Publications

11 Jan 2017
Research & Ideas

The Paradoxical Quest to Make Food Look 'Natural' With Artificial Dyes

Historians.) Hisano’s paper looks at how industry players and regulators collectively decided what any given food is supposed to look like—and redefined the marketing meaning of “natural.” The quest for summery butter and orange oranges... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

May 2012 (Revised February 2014)
Teaching Note

Learning About Reducing Hospital Mortality at Kaiser Permanente

By: Anita Carson Tucker

Keywords: Patient Safety; Process Improvement; Standardization; Organizational Learning; Knowledge Development; Safety; Knowledge Management; Health Care and Treatment; Business Processes; Health Industry

June 2010
Article

Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers

By: David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

Several studies have examined how the ISO 9001 Quality Management System standard predicts changes in organizational outcomes such as profits. This is the first large-scale study to explore how employee outcomes such as employment, earnings, and health and safety... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Management; Standards; Employees; Wages; Organizations; Profit; Safety; Health; Policy

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5 Sep 2013
Conference Presentation

The Color of Taste: Selling Food in Clear Packages in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States

By: Ai Hisano

This paper examines the role of color in the marketing and retailing of food products by focusing on the increasingly popular presentation of food in clear packages in the early-twentieth-century United States. In the 1910s, a candy company began using cellophane to... View Details

Keywords: Food; Product Marketing; Food and Beverage Industry

02 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Food Stamp Entrepreneurs: How Public Assistance Enables Business Bootstrapping

States. At the same time, his family received food purchasing assistance from the Food Stamp program. He's pretty sure that these safety nets helped lead to the formation of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

November 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Global Conservation Trust, The: A Foundation for Food Security

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Biodiversity is being lost due to the delegation of the ability to store and maintain various types of plants to governments and foundations with no or little financial base. How does one develop the resources to maintain plant diversity for the future benefit of... View Details

Keywords: Food; Safety; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Nonprofit Organizations; Welfare; Finance; Environmental Sustainability; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

January–February 2021
Article

Food and Drug Administration Guidance Documents and New Medical Devices: The Case of Breast Prostheses

By: Rachel E. Weitzman, Ariel Dora Stern and Daniel B. Kramer

As pressure mounts on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to speed its review process for novel devices, and budgetary pressures further strain its resources, the critical role of guidance documents in assuring consistent, rigorous, and scientifically grounded... View Details

Keywords: Medical Devices; FDA; Health Care and Treatment; Government Administration; Information; Standards

02 Aug 2024
HBS Case

How a Mission to Cut Food Waste Launched a Multimillion-Dollar Venture

entrepreneur’s Flashfood app at a Toronto supermarket hadn’t gone well, ending with confusion among customers and ire from the store manager. But Domingues, who had launched the app after learning that international food waste was the... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Technology; Information Technology

2016
Working Paper

Signaling without Certification: The Critical Role of Civil Society Scrutiny

By: Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell and Michael W. Toffel

In response to stakeholders' growing concerns, companies are joining voluntary environmental programs to signal their superior environmental management capabilities. In contrast to the literature's focus on certification programs that require a third-party audit, we... View Details

Keywords: United Nations; Labor Standards; Supplier Relationship; Procurement; Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Quality And Safety; Risk; Globalization; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Working Conditions; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Reputation

SSRN

01 Mar 2014
News

The Solution to the Global Food Crisis Just Might Come from Nigeria

these things, people look on it as the most difficult country to change." And yet, a shift appears under way. A new reformist government has started treating agriculture as a problem to be solved by industry rather than by aid. Private companies are springing up... View Details

Keywords: Francis Storrs; John H. Davis; Michael Halse; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing

March 2018 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Chewy.com (A)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, faces a “bet the company decision”—whether to stay with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for all of its e-commerce fulfillment or to take the function in house. Cohen worries... View Details

Keywords: Pet Food; Pet Products; Retail; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Decision Choices and Conditions; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Florida; United States

01 Sep 2020
News

Good Odds

impacts. Seeing an opportunity in the vast amount of waste within the food system, Imperfect Foods began purchasing “number twos” directly from farmers in California’s Central Valley in 2015. Those are the... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; food industry; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing

01 Sep 2007
News

Riding It Out

the company’s revenues have increased by leaps and bounds. But the melamine pet food scare last spring could have ruined everything. The bad news came to a place it shouldn’t: Disney World. It was during one of the few vacations that Paal... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; dog food; pets; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing

December 2015 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Chicken Republic

By: Jose Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Deji Akinyanju, founder of Nigerian fast-food chain Chicken Republic, and Ayo Oduntan, founder of an integrated Nigerian poultry operation (Amo Byng Group), are among a growing cadre of skilled food-industry entrepreneurs for whom the opportunities to serve the... View Details

October 2012 (Revised December 2013)
Case

Urbanizing China

By: Lakshmi Iyer and G.A. Donovan

In 2012, China attained a historic development milestone with more Chinese citizens living in cities than in the countryside. China's rapid urbanization, and the accompanying conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural uses, raised a number of economic, social,... View Details

Keywords: China; Urbanization; Industrialization; Property Rights; Local Government Finance; Social Protest; Business Environment; Food Security; Safety; Change Management; Food; Urban Development; Social Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Public Administration Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; China

2021
Case

Walmart's Blockchain Quest: Integrating New Technology into a Complex Supply Chain

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Blockchain is a digital, distributed, immutable ledger designed to build trust among parties without requiring an independent, third-party arbitrator or intermediary. The technology has potential to improve a variety of industries, including the complex, fragmented,... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Supply Chain Management; Technology Adoption

September 2013
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Laurent Adamowicz and Bon'App

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins

After a successful career as Chairman and CEO of Paris-based luxury food company Fauchon, Laurent Adamowicz sought to reduce obesity and improve health outcomes. Adamowicz created a mobile application to provide consumers with more accessible and interpretable... View Details

November 1997
Case

Odwalla, Inc.

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Tom Clay

Odwalla suffered one of the worst food safety crises in history and not only survived but continued to grow. Now they need to decide how the crisis affected their business and how to expand their business. View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development; Crisis Management; Safety; Expansion; System Shocks; Food and Beverage Industry

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September 2017 (Revised August 2018)
Supplement

The Ready-Made Garment Industry: A Bangladeshi Perspective (D)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Saloni Chaturvedi

This supplements the (A) case by summarizing key developments in the Bangladesh ready-made garment industry after the fire at Tazreen Fashions factory, including formation of the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Accord (“Accord”) and the Alliance for Bangladesh... View Details

Keywords: Apparel; Bangladesh; Corporate Responsibility; Human Rights; Supply Chains; Labor; Working Conditions; Supply Chain; Safety; Rights; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Bangladesh