Publications

February 1994 (Revised May 1999)
Case

Manville Corp. Fiber Glass Group (C)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Sarah Gant

Manville Corp.'s senior managers are surprised when Japanese government officials advise them not to go forward with their plan to add a cancer warning label to diatomaceous earth (DE) products sold in Japan. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has ruled... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Ethics; Conflict of Interests; Health; Safety; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Policy; Japan

December 2014
Article

The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization

By: Nicholas Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

Empirical studies on information communication technologies (ICT) typically aggregate the "information" and "communication" components together. We show theoretically and empirically that this is problematic. Information and communication technologies have very... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Information Technology; Organizational Structure

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07 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Rocket Science Retailing

forecasting; supply chain speed; inventory planning; and gathering accurate, available data. The following excerpt from their report in the Harvard Business Review shows how some of these companies are making the most of the data... View Details

Keywords: by Marshall L. Fisher, Ananth Raman & Anna Sheen McClelland; Retail

07 Mar 2023
HBS Case

ChatGPT: Did Big Tech Set Up the World for an AI Bias Disaster?

oversight or regulation. “You have to slow down to ensure that the data that these systems are trained on aren’t inaccurate or biased.” While many people are now aware that bias can be baked into AI systems, from credit reporting to... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Technology

July 2000 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Deaconess-Glover Hospital (A)

Chronicles the initial efforts to teach a health care organization to manage itself according to the principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Describes the decision and dilemmas that arose from the implementation experiment. Builds on Bowen and Spear's earlier... View Details

Keywords: Management; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Massachusetts

2020
Book

The Power of Experiments: Decision-Making in a Data-Driven World

By: Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman

Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of changes to an... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; Randomized Controlled Trials; Organizations; Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

Article

Credit and Punishment: Are Corporate Bankers Disciplined for Risk-Taking?

By: Janet Gao, Kristoph Kleiner and Joseph Pacelli

We examine whether bankers face disciplining consequences for structuring poorly performing corporate loans. We construct a novel data set containing the employment histories and loan portfolios of a large sample of corporate bankers and find that corporate credit... View Details

Keywords: Syndicated Loans; Credit Events; Career Outcomes; Loan Officers; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Risk Management; Corporate Finance; Personal Development and Career

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October 1981 (Revised June 1982)
Case

Concept Devices, Inc.: International Market Entry

Concept is a highly touted startup venture in distributed data processing computers. The company has only made one sale to date, but has an order backlog for its unique product and expects an almost vertical growth curve. The company has been courted seriously by... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Business Startups; Computer Industry; France; United Kingdom

2011
Working Paper

The Impact of Forward-Looking Metrics on Employee Decision Making

By: Pablo Casas-Arce, F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and V.G. Narayanan

This paper analyzes the effects of providing forward-looking metrics on employee decision making. We use data from a southern European bank that, in April 2002, started providing its branch managers with customer lifetime value (CLV) information about mortgage... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mortgages; Employees; Information; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Service Delivery; Banking Industry; Europe

Teaching Interest

Applied Business Analytics

Course Overview:

Business Analytics has become a core function in many firms today and is driving innovation in the form of new business and operating models. Data-driven decision-making requires understanding of statistics, computer... View Details

11 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

Strategy Execution and the Balanced Scorecard

Companies often manage strategy in fits and starts. Though executives may formulate an excellent strategy, it easily fades from memory as the organization tackles day-to-day operations issues, doing what HBS professor Robert S. Kaplan... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Proximie: Using XR Technology to Create Borderless Operating Rooms

By: Ariel D. Stern and Alpana Thapar

In mid-January 2022, Nadine Hachach-Haram, founder and CEO of Proximie, was thinking about the company’s growth plans. Launched in 2016, Proximie was a platform that enabled clinicians, proctors, and medical device company personnel to be virtually present in operating... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Strategic Planning; Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Digital Platforms; Health Industry; Lebanon; United Kingdom; United States

Article

How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay

By: Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton

Do people from different countries and different backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? Using survey data from 40 countries (N = 55,238), we compare respondents' estimates of the wages of people in different... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Justice; Wage; Cross-cultural; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Fairness; Income; Employees; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

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Summer 2013
Article

Analyzing Performance of Service Organizations: Balanced Benchmarking Can Identify Best Practices That Are Often Hidden

By: H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Just as sports teams have increasingly relied on rigorous quantitative analyses, so have many businesses. In particular, a growing number of service organizations have been investigating the use of a sophisticated linear programming technique called DEA, or data... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Benchmarking; Management

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October 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Pilgrim Bank (A): Customer Profitability

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Provides a context in which students can explore managerial decision making that is critically informed by data analysis. The setting is a retail bank and the decision making relates to the bank's policy toward online banking. The management team is evaluating whether... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Customers; Profit; Banking Industry

11 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won’t

Call it corporate alchemy. New research finds that multinational companies can spin gender bias into gold by recruiting and hiring well-educated female managers in countries that traditionally discriminate against women. Employing women... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

September 2011 (Revised October 2012)
Case

Ganging Up on Cancer: Integrative Research Centers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (A)

By: Heidi K. Gardner, Edo Bedzra and Shereef M. Elnahal

Dr. Barrett Rollins, Chief Scientific Officer of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, attempts to engender cross-scientist collaboration by applying project management principles to medical research. The resulting innovation, Integrative Research Centers, are novel in... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Motivation and Incentives; Employees; Performance Evaluation; Leadership Style; Leadership; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management