Publications

August 2013 (Revised November 2013)
Case

Ford vs. GM: The Evolution of Mass Production (A)

By: Willy Shih

This case explores the very different paths taken by the Ford Motor Company and the General Motors Corporation in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Henry Ford's Model T was a car for the masses. After considerable experimentation, Ford Motor... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Exploration; Dominant Design; Business Growth and Maturation; Business History; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Product Design; Product Development; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Vertical Integration; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Michigan

October 2018 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation

By: Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

In August 2017, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was looking for ways to differentiate itself from competing banks and was also trying to improve the financial well-being of... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Experimentation; Banks and Banking; Credit Cards; Customer Focus and Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Australia

22 May 2014
News

Why Silicon Valley Rules Don’t Work for So Many Older Companies

28 Nov 2017
News

The no-excuses way to manage healthcare growth

29 Aug 2016
News

Harvard establishes research alliance with Tata companies

April 2025
Case

Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif

By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman

Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Valuation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Industrial Products Industry; North America; Europe

Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, says that there are simple ways leaders can help their employees stay productive, focused, and psychologically healthy as they work from home during the current global global pandemic. The right... View Details

2010
Working Paper

The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage

By: Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel Schneider and Peter Tufano

We use a unique, nationally representative cross-national dataset to document the reduction in individuals' usage of routine non-emergency medical care in the midst of the economic crisis. A substantially larger fraction of Americans have reduced medical care than have... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Health Care and Treatment; France; Germany; Great Britain; Canada; United States

Read Now

27 Nov 2014
News

When Your Boss Gives You Conflicting Messages

February 2011
Article

Bounded Ethicality in Negotiations

By: Max Bazerman

Routine and persistent acts of dishonesty prevail in everyday life, yet most people resist shining a critical moral light on their own behavior, thereby maintaining and oftentimes inflating images of themselves as moral individuals. We overview the psychology that... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Strategy; Goals and Objectives; Reputation; Negotiation; Moral Sensibility

Find at Harvard

19 May 2015
News

Uber may never dominate in China—but it doesn't need to

July 1998 (Revised May 2005)
Case

Anderson Steel Service, Inc.

By: John A. Davis

Explores the management of family and business issues and helps to identify a range of topics with which families in business wrestle. Describes a dilemma faced by sixty-eight-year-old Charles Anderson, the semi-retired founder of the company and the father of three... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Family Business; Problems and Challenges; Business or Company Management; Family and Family Relationships; Strategy; Steel Industry

16 Feb 2022
News

How Job Applicants Try to Hack Résumé-Reading Software

08 Dec 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Decoding Inside Information

Keywords: by Lauren Cohen, Christopher Malloy & Lukasz Pomorski; Financial Services

June 2012
Case

PV Technologies, Inc.: Were They Asleep at the Switch?

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Diane Badame

PV Technologies, Inc. is an industry-leading manufacturer of photovoltaic inverters used to convert the direct current output of solar panels into alternating current for the commercial power grid. In conjunction with a request for proposal, the company's largest... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Product Marketing; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; United States

February 1985 (Revised July 1986)
Case

Applichem (A)

Applichem has six plants in different countries making the same chemical product. The purpose of this case is to allow students to think about what costs are relevant to management in this process industry environment, about how to define a comparison of costs and... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Performance Productivity; Operations; Performance Improvement; Chemical Industry

March–April 2023
Article

You Need Two Leadership Gears: Know When to Take Charge and When to Get Out of the Way

By: Lindy Greer, Francesca Gino and Robert Sutton

The debate about the best way to lead has been raging for years: Should you empower your people and get out of their way, or take charge and push them to do great work? The answer, say the authors, is to do both. Their research shows that effective leaders routinely... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Groups and Teams; Organizational Structure

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

March 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Technical Note

Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both — Lessons from Retail & Service Chains

By: Tatiana Sandino

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Standards; Employees; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Retail Industry; Service Industry