Publications

September 2021
Case

Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance

By: David G. Fubini, Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

The two vignettes within “Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance” (HBS No. 122-024) present various issues relating to governance in professional service firms (“PSFs”). In the first, the Managing Director of a U.S. consulting firm contemplates whether to... View Details

July 2014 (Revised October 2014)
Case

McKinsey & Co. - Protecting its Reputation (A)

By: Jay Lorsch and Emily McTague

On Tuesday March 15, 2011, all 1,200 global Partners of McKinsey & Co. gathered at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center near Washington, DC for their annual Partners' conference. The atmosphere was tense as Partners, in addition to their normal agenda,... View Details

Keywords: Board; McKinsey; Consulting Firms; Risk; Risk Assessment; Partnerships; Insider Trading; Confidentiality; Personal Investing; Reputation; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Management Practices and Processes; Risk Management; Consulting Industry; United States; California

November 2016 (Revised April 2017)
Case

Hygeia Group: Delivering Quality Care in Nigeria

By: Robert F. Higgins and Ifedayo O. Kuye

Fola Laoye is the Group Managing Director of Hygeia Group, a Nigerian healthcare insurer and provider, and she is deciding on the optimal strategy to grow the provider arm of her business. Hygeia Group was founded in the 1980s by her physician parents, and although... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Healthcare Industry; Hospitals; Nigeria; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; Nigeria

16 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Taking Your Shot in the Sports Industry with Adam Laitsas (MBA 2016), SVP, Head of Marketing for Madison Square Garden Sports

Division I college basketball player at St. John’s University. He then pivoted his career path into investment banking, corporate strategy, and management consulting before circling back to the game he loves. Now at MSG, Laitsas is... View Details

2015
Case

Fine Harvest Restaurant Group (cases A and B)

By: Clara (Xiaoling) Chen, Kenneth A. Merchant, Tatiana Sandino and Wim A. Van der Stede

The Fine Harvest Restaurant Group cases A and B examine a company's design of a new system to evaluate the performance (and determine the bonuses) for its restaurant managers. Fine Harvest had traditionally evaluated restaurant managers based on store margins and had... View Details

Keywords: Incentive Systems; Relative Performance Evaluation; Restaurant Industry; Accounting; Economics; Human Resources; Measurement and Metrics; Labor; Performance; Salesforce Management; Retail Industry; North and Central America

2014
Teaching Note

Fine Harvest Restaurant Group

By: Clara X. Chen, Kenneth A. Merchant, Tatiana Sandino and Wim Van der Stede

The Fine Harvest Restaurant Group cases A and B examine a company's design of a new system to evaluate the performance (and determine the bonuses) for its restaurant managers. Fine Harvest had traditionally evaluated restaurant managers based on store margins and had... View Details

Keywords: Incentive Systems; Relative Performance Evaluation; Restaurant Industry; Accounting; Economics; Human Resources; Measurement and Metrics; Labor; Performance; Salesforce Management; Retail Industry; North and Central America

July 2014 (Revised October 2014)
Supplement

McKinsey & Co. - Protecting its Reputation (B)

By: Jay Lorsch and Emily McTague

On Tuesday March 15, 2011, all 1,200 global Partners of McKinsey & Co. gathered at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center near Washington, DC for their annual Partners' conference. The atmosphere was tense as Partners, in addition to their normal agenda,... View Details

Keywords: Board; McKinsey; CONSULTING Firms; Risk; Risk Assessment; Partnerships; Insider Trading; Confidentiality; Personal Investing; Reputation; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Management Practices and Processes; Risk Management; Construction Industry; United States; California

July 2024
Case

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors: Bringing Systematic Investment to Philanthropy

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Alexander Bischoff and Sophia Pan

Melissa Berman, CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), evaluated her client’s philanthropy project and its mediocre performance. RPA was a segment of the Rockefeller Family Office’s Philanthropy Department, becoming an independent charity in 2002. Consistently... View Details

March 2015
Teaching Note

McKinsey & Co.—Protecting its Reputation (A) and (B)

By: Jay Lorsch and Emily McTague

McKinsey & Co—Protecting its Reputation (A&B) is a field case written from the perspective of the Firm's Managing Director Dominic Barton. The two cases describe the actions McKinsey & Co took to protect the firm's reputation after the Rajat Gupta matter.
The... View Details

Keywords: Consulting Firms; Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Leadership And Change Management; Leadership And Managing People; Leading A Global Business; Corporate Culture; Professional Service Firms; Professional Service Firm; Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Consulting Industry; United States

September 2014 (Revised March 2021)
Case

La Ribera Health Department (A)

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Emer Moloney and Daniela Beyersdorfer

The La Ribera case studies depict an innovative low cost/high quality privately financed hospital model struggling to achieve alignment with the Six Factors. It is reimbursed by the public sector in a Spanish environment whose Consumers, Structure, and Public Policy... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Financing; Health Care Industry; Health Care Operations; Health Care and Treatment; Operations; Business Model; Government and Politics; Programs; Innovation Strategy; Vertical Integration; Health Industry; Europe; Spain

June 1996 (Revised January 2000)
Case

McKinsey & Co.: Managing Knowledge and Learning

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Describes the development of McKinsey & Co. as a worldwide management consulting firm from 1926 to 1996. In particular, it focuses on the way in which McKinsey has developed structures, systems, processes, and practices to help it develop, transfer, and disseminate... View Details

Keywords: Management; Managerial Roles; Management Practices and Processes; Competitive Advantage; Global Range; Knowledge Dissemination; Business Processes; Consulting Industry

April 2011
Exercise

Strategic Foresight: An Exercise

The exercise asks students to perform a strategic analysis of the consulting industry in order to identify untapped strategic opportunities. View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Supply and Industry; Strategic Planning; Opportunities; Cognition and Thinking; Strategy; Consulting Industry

Find at Harvard

Career Coach

Ryan Smith

Ryan wants to help students plan, prepare, and pitch for the opportunities available to HBS students in the Consulting and FinTech industries. With work experience in these industries, Ryan can provide insights into what elements to... View Details

November 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Constellation Brands' Investment in Canopy Growth: Aiming High

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott

In 2017, Constellation Brands, the U.S.-based beverage company, acquired a 9.9% equity interest in the Canadian marijuana company, Canopy Growth. In 2018, Constellation announced a subsequent investment in Canopy—taking its ownership interest to 37%. However, Canopy’s... View Details

Keywords: Equity Investment; Marijuana; Growth Investing; New Market Development; Beverage Industry; Equity; Investment; Strategy; Consulting Industry; Consulting Industry; Canada; United States

October 2017 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Coaching Makena Lane

By: Ethan Bernstein and Om Lala

Makena Lane has a gift for producing results, even in the challenging retail context of the 2010s, but she also has a knack for “ruffling some feathers” in the process. Recruited to a Fortune 500 grocery and pharmacy retailer after climbing to Associate Principal in... View Details

March 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Transforming Kimball International, Inc. (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

Kimball International, Inc. (KII), led by CEO Kristie Juster, and its board of directors, chaired by Kim Ryan, faced critical questions about KII’s future in the spring of 2021. Two years earlier, the board had appointed Juster as the new CEO of KII, a publicly traded,... View Details

March 2022
Supplement

Transforming Kimball International, Inc. (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

Supplements the (A) case. View Details