Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,007)
- Faculty Publications (374)
- March 2019
- Technical Note
Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both—Lessons from Retail & Service Chains (Abridged)
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
- 2018
- Article
Insight into Gender Differences in STEM: Evidence from Peer Reviews in an Engineering Class
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Bruce Ankenman and Seyed Iravani
As the service industry moves toward self-service, peer feedback serves a critical role in this shift for educational services. Peer feedback is a process by which students provide feedback to each other. One of its major benefits is that it enables students to become... View Details
Keywords: Peer Review; Peer Feedback; STEM Education; Anonymity; Education; Gender; Education Industry
- October 2018 (Revised April 2019)
- Teaching Note
Kids & Company: Entering the U.S.
By: Boris Groysberg and Matthew G. Preble
Teaching Note for HBS No. 418-011. View Details
Keywords: Child Care; Childcare; Day Care; Daycare; Strategy; Growth Management; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Leadership; Product Marketing; Brands and Branding; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Product Design; Product Development; Selection and Staffing; Customer Focus and Relationships; United States; Canada
- September 2018
- Teaching Note
City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen
This teaching note assists in the classroom instruction of the HBS No. 318-089, “City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact.” It offers to instructors a case summary and analysis, along with student preparation questions and a guide for classroom discussion of the case.... View Details
Keywords: Scaling; Education Entrepreneurship; Education; Service Operations; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Resource Allocation; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Human Capital; Growth Management; Service Delivery; Organizational Design; Social Enterprise; Poverty; United States
- September 2018
- Article
Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services
By: Maria Ibanez, Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
Work-scheduling research typically prescribes task sequences implemented by managers. Yet employees often have discretion to deviate from their prescribed sequence. Using data from 2.4 million radiological diagnoses, we find that doctors prioritize similar tasks... View Details
Keywords: Discretion; Scheduling; Queue; Healthcare; Learning; Experience; Decentralization; Operations; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity; Decisions; Time Management; Cost vs Benefits; Health Industry
- August 2018
- Case
BlackBuck (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The case presents the challenges of scaling an asset-heavy company (that relies on its operations). It highlights how decisions on the early team impact a company’s ability to scale, linkage between growth and cash flows, as well the organizational impact of high... View Details
- July 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Teaching Note
Argentina Power—Don’t Cry for Me Argentina
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-041. This case concerns a complex potential energy infrastructure investment in Argentina by a global conglomerate shortly after Mauricio Macri (“Macri”) became President of Argentina in 2015. The central issues are (i) why was a country... View Details
- May 28, 2018
- Article
How Companies Can Identify Racial and Gender Bias in Their Customer Service
By: Alexandra C. Feldberg and Tami Kim
Research shows that minority customers — blacks and Asians — regularly receive worse customer service than whites in ways that are not immediately obvious to onlookers (or even managers). These results prompt a couple of questions for executives and managers. One, does... View Details
- April 2018
- Supplement
Breakfast at the Paramount
By: Ryan W. Buell
The Paramount is a 44-seat diner on Charles Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. A frequent "Best of Boston" award winner, the restaurant is a perennial favorite among locals and tourists, particularly for brunch on the weekends, when lines often stretch... View Details
- March 2018
- Supplement
Improving Access at VA
By: Ryan W. Buell and Robert S. Huckman
In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised February 2020)
- Teaching Note
Improving Access at VA
By: Ryan W. Buell and Robert S. Huckman
In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ran the largest healthcare system in the United States, with over 1,700 sites of care that served nearly 9 million veterans. One year earlier, a scandal had erupted over a cover-up of the excessive wait times veterans... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and James Weber
In 2018, City Year was a 30-year-old nonprofit that recruited and organized teams of young-adult “volunteers” (corps teams) to provide a year of citizen service. It had 3,100 corps members serving in 327 schools located in 28 U.S. cities. In its early decades, City... View Details
Keywords: Education; Service Operations; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Resource Allocation; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Human Capital; Growth Management; Service Delivery; Organizational Design; Social Enterprise; Poverty; United States
- March 2018
- Case
EKOL Logistics: Thinking Outside the Box
By: Willy C. Shih and Esel Çekin
This case describes Ekol, an intermodal transportation and logistics company, and how it manages capacity planning. Its busiest routes linked motor vehicle assemblers in Germany and Turkey with many of their parts suppliers, but it had also developed key links in... View Details
Keywords: Growth And Development; Strategy; Intermodal Transportation; Short-sea Transportation; Capacity Management; Capacity Planning; Delivery Planning; Route Optimization; Car Spare Part; Auto Manufacturing; Automotive Supply Chain; Europe; Turkey; Service Design; Fast Fashion; Near-shoring; Supply Chain; Supply Chain Management; Operations; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Logistics; Transportation Industry; Auto Industry; Turkey; Germany; Spain; European Union; Europe
- 2020
- Working Paper
The Impact of CEOs in the Public Sector: Evidence from the English NHS
By: Katharina Janke, Carol Propper and Raffaella Sadun
Abstract
Governments worldwide have sought to reform the delivery of public services by mimicking private sector governance models that grant CEOs greater autonomy and give them responsibility for meeting key government targets. We examine the effectiveness of this... View Details
- 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
- March 2018 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Alaska Airlines: Empowering Frontline Workers to Make It Right
By: Ranjay Gulati, Andrew O'Connell and Caroline de Lacvivier
This case documents the ongoing efforts by Alaska Airlines to enhance its efforts to become more customer centric by empowering its employees using a service framework. It explores how the airline starts with a completely hands-off approach to empowerment in which... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised August 2020)
- Background Note
Continuous Software Development: Agile's Successor
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Samuel Clemens and Olivia Hull
In recent years, the twin software development methodologies of continuous delivery and continuous deployment have risen to prominence in the start-up world and beyond. These methods have enabled technology companies large and small to accelerate their product... View Details
Keywords: Continuous Improvement; Continuous Development; Continuous Delivery; Continuous Integration; Product Development Processes; Computer Programming; Agile; Waterfall; Software Applications; Software Engineering; Applications and Software; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Product Development; Customer Focus and Relationships; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Quality; Product Marketing; Product; Infrastructure; Information Infrastructure; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry; Massachusetts; Boston
- January 2018
- Case
Kids & Company: Entering the U.S.
By: Boris Groysberg, Matthew G. Preble and Katherine Connolly Baden
In April 2017, Victoria Sopik and Jennifer Nashmi, CEO and CFO (respectively) of Kids & Company, a Canadian childcare provider that they had co-founded in the early 2000s and developed into a nearly 100-unit enterprise, are discussing how the company should proceed... View Details
Keywords: Child Care; Childcare; Day Care; Daycare; Early Childhood Education; Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Leadership; Marketing; Product Marketing; Brands and Branding; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Product Design; Product Development; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Selection and Staffing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Entrepreneurship; Service Industry; Service Industry; United States; Canada
- Article
TDABC Cost Analysis of Ocular Disorders in an Ophthalmology Emergency Department versus Urgent Care: Clinical Experience at Massachusetts Eye and Ear
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Jonathan Chou, Mahek Shah, Amy Watts, Matthew Gardiner, Joan Miller and John I. Lowenstein
Purpose
To perform a cost analysis comparison for managing common ocular disorders in an eye emergency department (ED) versus an urgent care setting using a time-driven activity-based cost model (TDABC) to assist physicians and staff in appropriate allocation of... View Details
- December 2017 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Network Strategy 2016
By: Michael E. Porter, Thomas W. Feeley and Toyin J. Okanlawon
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) began as a stand-alone hospital in the heart of downtown Philadelphia in 1855. By 2016 the CHOP Care Network stretched across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the New York metropolitan area, providing a wide range of services... View Details