Publications

April 1996 (Revised April 1996)
Case

Activity-Based Management at Stream International

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Norman Klein

Stream International's Crawfordsville, Indiana facilities undertake the design and implementation of an activity-based costing project. After analyzing the costs assigned to 161 work activities, Crawfordsville managers present five proposals for change based on ABM... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Activity Based Costing and Management; Indiana

19 Jun 2011
News

Don't hobble money market funds

03 Jan 2018
What Do You Think?

In the Wake of #MeToo, Should Corporate Boards Hire Compliance Officers?

on-the-job misdeeds served the purpose nicely. Those supporting the idea of a corporate board's creating an independent officer of compliance, reporting directly to the board, cited the need for visible action in the face of growing... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

April 2015 (Revised April 2022)
Case

Bankruptcy in the City of Detroit

By: Stuart Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Annelena Lobb

The June 2013 bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, Michigan was, at the time, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Detroit had struggled for years with a weakening tax base, high unemployment, a heavy debt load and increasing retiree costs. These... View Details

2011
Chapter

The Economics of Housing Finance Reform

By: David S. Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam

This paper analyzes the two leading types of proposals for reform of the housing finance system: (i) broad-based, explicit, priced government guarantees of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and (ii) privatization. Both proposals have drawbacks. Properly-priced... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Housing; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Government and Politics

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24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

The ABCs of Addressing Climate Change (From a Business Perspective)

It's Climate Week in New York City. The schedule features a UN Climate Summit, a People's Climate March, the Clinton Global Initiative, substantial criticism of the whole endeavor, and plenty of agitated interaction. There is a lot of noise here. How can businesses cut... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Energy; Utilities

28 Sep 2010
News

Hey Big Spenders: The Trickle-Down Argument

December 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

In the Eye of a Geopolitical Storm: South Korea's Lotte Group, China and the U.S. THAAD Missile Defense System (A)

By: Andy Zelleke and Brian Tilley

By late 2016 and early 2017, Lotte Group, a South Korean chaebol (large family-controlled business group) had become embroiled not only in the domestic political turmoil surrounding President Park Geun-hye, but also—uncomfortably—in a four-country geopolitical storm. ... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Politics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; National Security; International Relations; Decision Making; Government and Politics; Leadership; South Korea; China; Japan

August 2015 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Shonda Rhimes' ShondaLand

By: Anita Elberse and Henry McGee

In January 2015, superstar television creator Shonda Rhimes, whose production company ShondaLand dominates American television's most competitive and lucrative night with three shows in primetime on network ABC's Thursday night, is plotting the future. One challenge... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment; Television; Broadcasting; Creative Industries; Television Industry; Product Portfolio Management; Superstar; Talent Management; Television Entertainment; Media; Creativity; Marketing; Talent and Talent Management; Personal Development and Career; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States

Research Summary

Structural Breaks in Dynamic Factor Models: Representation and Testing (with James Stock and Mark Watson)

We demonstrate the equivalence of various of structural break representations for approximate dynamic factor models and show that even in the presence of such breaks, the estimated factors consistently span the fundamental factor subspaces. We propose tests to... View Details

April 1996
Case

Southern Pulp and Paper

A paper mill's paper machines are a bottleneck in the operation. The causes include poor scheduling, lack of investment, and ineffective process control. The plant manager is charged with improving this situation fairly rapidly and has a number of proposals for change... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Performance Improvement; Infrastructure; Pulp and Paper Industry

2023
Book

Workplace Conditions

By: Jill Maben, Jane Ball and Amy C. Edmondson

This Element reviews the evidence for three workplace conditions that matter for improving quality and safety in healthcare: staffing; psychological safety, teamwork, and speaking up; and staff health and well-being at work. The authors propose that these are... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Outcome or Result; Safety; Well-being; Health Industry

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September 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Giant Cinema

By: Malcolm P. Baker, Richard S. Ruback, Erik Stafford and Kathleen Luchs

The owner of Giant Cinema must decide whether to invest in a digital projector, a new technology for screening films, or purchase a traditional projector. The impact of the new technology is uncertain, and the case describes probabilities for different outcomes that... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Film Entertainment; Technology Adoption; Financial Strategy; Investment; Outcome or Result; Risk and Uncertainty; Technology; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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November 1999 (Revised June 2001)
Case

Compaq Computer Corporation: The DEC Acquisition

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Barbara Feinberg

Compaq's board of directors is faced with responsibility for setting the price range and terms for the proposed acquisition of Digital Equipment Corp. The transaction is described in the context of the rapidly evolving markets and business models of the computer... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Situation or Environment; Negotiation Offer; Acquisition; Computer Industry

06 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

John Kotter: Four Ways to Kill a Good Idea

the proposal was for a very innovative automotive parts product, and no one could have logically defended the superior worth of all the other projects in the works. But those who were running some of the... View Details

Keywords: by John Kotter & Lorne A. Whitehead

April 1993 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Northern Telecom (B): The Norstar Launch

By: Robert J. Dolan

Northern Telecom has spent $50 million to develop a new family of telephone systems for small businesses. The investment proposal was justified on the basis of appreciable market share impact. Now, the project team must develop the appropriate supporting marketing... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Investment; Product Launch; Product Development; Telecommunications Industry; Canada; United States

July 2020
Article

Exploring the Effect of Environmental Orientation on Financial Decisions of Businesses at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Evidence from the Microlending Context

By: Anton Shevchenko, Xiaodan Pan and Goran Calic

Existing research has accumulated substantial evidence on the effect that an environmental orientation has on businesses' economic performance. Yet this research does not cover small businesses from bottom‐of‐the‐pyramid (BOP) markets. In fact, despite increasing... View Details

Keywords: Micro-lending; Environmental Sustainability; Financing and Loans; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Small Business

2022
Working Paper

Product2Vec: Leveraging Representation Learning to Model Consumer Product Choice in Large Assortments

By: Fanglin Chen, Xiao Liu, Davide Proserpio and Isamar Troncoso

We propose a method, Product2Vec, based on representation learning, that can automatically learn latent product attributes that drive consumer choices, to study product-level competition when the number of products is large. We demonstrate Product2Vec’s... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Choice; Consumer Behavior; Competition; Product Marketing

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February 2025
Case

Abiomed: A Change of Heart

By: Satish Tadikonda, Faith Robertson and William Marks

After acquiring Impella CardioSystems AG in May 2005, Abiomed Inc., a company focused on cardiac care, ran into a dilemma. Its Impella 2.5 device was approved for use in the European Union, but CEO Michael Minogue had seemingly bet the company's future on the ability... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Health Care and Treatment; Business and Government Relations; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; European Union; United States