Publications

September 2016
Case

Financial Services at Falabella (A)

By: C. Fritz Foley and Agustin M. Hurtado

In 2010, the board and senior management team of Falabella, a leading retailer with operations throughout Latin America, faced choices about what to do with its financial services division. More than 4.5 million customers had CMR credit cards that could be used in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Credit; Financial Institutions; Personal Finance; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Banking Industry; Retail Industry; Latin America; Chile; Argentina; Colombia; Peru

01 Aug 2012
News

Why Is Great Service So Rare?

November 1990 (Revised February 1991)
Case

Commonwealth Blood Transfusion Service

For the first time, the Commonwealth Blood Transfusion Service (CBTS) has to determine product costs for the output of its plasma fractionation center. The motivation for determining product costs is political in nature. Therefore, the CBTS has to find a way to report... View Details

Keywords: Product; Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

Web

Contact Us

Contact Us Contact Us Work with Us Career & Professional Development is dedicated to fostering connections between employers and HBS talent. Our office takes a personalized... View Details

01 Feb 2000
News

Financial Services 24/7

Wingspanbank has joined with Lycos Inc. and Juno Online Services in an effort to attract more clients, and it is banking on retaining customers by offering benefits such as discounts when using a... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

Winter 2014
Article

Does Service Bundling Reduce Churn?

By: Jeff Prince and Shane Greenstein

We examine whether bundling in telecommunications services reduces churn using a series of large, independent cross sections of household decisions. To identify the effect of bundling, we construct a pseudo-panel dataset and utilize a linear, dynamic panel-data model,... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Customer Satisfaction; Product Marketing; Telecommunications Industry

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June 2004 (Revised July 2005)
Case

Procter & Gamble: Global Business Services

By: Thomas J. DeLong, Warren Brackin, Alex Cabanas, Phil Shellhammer and David L. Ager

Dave Walker, vice-president of business service opportunities and chairman of the governance team at Procter & Gamble, must decide what to do with P&G's 5,700 employee Global Business Services (GBS) group. GBS brought together internal services such as finance,... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Change Management; Decision Making; Globalized Firms and Management; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Organizational Design

April 2006
Background Note

Informing Service Management with Customer Data

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Taught as the third module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations. Explores the role of data analysis in ongoing service management. Describes how to realize the maximum amount of value from analyses and use this information in... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Design; Analytics and Data Science; Service Operations; Mathematical Methods; Value

Program

Leading Professional Service Firms

Summary As entry barriers rapidly disappear, competition is accelerating and reshaping the business landscape for professional service firms. Navigating this continual change successfully requires extraordinary leadership abilities. This... View Details

Keywords: Professional Services; Professional Services

Web

RCP Terms of Service - Research Computing Services

617-495-6600 immediately. You must ensure that your use of the Platform is consistent with the parameters the RCP has explicitly expressed, and you will not attempt to make external connections to services... View Details

22 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries

Wipro Technologies, an Indian outsource provider of software services, launches its own lean initiative. "In terms of operations and improvements, the service industries in general are a long way behind manufacturing," Upton... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Computer

October 2000 (Revised March 2001)
Case

eLance.com: Building a Professional Services Marketplace

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Kristin Kohler

Launched as an eBay for services, eLance promises to leverage the capabilities of the Internet to not only change the way services are bought and sold, but change the fundamental dynamics of the global economy. Building on theories posited in the HBR article by Tim... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Job Search; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Web Sites; Service Industry; Service Industry

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Web

HBSGrid Terms of Service - Research Computing Services

Usage and Policies HBSGrid Terms of Service 5ms To obtain access to Harvard Business School’s technology resources through Research Computing Services (RCS), you must acknowledge this agreement either... View Details

February 2015
Article

The Great Recession, Insurance Mandates, and the Use of In Vitro Fertilization Services in the United States

By: Sorapop Kiatpongsan, Robert S. Huckman and Mark D. Hornstein

Objective: To investigate the relationship between economic activities, insurance mandates, and the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United States.

Design: We examined the correlation between the coincident index (a proxy for overall economic... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Recessions; Medical Care; In Vitro Fertilization; Health Industry; United States

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Article

Enfranchisement of Service Workers

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and James Heskett

Enfranchisement is achieved through an integration of empowerment with methods of pay for performance. Evidence from Ito Yokado Group in Japan and Nordstrom in the US demonstrates the positive effects of enfranchisement. Successful efforts to enfranchise employees: 1.... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Franchise Ownership; Employees; Compensation and Benefits; Service Industry; Japan; United States

Read Now

April 1996 (Revised March 1998)
Case

Lex Service PLC-- Cost of Capital

By: W. Carl Kester and Kendall Backstrand

Lex Service company has grown into a large multidivisional company with a substantial capital budget. In 1993, the board was reviewing its capital budgeting procedures. Specifically, it sought to determine the company's cost of capital and whether it should use... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Cost of Capital; Equity; Capital Budgeting

October 2004 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Staffing in Professional Service Firms

By: Ashish Nanda

This case discusses the problem of balancing demand and supply of professionals over time using a fictional scenario. View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Service Industry