Publications

May 2017 (Revised June 2017)
Case

ATH Technologies (A): Making the Numbers

By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard

An exercise that takes students through five stages of growth in an entrepreneurial start-up in the medical devices industry: 1) founding, 2) growth, 3) push to profitability, 4) refocusing process, and 5) takeover by new management. At each stage, students must... View Details

Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Balancing Innovation And Control; Performance Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Profit; Geographic Location; Governance Controls; Innovation and Invention; Management Succession; Performance Evaluation; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

October 2003 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Dividend Policy at Linear Technology

By: Malcolm P. Baker and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

In 1992, Linear Technology, a designer and manufacturer of analog semiconductors, initiated a dividend. The firm increased its dividend by approximately $0.01 per share each year thereafter. In fiscal year 2002, Linear experienced its first significant drop in sales... View Details

Keywords: Financial Strategy; Investment Return; Financial Condition; Taxation; Initial Public Offering; Financial Management; Semiconductor Industry

01 Dec 2015
Research & Ideas

What to Do When Your Organization Has Dueling Missions

so-called mission drift by focusing on profits to the detriment of their social mission. Battilana’s previous work suggests that hiring employees who embrace the social mission is not sufficient to avoid mission drift and to ensure hybrid... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

10 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Is Groupon Good for Retailers?

may file for an initial public offering by the end of 2011, according to the New York Times. "Groupon has attracted remarkable interest," says Harvard Business School professor Benjamin G. Edelman. "With the economy... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Advertising; Technology

21 Dec 2009
Research & Ideas

Good Banks, Bad Banks, and Government’s Role as Fixer

the failure of many other large institutions. Most of the 600 institutions recapitalized by the federal government over the last year do not satisfy either criterion. A lot of bailout decisions were made ad hoc without a clear rationale.... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Banking; Financial Services

18 Oct 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Racial Diversity Initiatives in Professional Service Firms: What Factors Differentiate Successful from Unsuccessful Initiatives?

Keywords: by Modupe Akinola & David A. Thomas; Service

01 Oct 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance:Evidence from Indian Software Services

Keywords: by Robert S. Huckman, Bradley R. Staats & David M. Upton; Video Game; Web Services

26 Nov 2008
Working Paper Summaries

The Sciences of Design: Observations on an Emerging Field

Keywords: by Sandeep Purao, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan Hevner, Veda C. Storey, Jan Pries-Heje, Brian Smith & Ying Zhu; Technology

07 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis

going dark, fearful of offending or of being accused of taking advantage of an unfortunate situation for corporate gain. According to estimates from a March 2020 survey of marketers conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, nearly... View Details

Keywords: by Jill Avery and Richard Edelman

25 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

The Powerful Strategic Tool Companies Should Not Try to Control

user community is a great example of how a company can gain competitive advantage by tapping into its user community. LEGO allows its users to create their own designs and share them with other users. They... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

Article

Adaptive Machine Unlearning

By: Varun Gupta, Christopher Jung, Seth Neel, Aaron Roth, Saeed Sharifi-Malvajerdi and Chris Waites

Data deletion algorithms aim to remove the influence of deleted data points from trained models at a cheaper computational cost than fully retraining those models. However, for sequences of deletions, most prior work in the non-convex setting gives valid guarantees... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; AI and Machine Learning

Read Now

February 1991 (Revised May 2016)
Background Note

Note on Organizational Structure

By: Ethan Bernstein and Nitin Nohria

Provides the reader with a basic understanding of organizational structure. The first section outlines some of the key tools and criteria that must be taken into account in designing organizational structures. In the second section, some archetypal forms of... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure

20 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Misgovernance at the World Bank

development projects around the globe. The study, by Harvard Law School student Ashwin Kaja and HBS professor Eric Werker, is detailed in the working paper "Corporate Misgovernance at the World Bank" [PDF]. Theirs is the first... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

30 Aug 2006
Op-Ed

The Compensation Game

executive pay. The idea that CEO compensation is driven by the invisible hand of market forces is a myth from which chief executives have long benefited. In setting executive pay, directors have not been guided solely View Details

Keywords: by Lucian Bebchuk & Rakesh Khurana

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

How Bank of America Turned Branches into Service-Development Laboratories

America's Innovation & Development Team quickly realized that it would be very difficult to conduct a diverse array of experiments within the confines of a traditionally designed bank branch. Experiments require frequent changes in... View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke; Banking; Financial Services

13 Apr 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The ‘IKEA Effect’: When Labor Leads to Love

Keywords: by Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon & Dan Ariely; Consumer Products

19 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Company Loyalty

both employers and employees to strike a brand-new balance when it comes to loyalty—one that gives organizations the focus and expertise they need to compete and employees the career development opportunities they demand? According to the experts interviewed View Details

Keywords: by Lauren Keller Johnson

December 1980 (Revised February 1998)
Case

Burger King Corp.

By: W. Earl Sasser and David C. Rikert

Describes the operating system of a Burger King unit. The case does not have a decision focus; it is designed for use with McDonald's Corp. Students are asked to compare the operating systems of these two fast food hamburger chains. Careful analysis will detect the... View Details

Keywords: Food; System; Operations; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States