Publications

November 2005 (Revised August 2007)
Case

ConAgra Foods: The Next Chapter

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Mary L. Shelman

In 2005, CEO Bruce Rohde has almost completed the integration of ConAgra Foods' collection of 90 independent operating companies into a focused, value-added firm and was beginning to think about his successor. ConAgra had become the second largest food company and No.... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Corporate Strategy; Leading Change; Management Succession; Strategic Planning; Brands and Branding; Food; Agribusiness; Product Marketing; Management Teams; Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

Educators

2012
Chapter

Problem Solving and Search in Networks

By: David Lazer and Ethan Bernstein

This chapter examines the role that networks play in facilitating or inhibiting search for solutions to problems at both the individual and collective levels. At the individual level, search in networks enables individuals to transport themselves to a very different... View Details

Keywords: Network Organizations; Search; Problem Solving; Individual; Individuals And Teams; Collective; Cognitive Search; Network Search; Search Typology; Networks; Social and Collaborative Networks; Theory; Knowledge Sharing

Article

Mitigating Bias in Adaptive Data Gathering via Differential Privacy

By: Seth Neel and Aaron Leon Roth

Data that is gathered adaptively—via bandit algorithms, for example—exhibits bias. This is true both when gathering simple numeric valued data—the empirical means kept track of by stochastic bandit algorithms are biased downwards—and when gathering more complicated... View Details

Keywords: Bandit Algorithms; Bias; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods; Theory

November 1994 (Revised May 1996)
Case

Walt Disney's Dennis Hightower-- Taking Charge

By: Ashish Nanda

In 1987, Dennis Hightower, was recruited from outside for a newly created position as head of Disney Consumer Products European operations. Hightower has to win initial acceptance of entrenched country managers, integrate the company's diverse subsidiaries closer... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Change Management; Corporate Strategy; Personal Development and Career; Consumer Products Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Europe

Educators

2016
Working Paper

The Skills Gap and the Near-Far Problem in Executive Education and Leadership Development

By: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Executive development programs have entered a period of rapid transformation, driven on one side by the proliferation of a new technological, cultural, and economic landscape commonly referred to as “digital disruption” and on the other by a widening gap between the... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Executive Education; Disruption; Management Skills

19 Jan 2010
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing the Economic Crisis

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions To Be Answered: How do I lead in a crisis? What roles does the Board play? What are the emotional needs View Details

Keywords: by Staff

February 2023
Article

Maintaining Health Care Innovations After the Pandemic

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Barak D. Richman and Kevin A. Schulman

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the worst failings of the health care system, but it also stimulated a flurry of innovations that could lead to a much-improved delivery system. These were innovations that were born out of necessity: telemedicine access and use... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Care Outcomes; Innovation; Innovation In Healthcare Delivery; COVID; COVID-19 Pandemic; Pandemics; Telemedicine; Telehealth; Ambulatory Care; Vaccines; Innovation and Invention; Change; Health Industry

Article

The Store Is Dead—Long Live the Store

By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

In this article, we pursue two interconnected themes: the expansion of online-first retailers into offline stores that serve the purpose of “supercharging” customer value, and the transformation of the stores of offline-first retailers from... View Details

Keywords: Customer Experience; Inventory Control; Omnichannel Retailing; Online Marketing; Marketing Channels; Trends; Transformation; Digital Marketing; Retail Industry

26 Feb 2013
First Look

First Look: Feb. 26

Puzzle of Private Investment in State-Controlled Firms Authors:Pargendler, Mariana, Aldo Musacchio, and Sergio G. Lazzarini Abstract A large legal and economic literature describes how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) suffer from a variety... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2009
Article

An Evolutionary Approach to Financial History

Financial history is not conventionally thought of in evolutionary terms, but it should be. Traditional ways of thinking about finance, dating back to Hilferding, emphasize the importance of concentration and economies of scale. But these approaches overlook the rich... View Details

Keywords: History; Transformation; Finance

29 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

Hunting for a Hot Job in High Tech? Try 'Digitization Economist'

returns. Digital advertising provides marketers with renewed opportunity to measure advertising effectiveness. Economists draw on both existing theories of advertising and the tools View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Technology; Education

2010
Working Paper

Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs about Others

By: Rafael Di Tella and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

In this paper we present the results from a "corruption game" (a dictator game modified so that the second player can accept a side payment that reduces the overall size of the pie). Dictators (silently) treated to have the possibility of taking a larger proportion of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Game Theory; Personal Characteristics

27 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 27

Intervention Method, Empirical Evidence, and Theory Author:Michael Beer Publication:In Research in Organizational Change and Development. Vol. 19, edited by Richard Woodman, William Pasmore, and Abraham B.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Supplement

Transformation at Loyola New Orleans (B)

By: David Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti

In August of 2018, Tania Tetlow is inaugurated as President of Loyola University New Orleans, in the midst of turmoil. Prior to her start, the university was given a final warning to land a balanced budget by year's end by its accreditors or risk facing probation. It... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Financial Condition; Crisis Management; Change Management; Trust; Transformation

31 Jul 2012
First Look

First Look: July 31

perfect substitutes for equity finance, payout taxes may therefore have an effect on the investment of firms. High taxes will favor investment by firms that can finance internally. Using an international panel with many View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

March 2024
Case

Funderbeam: Teaming Up or Going Alone?

By: Paul A. Gompers, Elena Corsi and Orna Dan

Funderbeam, a global platform founded in Estonia to enable start-ups to run private syndications and secondaries while offering liquidity for private equity investors, was at a crossroads. Over its ten-year run, the company had expanded its services and areas of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Business Exit or Shutdown; Transition; Leading Change; Business or Company Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Law; Mergers and Acquisitions; Financing and Loans; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Ownership Stake; Expansion; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Financial Services Industry; Estonia; Republic of Ireland; United Kingdom; Singapore

Educators

29 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 29, 2018

trace the theory’s evolution from a technology-change framework—essentially descriptive and relatively limited in scope—to a more broadly explanatory causal theory of innovation and competitive response.... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Article

Assent-maximizing Social Choice

By: Katherine A. Baldiga and Jerry R. Green

We take a decision theoretic approach to the classic social choice problem, using data on the frequency of choice problems to compute social choice functions. We define a family of social choice rules that depend on the population's preferences and on the probability... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Theory; Measurement and Metrics; Mathematical Methods; Society