Publications

February 2000 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Owens & Minor, Inc. (B)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

After a manager at Owens & Minor, a national medical and surgical distribution company, proposes and develops a formalized activity-based pricing and activity-based management approach to sales and service provision, this case explore the outcome. View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Logistics; Distribution; Price; Supply Chain Management; Sales; Outcome or Result; Management Style; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Distribution Industry

20 Nov 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Pay Harmony: Peer Comparison and Executive Compensation

Keywords: by Claudine Gartenberg & Julie Wulf

29 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

Pride Goeth Before a Profit

At General Motors' Car Assembly Plant in Wilmington, DE, there is a film that managers like to show when times get tough. Dating to 1991, the film opens with a GM executive saying that the plant will be closed in three years. There is no... View Details

Keywords: by Theodore Kinni

July 2005 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Understanding Customer Profitability at Charles Schwab

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

Charles Schwab is transforming into a customer-centric organization. Central to this cultural and organizational change is the utilization of customer profitability at different decision-making levels. Examines several technical aspects of the ABC cost system, as well... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Motivation and Incentives; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Activity Based Costing and Management; Decision Making; Organizational Culture; Profit; Performance Evaluation; Budgets and Budgeting

May 2017
Teaching Note

Promontory, Inc. (Brief Case)

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Handlin

Teaching Note for HBS No. 917-535. The Promontory teaching note covers a) how and why buying processes in Promontory’s market generate the array of selling approaches illustrated in the case; b) the impact of incremental sales increases on the firm’s cost structure and... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Salesforce Management; Marketing Strategy

May 1992 (Revised January 2000)
Case

Asea Brown Boveri: The ABACUS System

By: Robert L. Simons

Describes the computer-based information system (ABACUS) used to monitor and control business operations in a complex, global company. Describes the technical attributes of the database system, financial reporting requirements, target setting and profit calculations on... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Profit; Business Growth and Maturation; Analytics and Data Science; Design; Accounting Audits; Growth and Development; Globalized Firms and Management; Complexity; Technology Industry

September 2017 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Intermountain Healthcare: Pursuing Precision Medicine

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy E. Giusti, Robert S. Huckman and Julia Kelley

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Intermountain Healthcare operates 23 hospitals and hundreds of clinics in Utah and Idaho and provides insurance to approximately 850,000 patients through its insurance arm, SelectHealth. In 2013, Intermountain, known for its commitment... View Details

Keywords: Precision Medicine; Healthcare; Innovation; Cancer; Cancer Research; Health Care; Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation Leadership; Disruptive Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Decision Choices and Conditions; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; Utah; United States; North America

23 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Keep Employees Productive: Support Caregivers

Ostensibly, Shah was trying to refocus employees. New research from Harvard Business School Professor Joseph B. Fuller offers a different take. When workers feel tension between their work and private lives, they’re likely to quit or be less productive. Fuller’s latest... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

January 2021
Case

Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; United States; California

Web

Employment | Harvard Business School

managers alike. Additionally, with generous tuition reimbursement programs at the University and local level, the cost of most undergraduate and graduate programs is covered by Harvard. By joining HBS you’ll... View Details

2012
Working Paper

Is India's Manufacturing Sector Moving Away from Cities?

By: Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover Goswami and William R. Kerr

This paper investigates the urbanization of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise data from formal and informal sectors. We find that plants in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into rural locations, while the informal sector is moving... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Policy; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Geographic Location; Education; Infrastructure; Manufacturing Industry; India

04 Mar 2024
What Do You Think?

Do People Want to Work Anymore?

around fewer, carefully selected, better-paid people performing complex jobs requiring extensive training, with resulting higher employee retention and lower costs of selection, hiring, and training for new employees. This contrasts with... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

September 2, 2020
Article

How to Pay for Public Option Without Tax Hike

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard Boxer

A bipartisan combination of the two parties’ most popular initiatives can expand health care coverage, significantly reduce costs, and enable freedom of choice, without raising taxes. Along the way, we can revitalize competition between public and private plans. Our... View Details

Keywords: Health Insurance; Public Option; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Cost Management; United States

16 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

Understanding the ‘Want’ vs. ’Should’ Decision

"should" items when the impact will be felt in the future. They also talk about their related research on DVD rentals—should I rent the good-for-me documentary An Inconvenient Truth or the entertaining Pirates of the Caribbean—and offer implications for View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Retail; Entertainment & Recreation

June 2009
Case

Plaza, the Logistics Park of Zaragoza

In the year 2000, the Government of the Autonomous Community of Aragón, Spain, made public a project for the development of a large-scale logistics park in the outskirts of the city of Zaragoza. With an area of nearly 13 square kilometers, PLAZA (an acronym for... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Geographic Location; Growth and Development Strategy; Infrastructure; Logistics; Supply Chain; Transportation; Distribution Industry; Zaragoza

December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Alltech

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

Alltech was a Lexington, Kentucky–based producer of supplements for animal feed, with revenues of over $2 billion (projected to reach $3 billion in 2018), sales in 120 countries, 5,000 employees, and 100 manufacturing plants worldwide. For nearly four decades, Alltech... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Allocating Marketing Resources

By: Sunil Gupta and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Marketing is essential for the organic growth of a company. Not surprisingly, firms spend billions of dollars on marketing. Given these large investments, marketing managers have the responsibility to optimally allocate these resources and demonstrate that these... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Mathematical Methods

2008
Chapter

Allocating Marketing Resources

By: Sunil Gupta and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Companies spend billions of dollars on marketing every year because it is essential to organic growth. Given these large investments, marketing managers have the responsibility to optimally allocate resources and to demonstrate that their investments generate... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Mathematical Methods