Publications

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August 2003 (Revised October 2003)
Case

Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative at the Ten-Year Mark, The

By: James E. Austin, Stacey M. Childress and Cate Reavis

In mid-2003, as the 10-year anniversary of Harvard Business School's Social Enterprise Initiative approached, the group's faculty and staff decided to analyze its past performance and to formulate its future strategy. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Evaluation; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise

February 2006 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Tad O'Malley: June 2005

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Tad O'Malley, a new associate at Empire Investment Group, a top-tier leveraged buyout firm, must evaluate three different deals and recommend which should receive additional resources for further investigation. He must consider the specifics of each company and each... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Deal; Resource Allocation; Private Equity; Projects; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Evaluation; Leveraged Buyouts

Article

A Cost Comparison of Cataract Surgeries in Three Countries—United States, India, and Nepal

By: Jiayin Xue, John Hinkle, Mary-Grace Reeves, Luo Luo Zheng, Vengadesan Natarajan, Shyam Vyas, Radhika Upreti Oli, Matt Oliva, Robert S. Kaplan, Arnold Milstein, Geoff Tabin, Jeffrey L. Goldberg and Kevin Schulman

U.S.-based cataract surgeries are costly compared with those performed in high-quality Indian and Nepalese eye centers. The authors used time-driven activity-based costing to evaluate phacoemulsification surgery across four sites: a U.S.-based academic hospital... View Details

Keywords: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Cost Accounting; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; India; Nepal; United States

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Article

Towards a Single European Sky

By: Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Bert De Reyck

We describe an integrated decision-making framework and model that we developed to aid EUROCONTROL, the European air traffic management organization, in its vital role of constructing a single unified European sky. Combining multicriteria decision analysis with... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Analysis; Air Transportation Industry; Europe

October 2010
Article

Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams

By: Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman and Charles A. O'Reilly III

This article empirically explores the relations between alternative organizational designs and a firm's ability to explore as well as exploit. We operationalize exploitation and exploration in terms of innovation streams—incremental innovation in existing products as... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Innovation and Invention; Management Teams; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement

January 2023
Case

Crow Holdings Development: Mass Timber Construction

By: John D. Macomber, Robert Hernandez and Kyle MertensMeyer

Jim McCaffery and Cody Armbrister of Crow Holdings Development evaluate the pros and cons of committing to mass timber construction instead of conventional concrete or steel for a new 260,000 SF multi-story office building in Texas. Benefits include substantially... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate Development; Architecture; Air Quality; Health ＆ Wellness; Office Property; Sustainability; Carbon Abatement; Natural Environment; Environmental Accounting; Green Buildings; Design; Construction; Cost vs Benefits; Environmental Sustainability; Construction Industry; Real Estate Industry; Texas

January 2008 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Cognizant Technology Solutions

By: Robert G. Eccles, David Lane and Prabakar 'PK' Kothandaraman

In the highly competitive information technology outsourcing industry, Cognizant Technology Solutions has developed a strategy to differentiate itself by emphasizing building very close client relationships through its "Two-in-a-box" (TIB) model. This model is based on... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Knowledge Sharing; Resource Allocation; Competitive Advantage; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

07 Sep 2017
HBS Seminar

Martin Dimitrov, Tulane

May 2019
Supplement

Kjell and Company: Motivating Salespeople with Incentive Compensation (D)

By: Doug J. Chung

Kjell & Company was a Swedish retail electronics chain. The company’s products consisted of home electronics and accessories. The company was noted for its excellent customer service and a fair “one-for-all” HR policy. Historically, the salespeople had been compensated... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Change Management; Behavior; Electronics Industry; Sweden

To get people to be more creative and productive, managers increase transparency with open workspaces and access to real-time data. But my research shows that less-transparent work environments can actually yield more-transparent employees who solve problems more... View Details

03 Nov 2015
First Look

November 3, 2015

queues. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50023 Evaluating Firm-Level Expected-Return Proxies By: Lee, Charles M.C., Eric C. So, and Charles C.Y. Wang Abstract—We develop and implement a rigorous... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

An Integrated Decision-Making Approach for Improving European Air Traffic Management

By: Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Bert De Reyck and Zeger Degraeve

We develop a multistakeholder, multicriteria decision-making framework for Eurocontrol, the European air traffic management organization, for evaluating and selecting operational improvements to the air traffic management system. The selected set of improvements will... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Framework; Operations; Performance Improvement; Government Administration; Air Transportation Industry; Europe

January 2017 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Kjell and Company: Motivating Salespeople with Incentive Compensation (A)

By: Doug J. Chung

Kjell & Company was a Swedish retail electronics chain. The company’s products consisted of home electronics and accessories. The company was noted for its excellent customer service and a fair “one-for-all” HR policy. Historically, the salespeople had been compensated... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Change; Decision Making; Electronics Industry; Sweden

January 2013 (Revised March 2017)
Teaching Note

Luotang Power: Variances Explained (Brief Case)

By: Robert Simons and Craig Chapman

The primary objective is to explore the concepts of variance analysis in performance from one year to the next and the predictability of contracting counterparts to extract value from contract positions where they can. The general manager of a coal-fired power plant... View Details

Keywords: Variance Analysis; Strategy And Execution; Profitability Analysis; Management Control Systems; Contracts; Valuation; Energy Generation; Accounting; Performance Evaluation; China

06 Oct 2011
What Do You Think?

How Will the ‘Moneyball Generation’ Influence Management?

dashboard, "indirect goals" that help predict and explain financial performance beyond the "direct goal" of profit. These might include the speed of aircraft turnaround in the airline industry, the conversion rate of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

April 2013
Article

First-Party Content and Coordination in Two-Sided Markets

By: Andrei Hagiu and Daniel Spulber

The strategic use of first-party content by two-sided platforms is driven by two key factors: the nature of buyer and seller expectations (favorable versus unfavorable) and the nature of the relationship between first-party content and third-party content (complements... View Details

Keywords: Two-sided Platforms; Platform Strategy; Technology; Information Technology; Performance Expectations; Strategy; Digital Platforms

11 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Building a Better Board

discuss what he considers to be the biggest practical issues facing boards today: how to get and give honest assessments without eroding collegiality and trust; how to evaluate the CEO using factors that go beyond financial results; how... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

The Surprising Power of Online Experiments

In the fast-moving digital world, even experts have a hard time assessing new ideas. Case in point: At Bing a small headline change an employee proposed was deemed a low priority and shelved for months until one engineer decided to do a quick online controlled... View Details

May 1997
Teaching Note

Product Development Performance, Instructor's Note

By: Marco Iansiti

Focuses on what constitutes product development performance and how it is assessed. Performance, as explained in both the note and in the materials for this three-session module, refers to the performance of both the product and the organizational process producing it.... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Infrastructure; Product Development; Production; Performance Evaluation