Publications

01 Mar 2007
News

Courting the Poor

procedure for credit approval, using nontraditional metrics to enable customers with lower, less easily established incomes (a pushcart vendor, for example) to make purchases. “Their loan repayment rates are the envy of the world, and the... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; department stores; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

02 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

Modern Indian Art: The Birth of a Market

and schools of art within the Indian context to define relative value, and finally, descriptions of the internationalism of Indian artists in order to establish their legitimacy in the art world. These constructs provided metrics that... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

11 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Building a Better Board

fellow board members said you could do to be more effective as a board member or as a CEO," Kaufman says. More Comprehensive Assessment Metrics Historically, a board member's assessment of a CEO's performance simply involved asking a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

1998
Working Paper

CEO Incentives and Firm Size

By: Brian Hall and George P. Baker

What determines CEO incentives? A confusion exists among both academics and practitioners about how to measure the strength of CEO incentives, and how to reconcile the enormous differences in pay sensitivities between executives in large and small firms. We show that... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Motivation and Incentives; Executive Compensation; Size; Management Systems

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November 2009 (Revised September 2011)
Case

The Last DVD Format War?

By: Andrei Hagiu

Provides a brief overview of the standards battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, focusing on the events that precipitated the Blu-ray victory in early 2008. View Details

Keywords: Five Forces Framework; Standards; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Hardware; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Technology Industry

March 1998 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Lehigh Steel

By: V.G. Narayanan and Laura Donohue

Lehigh Steel is a specialty steel manufacturer that plummeted from record profits to record losses in less than three years, driven by an inability to distinguish between profitable and unprofitable business. The scale and growth of service activities and overhead... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Product; Cost; Activity Based Costing and Management; Profit; Accounting; Corporate Finance; Steel Industry

August 2009 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Kansas City Zephyrs Baseball Club, Inc. 2006

By: Krishna G. Palepu

This case centers around a dispute between the owners and the players regarding the profitability of professional baseball teams in connection with the negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement. The case describes the financial statements of the baseball... View Details

Keywords: Accrual Accounting; Financial Statements; Profit; Labor Unions; Measurement and Metrics; Agreements and Arrangements; Performance; Sports Industry; United States

September 2007 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Silic (A): Choosing Cost or Fair Value on Adoption of IFRS

By: David F. Hawkins, Vincent Marie Dessain and Andrew Barron

A French real estate firm must choose to report its primary asset (investment property) using either cost or fair-value accounting methods upon adoption of international accounting standards (IAS) in 2005. View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; International Accounting; Investment; Standards; Real Estate Industry; France

October 2005
Case

Wipro Technologies: The Factory Model

Based in Bangalore, Wipro Technologies is a rapidly growing software services company. Wipro is experimenting with a new software service delivery model that draws on the principles of the Toyota production system and "lean" manufacturing. Addresses the advantages and... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Service Operations; Applications and Software; Standards; Information Technology Industry; Bangalore

August 2021 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Fair Park Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Site (A)

By: Willy Shih

This case is an opportunity to apply the methods of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the analysis of an everyday service application: administering Covid-19 vaccines. It describes the start-up of a drive-up Covid-19 mass vaccination site at the Texas State Fair... View Details

Keywords: Operations Improvement; Operations And Processes; Toyota Production System; COVID-19 Pandemic; Operations; Service Operations; Health Pandemics; Problems and Challenges; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States; Texas

June 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Teaching Note

Qualcomm Inc., 2019

By: David B. Yoffie

Teaching Note for HBS No. 718-514. View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Intellectual Property; Information Technology; Standards; Business Model; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Telecommunications Industry; Semiconductor Industry

January 2005 (Revised October 2005)
Background Note

Standard & Poor's Sovereign Credit Ratings: Scales and Process

By: Rawi E. Abdelal and Christopher Bruner

Describes Standard & Poor's sovereign credit ratings scales and the credit rating process. In particular, describes the role and function of the rating committee and the analytical categories considered in arriving at a final sovereign credit rating. View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Credit; Bonds; Policy; Risk and Uncertainty; Measurement and Metrics; Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Services Industry

17 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Rating Fund Managers by the Company They Keep

from the Working Paper.Ann Cullen: How is your system different than traditional mutual fund rating systems? Cohen: Our method takes advantage of a wealth of previously unexploited information about fund holdings. Standard metrics rate... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

May 2021
Article

Value-Based Healthcare in Urology: A Collaborative Review

By: Chanan Reitblat, Paul A. Bain, Michael E. Porter, David N. Bernstein, Thomas W. Feeley, Markus Graefen, Santosh Iyer, Matthew J. Resnick, C.J. Stimson, Quoc-Dien Trinh and Boris Gershman

Context:
In response to growing concerns over rising costs and major variation in quality, improving value for patients has been proposed as a fundamentally new strategy for how healthcare should be delivered, measured, and... View Details

Keywords: Value-based Healthcare; Integrated Practice Units; Outcome Measurement; Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Health Care and Treatment; Value; Cost Management; Strategy; Outcome or Result; Measurement and Metrics

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July 2012
Article

The Real Consequences of Market Segmentation

By: Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam

We study the real effects of market segmentation due to credit ratings using a matched sample of firms just above and just below the investment-grade cutoff. These firms have similar observables, including average investment rates. However, flows into high-yield mutual... View Details

Keywords: Segmentation; Credit; Investment; Investment Funds; Quality; Markets; Measurement and Metrics; Business Ventures

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2008
Working Paper

Consequences of Voluntary and Mandatory Fair Value Accounting: Evidence Surrounding IFRS Adoption in the EU Real Estate Industry

By: Karl A Muller III, Edward J. Riedl and Thorsten Sellhorn

We examine the causes and consequences of European real estate firms' decisions to provide investment property fair values prior to the required disclosure of this information under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). We find evidence that investor... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; International Accounting; Corporate Disclosure; Standards; Real Estate Industry; European Union