General Mills would need to respond. George Floyd, an African-American man who had been accused... View Details

Keywords: Race; Decisions; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Minneapolis; Minnesota; United States

January 2004
Article

Cross-country Technological Adoption: Making the Theories Face the Facts

By: Diego Comin and Bart Hobijn

We examine the diffusion of more than twenty technologies across twenty-three of the world's leading industrial economies. Our evidence covers major technology classes such as textile production, steel manufacture, communications, information technology,... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Development Economics; Human Capital; Government and Politics; Trade; Production; Information Technology; Steel Industry; Communications Industry

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February 2012 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Sweet Deal—Industry Self-Regulation of Breakfast Cereal Advertising to Children

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis Yao, Britta Kelley and Lizzie Gomez

In response to growing concern about childhood obesity, in February 2006 the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) announced an initiative to examine its self-regulatory program on children's advertising. The existing program was a voluntary cross-industry program... View Details

Keywords: Food; Advertising; Ethics; Food and Beverage Industry

November 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

ConAgra Foods

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Ingrid Vargas

In 2002, ConAgra Foods CEO Bruce Rohde was deliberating the next steps in the process of transforming the company from an agribusiness giant to a value-added food processor. ConAgra had become the second largest food company and number one food service supplier in the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Leading Change; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Food; Agribusiness; Product; Business Processes; Management Teams; Expansion; Brands and Branding; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

2019
Article

The Social Desirability of Offshoring: A Swiss Consensus (1945–1975)

By: Sabine Pitteloud

This article focuses on the evolution of the rhetoric and practice of corporate offshoring in Switzerland from the post-war economic boom to the industrial crisis in the mid-seventies. The virtue of a historical perspective on the issue of offshoring is to show how... View Details

Keywords: Multinationals; Offshoring And Outsourcing; Relocation; Labor Relations; Multinational Firms and Management; Labor and Management Relations; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Switzerland

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June 2018
Case

The Grommet in 2018

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Karen Gordon Mills and Lena Goldberg

The Grommet, an online product launch platform, was at the brink of scaling its business. The Grommet's daily launch and sale of innovative consumer products, using personal videos created by product makers, had led to its initial success. In 2014, the company launched... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Value Capture; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Value; Retail Industry

December 1997 (Revised April 1998)
Case

www.springs.com

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Melissa Dailey

Business Week's June 1997 "Rising Star" profile of Springs Industries' president and COO, Crandall Bowles, reported that she was poised to become one of the top two or three women executives in the country. In November 1997, the company announced Bowles' appointment to... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Operations; Product Marketing; Management; Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; South Carolina

July 2020
Case

Amanda and Kristen: Mented Cosmetics

By: Steven Rogers, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Alterrell Mills

The co-founders (Black HBS alumnae) of an e-commerce beauty startup explore the unmet needs within the beauty industry. This case study examines the entrepreneurial opportunities that come from identifying an underserved market, specifically within the Black community... View Details

November 2019 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Grupo Éxito: Facing Colombia's Competitive Grocery Retail Industry

By: José B. Alvarez, Carla Larangeira, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Miguel Diaz Moreno

Grupo Éxito, a leading South American retailer, faced declining market shares in Colombia in 2019 with the arrival of low-cost competitors and emerging digital trends. Originally founded in Medellín, Éxito had over the course of its seventy-year history evolved from a... View Details

Keywords: Grocery; Market Share; Information Technology; Trends; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry; Colombia; Latin America