Publications

February 1998 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Uganda and the Washington Consensus

By: Huw Pill and Courtenay Sprague

Under the direction of President Museveni, much of the world has heaped praise on Uganda for transforming its economy from devastation to growth and managing the ethnic and racial strife that has divided the country in the past. Following a decade of reforms, Uganda is... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Economy; Policy; Analysis; Development Economics; Borrowing and Debt; Management; Developing Countries and Economies; Uganda

Educators

05 Aug 2021
News

The chip shortage is getting worse

2021
Working Paper

The Business of K-12 Education in China

By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu

This working paper examines the evolution of K-12 education in China, especially between 1985 and the present day, drawing extensive interviews with participants in the educational sector. China has been hugely successful in reaching almost 100 percent literacy,... View Details

Keywords: K-12 Education; China; Real Estate; Early Childhood Education; Performance Evaluation; Teaching; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Personal Development and Career; Social Issues; Nonprofit Organizations; Private Sector; Education Industry; Real Estate Industry; China

22 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 22, 2008

the company faces a number of challenges, including generic drugs, patent infringements in developing countries, and pricing pressure from governments and health insurers in the United States. Given these challenges, Novartis must decide... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2023
Working Paper

No Mask, No Service: Customer Reaction to Walmart’s 2020 National Mask Mandate

By: Innessa Colaiacovo

Multi-location firms face a complex series of economic tradeoffs when deciding whether to implement standard processes or allow processes to vary across establishments. One element of this tradeoff is customer response. This paper explores customer reaction to a... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Geographic Location; Policy; Health Pandemics; Retail Industry; United States

July–August 2013
Article

Six Ways to Sink a Growth Initiative

By: Donald L. Laurie and J. Bruce Harreld

The conventional wisdom about how best to pursue growth—launch a slew of initiatives in high-potential areas; appoint some promising young managers to lead them; locate them safely away from the established businesses—is a recipe for failure, according to the authors.... View Details

Keywords: Failure; Growth and Development Strategy

Article

Mandate Outcomes Reporting

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Michael E. Porter

Currently, few health care providers measure and report their patient outcomes, which leads to several problems. Attempts to introduce price transparency without outcomes transparency could trigger a “race to the bottom.” Should Medicare coverage be expanded to... View Details

Keywords: Outcomes Reporting; Outcomes Measurement; Medicare; Medicaid; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Measurement and Metrics

08 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 8

governance. The patterns we observe are consistent with the hypothesis that time spent with outsiders is on average less beneficial to the firm and more beneficial to the CEO and that the CEO spends more time with outsiders when View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2008
Case

Novartis AG: Science-Based Business

By: H. Kent Bowen and Courtney Purrington

Novartis is a science-based drug company, which has important implications for its business strategy. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world with over $38B in sales in 2007. Pharmaceuticals account for slightly over $24B of that total. In 2007,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Resource Allocation; Product Development; Partners and Partnerships; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Pharmaceutical Industry

Educators

September 2012
Teaching Note

Stryker Corporation: Capital Budgeting (TN)

By: Timothy A. Luehrman

This case examines some parts of Stryker Corporation's systems and procedures for approving and authorizing capital spending of many different types, including buildings, machinery, and working capital for existing businesses, as well as transactions with third parties... View Details

Keywords: Capital Expenditures-equipment; Capital Expenditures-machinery; Internal Rate Of Return; Discounted Cash Flows; Net Present Value; Cost of Capital; Valuation; Cash Flow; System; Organizational Culture; Policy; Business Processes; Capital Budgeting

January 2021 (Revised February 2021)
Case

TCS: From Physical Offices to Borderless Work

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Malini Sen

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a multinational IT services company headquartered in Mumbai, is a subsidiary of one of India’s most reputed conglomerates, the Tata Group. In 2020, TCS was valued at $144.7 billion, the highest for any company in the IT sector,... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Organizational Structure; Change Management; Transformation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Customer Satisfaction; Information Technology Industry; India; Asia; United States; Europe

Educators

15 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

Managing the Family Business: It Takes a Village

but are not necessarily liked by all their relatives. Leaders tell me that they have a gratifying but tough and often thankless job. Many successful family business leaders tell me that they spend half of their time working to address... View Details

25 Aug 2014
Blog Post

Working in Tech 4Dev

After spending the first half of my internship in Nairobi, I am now wrapping up the summer at Ushahidi’s San Francisco office, where I’ve been working in a business development capacity to develop a new mapping platform. Lately, I’ve been... View Details

Keywords: Technology

June 2014
Article

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people's disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with, while the second is the dependence of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Attitudes; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

01 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

How Much Time Should CEOs Devote to Customers?

customer intimacy but product innovation; the CEO will need to spend time with his chief scientists, medical opinion leaders, government regulators, and CEOs of the companies distributing pharmaceuticals,... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

07 Dec 2009
Research & Ideas

Government’s Positive Role in Kick-Starting Entrepreneurship

government in making it a success. "Particularly during the early years, the government played a critical role in shaping Silicon Valley," especially spending and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

2011
Working Paper

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people's disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with while the second is the dependence of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Mathematical Methods; Attitudes; Interests; Perception; Wealth and Poverty

July 2020
Article

Lessons from the Impact of Price Regulation on the Pricing of Anticancer Drugs in Germany

By: Victoria D. Lauenroth, Aaron S. Kesselheim, Ameet Sarpatwari and Ariel Dora Stern

Worldwide spending on prescription drugs has increased dramatically in recent years. Although this increase has been particularly pronounced in the U.S., it remains largely unaddressed there. In Europe, however, different approaches to regulating drug prices have been... View Details

Keywords: Pharmaceuticals; Prescription Drug Costs; Drug Pricing; Access To Care; Cost Reduction; Health Care and Treatment; Price; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Cost Management; Germany