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Publications
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(6,703)
- Faculty Publications (1,223)
- March 2004
- Case
L.L. Bean: A Search for Growth
By: Rajiv Lal, Walter J. Salmon and James Weber
In mid-2003, CEO Chris McCormick felt L.L. Bean was in a good position to begin to grow again. For nearly 90 years, the company sold clothing and gear for outdoor enthusiasts through its catalogs and a single retail store in Freeport, Maine. In the three decades prior... View Details
- March 2004 (Revised April 2005)
- Case
Midwest Office Products
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Presents an easy introduction to time-driven activity-based costing (ABC) that allows students to build a simple ABC model of order profitability. Midwest's time-driven ABC approach is based on two categories of parameter estimates. The first is the cost per hour of... View Details
- February 2004 (Revised January 2005)
- Case
Hewlett-Packard: Culture in Changing Times
By: Michael Beer, Rakesh Khurana and James Weber
HP had been a highly successful and respected company for decades. It was well known for its company culture and management practices--the HP way--which emphasized both profits and people. Changing markets, strong competitors, and the growth of its computer business,... View Details
- January 2004 (Revised November 2004)
- Case
Rwandan Tea Industry, The: Looking into the Future
By: Debora L. Spar
In 2003, the Rwandan government was focused on transforming the nation's tea industry into a world-class competitor. To accomplish this objective and stave off the downward prices that plagued the international tea market, the government believed that the industry... View Details
- January 2004
- Case
Bob Holgrom and the Buyout of the Carlson Division
By: Thomas R. Piper
The head of the Carlson Division stands to benefit substantially in financial terms if a private equity firm wins the bid for the division. The division is in the early stages of a performance turnaround, with only three quarters of profit improvement and no audited... View Details
- Article
Why Hospitals Don't Learn from Failures: Organizational and Psychological Dynamics That Inhibit System Change
By: A. Tucker and A. Edmondson
The importance of hospitals learning from their failures hardly needs to be stated. Not only are matters of life and death at stake on a daily basis, but also an increasing number of U.S. hospitals are operating in the red. This article reports on in-depth qualitative... View Details
- November 2003 (Revised August 2005)
- Case
Reinventing the Automobile: General Motors' AUTOnomy Project
By: Alan D. MacCormack and Kerry Herman
Describes the history of General Motor's attempts to develop a hydrogen fuel-cell powered car. As of 2003, GM developed several prototypes of such a vehicle to demonstrate the viability of the overall concept. Many uncertainties remained, however, with respect to the... View Details
- November 2003 (Revised January 2005)
- Case
San Francisco Giants
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth Kind
Larry Baer, executive vice-president and COO, was eager to improve profitability for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Over the last few years, the Giants have had a number of successes. They successfully built the first privately financed ball park in over 30... View Details
- October 2003 (Revised November 2003)
- Module Note
Organizing to Learn Module Note
By: Amy C. Edmondson
Teaches a framework for managing in dynamic or uncertain organizational contexts, designed for either MBA or Executive Education courses. Offers a new perspective on how managers can help stimulate and guide a collective learning process in their organizations. The... View Details
- August 2003 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Fighting the Battle of the Bulge—Evaluating Do Good/Do Well Innovations in Morbid Obesity Treatment
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and John McDonough
Many health care innovations appear successful; but fail. This is the first case in the Innovating Health Care course that investigates how to create successful health care innovations. It is part of the first module in the course. This module focuses on how to... View Details
- July 2003 (Revised September 2003)
- Case
Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (A), The
By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen
The CFO of General Motors' joint venture in Shanghai, Shanghai General Motors (SGM), wants to refinance almost $900 million of project finance it raised to begin operations. The highest priority is improving the terms of the financing with regard to costs and specific... View Details
- July 2003 (Revised September 2003)
- Case
Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (B), The
By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen
This case provides the outcome to "The Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (A)" in which the CFO of General Motors' joint venture in Shanghai, Shanghai General Motors (SGM), wants to refinance almost $900 million of project finance it raised to begin operations. The... View Details
- June 2003 (Revised September 2003)
- Case
Peabody Elementary School (B)
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Kevin Morris
After six months as principal of the school, Marty Pettigrew has commenced a series of reform initiatives to improve its academic performance and culture. As the school year ends, he must assess his progress and decide on his strategies for the following year. He... View Details
- May 2003
- Module Note
Product Development Process Design and Improvement
By: Stefan H. Thomke
Describes the conceptual foundations and pedagogy for a module on the design and improvement of processes for the development of products and services. Can also be used as part of a more general course on Managing Technology and Innovation. Central to Managing Product... View Details
- May 2003
- Case
Renault-Nissan Alliance, The
By: Michael Y. Yoshino and Perry Fagan
On Wednesday, May 29, 2002, the board of directors of Renault-Nissan BV (RNBV) met for the first time to discuss the state of the alliance between Renault SA and Nissan Motors-two of the world's largest automakers. RNBV was a 50/50 joint venture company established in... View Details
- March 2003
- Background Note
Management and Creativity in Television Broadcasting
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Douglas A Raymond
Management and creativity are sometimes assumed to be unrelated or even conflicting concepts. In the best cases, management controls enable artistic success by gathering resources and providing discipline. However, if pushed too far, the same discipline can stifle... View Details
- 2003
- Conference Paper
Follow the Money: What Really Drives Technology Innovation in Construction
By: John D. Macomber
Technology enthusiasts, academics, and software companies remain concerned about the slow pace of innovation in the construction industry. Tools are widely available that seem to provide eminently sensible and clearly apparent improvement to the process of design and... View Details
- March 2003
- Article
Technological Development and Medical Productivity: The Diffusion of Angioplasty in New York State
By: David M. Cutler and Robert S. Huckman
A puzzling feature of many medical innovations is that they simultaneously appear to reduce unit costs and increase total costs. We consider this phenomenon by examining the diffusion of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA)—a treatment for coronary... View Details
- February 2003
- Background Note
Leading Teams
This note which describes the architecture and processes that characterize effective teams, begins by detailing the steps involved in designing a team, from diagnosing the complexity, interdependence, and objectives of the task to harnessing the key resources teams... View Details
- February 2003 (Revised March 2006)
- Case
Asociacion Colombiana de Industrias Plasticas (Acoplasticos)
Acoplasticos was established in 1961 as a lobbying group for Colombia's major plastics manufacturing companies. In the early 1980s, the organization shifted its focus toward improving the productivity of the Colombian plastics and rubber cluster, which also included... View Details