Publications

11 Jul 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Deconstructing 'Customer Experience'

With the help of LEGO bricks, business executives discover how design principles can serve as building blocks to create a great customer experience. How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.comIndy booksellers have survived brutal competition by... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail; Service

20 Dec 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

How to Design a Better Customer Experience

adventure. The newly configured machines transformed children from distraught to happy, leading to a pleasant ripple effect: collective relief among parents, a sharp reduction in sedations, and satisfaction scores that jumped by 90... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health; Entertainment & Recreation

Forthcoming
Article

Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency

By: Ryan W. Buell and MoonSoo Choi

Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Customer Selection; Customer Compatibility; Retention; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Australia

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2011
Article

Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia

By: Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu

In this paper, we examine the causal relationship between group size and incentives to contribute in the setting of Chinese Wikipedia, the Chinese language version of an online encyclopedia that relies entirely on voluntary contributions. The group at Chinese Wikipedia... View Details

Keywords: Rights; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Valuation; Groups and Teams; Knowledge Sharing; Behavior; Satisfaction; Size; Government and Politics; Economics; Information Technology Industry; Hong Kong; Taiwan; Singapore

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06 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

Does Hybrid Work Actually Work? Insights from 30,000 Emails

eight days during the study period. Hybrid workers spent nine to 14 days at the office, and the mostly in-office cohort worked more than 15 days in the office. Employees completed surveys that assessed their sense of satisfaction with... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

April 2024
Article

Speaking up and Taking Action: Psychological Safety and Joint Problem-solving Orientation in Safety Improvement

By: Hassina Bahadurzada, Michaela J. Kerrissey and Amy C. Edmondson

Healthcare organizations face stubborn challenges in ensuring patient safety and mitigating clinician turnover. This paper aims to advance theory and research on patient safety by elucidating how the role of psychological safety in patient safety can be enhanced with... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare Operations; Psychological Safety; Teams; Retention; Safety; Customer Satisfaction; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Health Industry

Read Now

2018
Working Paper

Status Inconsistency: Variance in One's Status Across Groups Harms Well-being but Improves Perspective-taking

By: Catarina Fernandes and Alison Wood Brooks

Most people belong to many different groups. While some people experience consistently high or low status across all of their groups, others experience wildly different levels of status in each group. In this research, we examine how status inconsistency – the degree... View Details

Keywords: Status; Social Hierarchies; Well-being; Perspective Taking; Status and Position; Groups and Teams; Satisfaction; Perspective

July 2008 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)

By: Tsedal Neeley and Thomas J. DeLong

Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc., sets out to meet with his entire 43-member customer implementation team spread across India, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America to resolve a dire customer system outage as required... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Global Range; Management; Customer Satisfaction; Service Delivery; Crisis Management; Conflict and Resolution; Technology Industry; India; United Arab Emirates; France; United States

2014
Other Teaching and Training Material

Marketing Reading: Brand Positioning

By: Jill Avery and Sunil Gupta

This Reading addresses the principles of brand positioning and demonstrates how companies can strategically craft powerful, resonant, and unique brand positions to help products stand out amidst the cacophony of the marketplace. Strategic brand positioning provides... View Details

Keywords: Brand Positioning; Branding; Consumer Research; Defensive Strategies; Market Positioning; Marketing; Product Differentiation; Product Positioning; Strategic Positioning; Value Proposition; Customer Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Customer Satisfaction; Brands and Branding

28 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

How Racial Bias Taints Customer Service: Evidence from 6,000 Hotels

terms of business outcomes, they're not developing the best customer relationships they could.” Companies that fix disparities in their service delivery are likely to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty,... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

24 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

Four Keys of Enduring Success: How High Achievers Win

may not be the same, he said. Satisfaction can turn into pride and pride into hubris. "This is fundamentally the story of every Greek tragedy that exists." What Is Success? Stevenson and Nash believe success is a state of being.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

09 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations

and Nohria examine how an organization built around the four-drive theory might look. The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of work. With it, life is heaven, or as near heaven... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

March 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Reinventing Best Buy

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast... View Details

Keywords: Best Buy; Hubert Joly; Renew Blue; Showrooming; Webrooming; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Online Retail; Multichannel Retailing; Omnichannel; Marketplaces; Turnaround; Consumer Electronics; Consumer Electronics Accessories; Appliances; Stores-within-stores; Store Experience; Store Size; Store Pickup; Store Management; Delivery; Delivery Models; Amazon; Amazon.com; Pricing Strategy; Business Subsidiaries; Business Units; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Music Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Theater Entertainment; Price; Profit; Revenue; Geographic Scope; Multinational Firms and Management; Business History; Cost; Selection and Staffing; Reports; Technological Innovation; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Human Capital; Leading Change; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Media; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Distribution Channels; Infrastructure; Product; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Programs; Groups and Teams; Sales; Salesforce Management; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Internet and the Web; Applications and Software; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Resource Allocation; Computer Industry; Electronics Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Information Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Video Game Industry; United States; Minnesota; Minneapolis; Saint Paul; St. Paul

13 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

Managers, Here’s How to Bond with New Hires Remotely

significantly improve the performance and satisfaction of workers and boost the chances of hiring them permanently, according to the results of the study by Harvard Business School professors Iavor I. Bojinov and Prithwiraj Choudhury and... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

March–April 2019
Article

Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees

By: Ryan W. Buell

Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Customers; Services; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Customer Satisfaction; Behavior; Service Industry

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August 2022 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Bajaj Finance: Building an Omnipresent Financial Services Firm

By: Das Narayandas and Rachna Tahilyani

Bajaj Finance, India’s largest consumer finance firm with $20.9 billion of assets across 50.5 million customers, is on a journey to transform itself from a traditional firm that sells loans and other financial products through brick-and-mortar outlets to an omnipresent... View Details

Keywords: Financial Institutions; Transformation; Financial Instruments; Customer Satisfaction; Internet and the Web; Customer Focus and Relationships; India

September 2017 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Marriott International: The Next 90 Years

By: Chiara Farronato and Gary Pisano

The case examines how Marriott should respond to the potential threats from new home-sharing platforms and the rise of online travel agencies. In 2017 Marriott was the largest hotel chain, with more than one million rooms and 7% of worldwide room supply. In the... View Details