Publications

Find at Harvard

2017
Working Paper

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

SSRN

August 2000
Case

Project ACHIEVE - January 2000

By: H. Kent Bowen and Elizabeth Kind

Education services target public schools to assist the school with technology and services that will improve their communication with students, parents, and the community. There is also the goal of increasing scores of measured learning. How does a small company do... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Service Delivery; Learning; Interactive Communication; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Consistency; Business and Community Relations; Expansion; Technology Adoption; Education Industry

November 2016 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Improving Access at VA

By: Ryan W. Buell, Robert S. Huckman and Sam Travers

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

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Social Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Government Administration; Performance Improvement; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

29 May 2014
Research & Ideas

Research Symposium 2014

to find ways to get our students to engage with this idea," he said. "Our students will be tomorrow's participants in thin political markets." (To learn more about thin political markets, see the story A Manager's Moral Obligation to Preserve Capitalism. ) Value-based... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Accounting; Health

21 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Missing the Wave in Ship Transport

notes the folly of that strategy, quoting marine historian Martin Stopford, author of Maritime Economics, a leading treatise on shipping: "If so many owners had not had the same idea, this would have been a successful strategy." The heavy View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Transportation

05 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

Reinventing the Dowdy Savings Bond

institutions, particularly the mutual fund industry. His work has focused on the determinants of fund flows, the impact of alternative governance structures on fee setting, the evolution of competition, and underlying economics of the industry. Recently, he has been... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Banking; Financial Services

26 Feb 2001
Research & Ideas

David, Goliath, and Disruption

audience. "But it's also a hell of a lot of fun. If you have something that truly is new and different and better, if you can focus it on a market ... you can do amazing things against some awfully big competitors." "Disruption often comes in service... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

18 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 18

and physical therapists. The Center was created to address what its founder, James Weinstein, M.D., saw as the uncoordinated and inefficient delivery of spinal care in the United States. The Center emphasized using non-surgical treatments... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

15 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Solving the Health Care Conundrum

the potential to create a virtuous cycle in health care delivery with many winners. Areas of excellence will lead to accumulating greater experience, which will result in increasing efficiency and gathering better information on results... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter; Health

19 May 2009
First Look

First Look: May 19, 2009

http://hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=709484 Performance Management at Intermountain Healthcare Harvard Business School Case 609-103 Intermountain Healthcare is a 21-hospital integrated delivery system serving Utah... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

24 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 24, 2009

decision-making procedures were unjust. Subtly activating performers' prosocial identities reversed these reactions. Results highlight how roles and identities shape the experience and delivery of unfavorable outcomes; when procedures are... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2011
Working Paper

Non-Audit Services and Financial Reporting Quality: Evidence from 1978-1980

By: Kevin Koh, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan

We provide evidence for the long-standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978 to 1980. Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved... View Details

Keywords: Accounting Audits; Financial Reporting; Stocks; Price; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Service Delivery; Quality; Research

SSRN

November 2000 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Oracle Corporation

By: Frances X. Frei and Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar

Oracle Corp., the world's second-largest independent software company (behind Microsoft) was the world's dominant supplier of database software. Oracle also sold application software, such as the popular enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Internet and the Web; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Applications and Software; Management Teams; Innovation and Invention; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry

Find at Harvard

April 1992 (Revised June 1993)
Case

American Nursing Services, Inc.

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Roger H. Hallowell

P.K. Scherle, R.N., founder, president, and owner, struggles with her successful business and focuses on either growth or enhanced profitability. View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Service Delivery; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry

September 1976 (Revised January 1977)
Case

Del Norte Paper Co. (C)

By: William A. Sahlman

Designed to serve two roles: first, it provides a reasonably comprehensive description of an ongoing capital budgeting system for the international operations of a large American company. Second, it allows the student to focus upon and critically analyze a series of... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; International Relations; Globalized Markets and Industries; Goals and Objectives; Service Delivery; Business Subsidiaries; Performance Evaluation; Performance Expectations; Financial Services Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry

April 2009 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Partners In Health: HIV Care in Rwanda

By: Michael E. Porter, Scott S. Lee, Joseph Rhatigan and Jim Yong Kim

In 2005, Partners in Health (PIH) was invited by the Rwandan Ministry of Health to assume responsibility for the management of public health care in two rural districts in Eastern Rwanda and create an HIV treatment program at these sites. PIH successfully implemented a... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Medical Specialties; Service Delivery; Nonprofit Organizations; Expansion; Health Industry; Rwanda

January 2001 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Ninth House: e-Learning Software

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Frances X. Frei and Corey B. Hajim

Jeff Snipes, CEO of the Ninth House Network, a San Francisco-based E-Learning company, considers a strategy shift to address a recent slump in sales and to attract more customers. The revised strategy would require creating shorter, more directed content that could be... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Service Operations; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Learning; Sales; Service Delivery; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry; Education Industry; San Francisco