Publications

February 1994
Case

Project Ghost Busters (A)

Describes a field study project undertaken by four students, attacking a specific quality problem in an auto assembly plant. How should they approach this problem to reduce its frequency by 50%? How should they manage this team project to get the most out of all... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Production; Performance Improvement; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry

Find at Harvard

10 Aug 2022
News

Operations Service Management: Transforming Campus Through Digital Workflows

November 2006
Case

Tickle

By: William A. Sahlman and Dan Heath

Describes a set of decisions confronting the management team of a rapidly growing online psychological testing and social networking company. They can either sell the company to a large public company, raise another round of capital from a preeminent venture capital... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Internet and the Web; Business Strategy; Corporate Finance

November 2007 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Creativity under the Gun at Litmus Corporation

By: Teresa M. Amabile and Yana Litovsky

Teaches students to diagnose the circumstances under which time pressure can facilitate or hinder creativity. A team's creative "genius", Miles Grady, who previously conceptualized a revolutionary material for an important new product, must now significantly change... View Details

Keywords: Situation or Environment; Creativity; Innovation and Management; Problems and Challenges

23 Jun 2023
HBS Case

This Company Lets Employees Take Charge—Even with Life and Death Decisions

care teams after experiencing firsthand as a nurse, and then a decade as a senior leader of two large health care organizations, how the health care system managed quality and productivity in ways that... View Details

Keywords: by Annelena Lobb; Health

14 Oct 2011
News

Biz school students put smarts in Jeopardy vs. supercomputer

Ethan S. Bernstein

Ethan Bernstein (@ethanbernstein) is an associate professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School. He has spent his career researching novel talent management practices and their effect on employee behavior, collaboration, and performance.... View Details

16 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

Is Your Workplace Biased Against Introverts?

passion can quietly enable organizational biases against more introspective employees, Jachimowicz and his team say, as studies show that extroverts get more attention from managers in the form of resources,... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

September 2008
Case

Adobe Systems: Working Towards a "Suite" Release (A)

By: David A. Thomas and Lauren Barley

The case examines the tools a manager can use to keep her project on track and manage conflict and tension as Adobe prepares to launch Creative Suite 3, the biggest software release in the company's 25-year history. The protagonist, Yvonne Murray, is a group program... View Details

Keywords: Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Product Launch; Projects; Groups and Teams; Conflict Management; Power and Influence

December 2023
Teaching Note

Buurtzorg

By: Ethan Bernstein and Tatiana Sandino

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 122-101. As co-founders of home nursing company Buurtzorg, Jos de Blok and Gonnie Kronenberg prized both self-management and organizational learning. Buurtzorg’s 10,000 nurses across 950 neighborhood nursing teams in the Netherlands were... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Employee Relationship Management; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Management; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Learning; Health Industry; Netherlands

April 2009 (Revised May 2009)
Case

Oprah Winfrey

By: Nancy F. Koehn, Erica Helms, Katherine Miller and Rachel Wilcox

The case explores the entrepreneurial journey of Oprah Winfrey, examining how she built an audience for one of the most successful television shows in history; how she created the company, Harpo Productions, that produces that show as well as other media offerings; how... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Personal Development and Career; Strategy; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States

February 2008 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Olympia Machine Company, Inc.

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Benson P. Shapiro

The management team of an industrial equipment supplier is debating the company's method of compensating salespeople. Different executives have offered different alternatives to the current method of straight salary plus expenses. Each option has different implications... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Compensation and Benefits; Mission and Purpose; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives; Business Strategy; Industrial Products Industry

July 2006 (Revised August 2007)
Case

Charles Veillon, S.A. (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Aldo Sesia

The top management team at Charles Veillon, a Swiss mail-order company, is considering whether to work with a human rights organization to monitor the labor practices of its suppliers. A particular concern is avoiding child labor and other forms of workplace coercion.... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Governance Controls; Labor; Rights; Nonprofit Organizations; Switzerland

April 1999 (Revised March 2001)
Case

Be Our Guest, Inc.

By: Dwight B. Crane and Penny Joseph

Be Our Guest is a rapidly growing equipment rental company with substantial seasonality in its revenues and profits. In the spring of 1998, the senior management team is reviewing its financial plans in preparation for a meeting with the company's bank. The case... View Details

Keywords: Financial Strategy; Borrowing and Debt; Banks and Banking; Revenue; Management Teams; Business Plan; Forecasting and Prediction; Utilities Industry; Service Industry

22 Aug 2020
News

It’s OK that companies aren’t talking about Black Lives Matter—as long as they’re making progress in private

January 2017 (Revised December 2017)
Case

Merging American Airlines and US Airways (A)

By: David G. Fubini, David A. Garvin and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In February 2013, US Airways announced that it would merge with American Airlines to create the world’s largest airline. Doug Parker, the CEO of US Airways, would become CEO of the new American Airlines Group (AAL). The case describes a number of critical decisions... View Details

Keywords: Airlines; Merger; Takeover; Integration Strategy; Merger Integration; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Making; Governance; Management Teams; Operations; Organizational Culture; Air Transportation Industry; United States