Publications

May–June 1991
Article

Profit Priorities from Activity-Based Costing

By: Robin Cooper and Robert S. Kaplan

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Profit

24 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

How Cost Accounting is Improving Healthcare in Rural Haiti

Medical records at a healthcare clinic in Lascahobas, Haiti. Ryan McBain A few years ago, the Boston-based nonprofit health care organization Partners in Health (PIH) set out to quantify the cost of primary care for its... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

18 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

The Cost of Leaning In

“Just because we observe women doing well in a particular negotiation situation, it doesn’t necessarily mean all women will do well in that situation” But a recent laboratory experiment shows that when women avoid negotiations, they may be wise to do so. In the paper... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

October 2006
Article

Location Choices across the Value Chain: How Activity and Capability Influence Collocation

By: Juan Alcacer

There has been a recent revival of interest in the geographic component of firm strategy. Recent research suggests that two opposing forces—competition costs and agglomeration benefits—determine whether firms collocate in a given geographic market. Unexplored is (1)... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Sales; Research and Development; Cost Accounting; Cost Management; Markets; Production; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Distribution; Cost vs Benefits; SWOT Analysis; Telecommunications Industry

21 Nov 2016
News

Giving Patients an Active Role in Their Health Care

Web

Latin America - Global Activities 2021

of climate change by helping SHI scale its business operations in Latin America and create ventures that offset financial costs and increase farmers’ benefits. Of the eight HBS Online Community Chapters that submitted proposals, the one... View Details

February 1996 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Indianapolis: Activity-Based Costing of City Services (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

A new administration in the City of Indianapolis is initially determined to privatize many municipal services. Before taking this action, however, the city managers want to know the current cost of performing these services with the municipal workers. Existing... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Public Sector; Activity Based Costing and Management; Service Delivery; Privatization; City; Indianapolis

Educators

Web

Actively Addressing Unconscious Bias in Recruiting - Recruiting

Insights & Advice 16 Jun 2023 Actively Addressing Unconscious Bias in Recruiting Becca Carnahan & Christopher Moore Author HBS Team tag All Industries All Locations Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging Recruiting Advice Recruiting Strategies... View Details

2021
Working Paper

The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing

By: Amitabh Chandra, Evan Flack and Ziad Obermeyer

We use the design of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit program to demonstrate three facts about the health consequences of cost-sharing. First, we show that an as-if-random increase of 33.6% in out-of-pocket price (11.0 percentage points (p.p.) change in... View Details

Keywords: Cost-sharing; Impact; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Health; Consumer Behavior

Read Now

Article

Comparative Costs of Advanced Proton and Photon Radiation Therapies: Lessons from Time-driven Activity-based Costing in Head and Neck Cancer

By: Nikhil G. Thaker, Steven J. Frank and Thomas W. Feeley

Time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) is an innovative costing tool in healthcare that can be used to directly compare the true cost of competing technologies over the full care cycle. Rather than only comparing therapeutic effectiveness over a limited number of... View Details

Keywords: Head And Neck Cancer; IMRT; Proton Therapy; Time-Driven ABC; Information Technology; Activity Based Costing and Management; Medical Specialties

Read Now

March 2006 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Tecsis: A Global Cleantech Venture Based in Brazil

Bento Koike, founder and CEO of Tecsis Ltda., is facing a number of important decisions. With ups and downs typical of self-funded start-ups, Tecsis has grown to about 1,500 people and over $50 million in revenues with one major customer. Tecsis, located in Brazil, is... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Cost vs Benefits; Diversification; Emerging Markets; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Volatility; Green Technology Industry; Brazil; United States

1998
Working Paper

Some Evidence on the Optimal Welfare State Based on Subjective Data

By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch

It is often difficult to evaluate all the costs and benefits of the welfare state. This paper suggests an alternative approach based on surveys of citizen satisfaction with welfare programs. In the first part of the paper we estimate the level of unemployment benefits... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; Employment; Surveys; Programs; Government and Politics; Age; Income; Residency; Welfare; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Cost vs Benefits; Satisfaction; United Kingdom

03 May 2021
What Do You Think?

Where Does CEO Activism Go From Here?

(Image credit: iStockphoto/adamkaz) CEO activism entered a new chapter with the decision by more than 200 leaders of large corporations last month to publicly declare their support for voting rights for Americans and, by extension, their... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

04 Aug 2011
Working Paper Summaries

A Dynamic Perspective on Ambidexterity: Structural Differentiation and Boundary Activities

Keywords: by Sebastian Raisch & Michael L. Tushman

04 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

The Real Cost of Bribery

It's a sad, quantitative fact that bribery runs so rampant in the world that it has become a Darwinian business tool. A July 2013 report from Transparency International finds that more than one in four people paid a bribe in the past year, View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

January 2018
Case

Partners In Health: Costing Primary Care in Haiti

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Mahek A. Shah

Partners in Health, a global NGO focused on delivering health care to residents of rural underserved communities, conducts a project on the cost of primary care at five sites in the Central Highlands of Haiti. It devises a simple approach for tracking the resources... View Details

Keywords: Global Health; Public Health; Health Care and Treatment; Activity Based Costing and Management; Cost Accounting; Rural Scope; Health Industry; Haiti

Educators

March 1997 (Revised June 1999)
Background Note

Using Activity-Based Costing with Budgeted Expenses and Practical Capacity

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Describes how activity-based costing (ABC) should be applied with: 1) budgeted, not historical, expenses and 2) assigning the costs of capacity resources. View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Activity Based Costing and Management; Budgets and Budgeting

Educators

2015
Chapter

Information Technology and the Distribution of Inventive Activity

By: Chris Forman, Avi Goldfarb and Shane Greenstein

We examine the relationship between the diffusion of advanced Internet technology and the geographic concentration of invention, as measured by patents. First, we show that patenting became more concentrated from the early 1990s to the early 2000s and, similarly, that... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Geographic Location; Internet and the Web; Innovation and Invention