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March 2025
Case

The Changing Climate on Wall Street

By: Clayton S. Rose, Maxim Pike Harrell and Michael Norris

Increasing and conflicting regulatory requirements and political pressures regarding climate change tested the leaders of U.S. financial institutions, as they struggled to determine how best to comply while managing their business and its risks. In October 2024,... View Details

2010
Working Paper

Introductory Reading for Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model

By: Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen, Steve Zaffron and Kari L. Granger

This paper is the sixth of six pre-course reading assignments for an experimental leadership course developed by the authors over five years (2004-2008) at the U. of Rochester Simon School of Business working with students, alumni, executives, and faculty from various... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Curriculum and Courses; Strategy; Performance Capacity; Attitudes; Behavior; United States; Netherlands; Texas

SSRN

12 Apr 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Productivity Suffers When Employees Are Allowed to Schedule Their Own Tasks

working paper Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services by María R. Ibáñez, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Business School; Jonathan R. Clark , an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

07 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Supervisor of Sandwiches? More Companies Inflate Titles to Avoid Extra Pay

$455, above which companies must pay extra for more than 40 hours of work. Cohen conducted the research with Umit Gurun and N. Bugra Ozel, a professor and associate professor of accounting, respectively, at the Naveen Jindal School of Management at the University of... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

December 2019 (Revised December 2022)
Case

TXU (A): Powering the Largest Leveraged Buyout in History

By: Trevor Fetter, Erik Snowberg and Rebecca M. Henderson

This case is designed to support a lively discussion about the relative merits of shareholder vs. stakeholder perspectives in the context of a company that provides a vital public service that has important environmental implications. The 2007 purchase of TXU, the... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Transformation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Environmental Sustainability; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Energy Generation; Non-Renewable Energy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry; Texas

06 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

Latest Isn’t Always Greatest: Why Product Updates Capture Consumers

necessarily better,” says Ximena Garcia-Rada, a former Harvard Business School doctoral student who is now an assistant professor at Texas A&M University. “We see a significant proportion of participants shift to the objectively... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products; Retail

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

Recently, I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast where Dr. Andrew Huberman interviewed Dr. David Buss, a founding member in the field of evolutionary psychology and professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, whose... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

28 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

Keep or Cut Workers? How Companies Reacted to the COVID-19 Crisis

Employment,” which Rouen co-authored with Stanford professor Rebecca Lester and University of Texas professor Braden Williams. As the American economy slowly recovers from the pandemic, corporate leaders, policymakers, and researchers are... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

14 Aug 2006
HBS Case

On Managing with Bobby Knight and “Coach K”

practices as can be imagined—Snook asks students to confront their basic assumptions about human nature, motivation, and preferred styles of leading. Bobby Knight, also known as "The General," is the head coach at Texas Tech... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Sports

2010
Working Paper

Course Materials For: 'Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership - An Ontological Model'

By: Werner H. Erhard, Michael C. Jensen, Steve Zaffron and Kari L. Granger

This course is designed to leave students being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression - rather than attempting to learn the characteristics, styles, and skills of noteworthy leaders, and then trying to remember and apply them... View Details

Keywords: Curriculum and Courses; Leadership Development; Research; Science; Attitudes

SSRN

May 2013
Case

Wendy Peterson

By: Linda A. Hill and Alisa Zalosh

Wendy Peterson was recently promoted to Vice President of Sales at the Plano, Texas, office of AccountBack, an accounting software and services company. To penetrate a perceived market niche, Peterson hires Fred (Xing) Wu, whose familiarity with and access to Chinese... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Conflict Management; Salesforce Management; Rank and Position; Performance Evaluation; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Accounting Industry; Texas

October 2022
Case

Cost Plus Drugs

By: Alexander MacKay and James Barnett

In September 2022, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company CEO Alex Oshmyansky considered the future of the company. Cost Plus Drugs was a retailer for more than 340 generic oral medications, selling their drugs at significantly lower prices than typical pharmacies.... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Health; Markets; Social Enterprise; Society; Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Business Divisions; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Health Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Texas

December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

IBM Watson at MD Anderson Cancer Center

By: Shane Greenstein, Mel Martin and Sarkis Agaian

After discovering that their cancer diagnostic tool, designed to leverage the cloud computing power of IBM Watson, needed greater integration into the clinical processes at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the development team had difficult choices to make. The Oncology... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Operations; Failure; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Health Care and Treatment; Product Development; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Houston; Texas

05 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

How Hormones Foretell Whether People Will Cheat

Harvard Business School; Ellie Shuo Jin and Leslie K. Rice, doctoral students at The University of Texas at Austin; and Robert A. Josephs, professor and head of the Clinical Neuroendocrinology Laboratory at UT Austin. Employers may be... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

November 2009 (Revised December 2009)
Case

RL Wolfe: Implementing Self-Directed Teams

By: David A. Garvin and Elizabeth Collins

Key topics include team design, team management, job design, employee empowerment, implementing change, and high performance workforces. In 2004, John Amasi, the director of production for a manufacturer of plastic pipe, introduced the concept of self-directed teams... View Details

Keywords: Work Force Management; Employee Empowerment; Motivation; Motivation and Incentives; Leading Change; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Productivity; Groups and Teams; Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Manufacturing Industry; Texas

31 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

American Idle: Workers Spend Too Much Time Waiting for Something to Do

former HBS doctoral student who is now an assistant professor at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Despite such pitfalls of idle time, however, the phenomenon has been understudied. “There is much more focus... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

September 2023 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Honest Jobs: A Path to Redemption

By: Paul A. Gompers and Jeffrey Barkas

Founded by a formerly incarcerated job seeker, Honest Jobs' mission is to be the hub where people with criminal records come to build careers and employers come to find great talent. Honest Jobs faced early challenges as a two-sided platform for justice-involved job... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Venture Capital; Recruitment; Entrepreneurial Finance; Selection and Staffing; Digital Platforms; Job Search; Mission and Purpose; Expansion; Employment Industry; United States; Colorado; Ohio; Texas

August 2012
Case

ARISE: A Destination-for-a-Day Spa

By: Michael Beer and Lynda St. Clair

A new Dallas-based health and beauty spa aims to use a highly distinctive human resource system as the foundation of its competitive strategy. By encouraging employees to act as "personal wellness coaches" (PWCs) with high commitment and broad responsibilities, the... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Service Delivery; Competitive Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Health Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Service Industry; Texas