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- Faculty Publications (688)
- November 15, 2022
- Article
What Really Makes Toyota’s Production System Resilient
By: Willy C. Shih
Toyota has fared better than many of its competitors in riding out the supply chain disruptions of recent years. But focusing on how Toyota had stockpiled semiconductors and the problems of other manufacturers, some observers jumped to the conclusion that the era of... View Details
Keywords: Supplier Relationships; Manufacturing; Supply Chain; Production; Auto Industry; United States; Japan
- October 2022
- Supplement
The SAH Group: The Time is Right, Instructor Spreadsheet
By: Juan Alcacer and Alpana Thapar
In January 2021, Jalila Mezni, CEO of the SAH Group, was preparing to present the company’s future growth plans to its board of directors. The Tunisian company was a leading producer and distributor of personal care and packaged hygiene products. In 2019, it expanded... View Details
- October 2022
- Supplement
The SAH Group: The Time is Right, Spreadsheet Supplement
By: Juan Alcacer and Alpana Thapar
In January 2021, Jalila Mezni, CEO of the SAH Group, was preparing to present the company’s future growth plans to its board of directors. The Tunisian company was a leading producer and distributor of personal care and packaged hygiene products. In 2019, it expanded... View Details
- October 25, 2022
- Article
Why Sharing Economic Growth with the Community Is Good Business
By: José A. Tiburcio, Lino Miguel Dias and Robert S. Kaplan
Subsistence dairy ranchers in Central America struggle to stay afloat during the dry season when grass is scarce. Global life sciences company Bayer has launched a program to enable them to produce their own corn silage feed. The results of this program are helping to... View Details
- October 21, 2022
- Article
Climate Regulations Are About to Disrupt Global Shipping
By: Willy C. Shih
Ships that transport goods across oceans are collectively a major generator of greenhouse gases. Rules from the International Maritime Organization and the European Union aimed at curbing these emission promise to make transoceanic and regional shipping more expensive... View Details
- October 2022 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Cigna-Express Scripts: Can a Vertical Merger Rescue an Industry Under Attack?
By: Leemore Dafny
In Fall 2019, Cigna Corporation – a global health services company with a significant presence in the U.S. employer-sponsored health insurance market - was digesting its $54 billion acquisition of Express Scripts, Inc. (ESI), a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM)... View Details
- October 2022 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
Driving Decarbonization at BMW
The case describes BMW’s electrification and decarbonization strategy, and how the company measured carbon emissions throughout the life cycle of its vehicles and used tools like carbon abatement cost curves to evaluate decarbonization opportunities. In mid-2022,... View Details
Keywords: Decarbonization; Climate Change; Environment; Sustainability; Carbon Accounting; Carbon; Carbon Abatement; Electric Vehicles; Automobiles; Transportation; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Management; Environmental Sustainability; Accounting; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Supply Chain; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Transportation Industry; Auto Industry; Battery Industry; Germany; China; United States; Europe
- October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
mPharma: Scaling Access to Affordable Primary Care in Africa
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo
mPharma hopes to scale up to create the largest pan-African healthcare company ever to provide much-needed primary care in retail pharmacies; a reliable, fairly priced supply of drugs; and micro-insurance for drugs. They must prioritize launching a telemedicine... View Details
Keywords: Africa; Pharmaceutical Companies; Pharmacy Benefit Manager; Health Care; Health Care And Treatment; Health Care Costs; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Entrepreneurship; Telehealth; Health Equity; Corporate Strategy; Social Entrepreneurship; Equity; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Product Launch; Customer Value and Value Chain; Social Enterprise; Multinational Firms and Management; Pharmaceutical Industry; Health Industry; Africa
- September 2022 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: Trade and Genocide in U.S.-China Relations
By: Jeremy Friedman and David Lane
On June 21, 2022, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect, requiring companies to prove that goods imported from the People’s Republic of China were not made with forced labor. The bill was a reaction to reports of products being made with... View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Government Legislation; International Relations; Labor; Wages; Law Enforcement; Law; Rights; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Business and Government Relations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Mining Industry; China; United States
- August 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Sian Flowers: Fresher by Sea?
By: Willy C. Shih, Michael W. Toffel and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The setting for this case is the Sian Flowers, a company headquartered in Kitengela, Kenya that exports roses to predominantly Europe. Because cut flowers have a limited shelf life and consumers want them to retain their appearance for as long as possible, Sian or its... View Details
- August 1, 2022
- Article
The Supply Chain, Explained
By: Willy C. Shih
Why have supply chains been such a mess? For starters, there are a lot more layers than you think. This article describes some common features of supply chains that help the reader to understand how things could have gone so far off track during the pandemic. View Details
- June 2022
- Case
Michelin’s Green Gold Bahia Program: Leaving With Grace
By: Sandra J. Sucher, Shalene Gupta and Susan J. Winterberg
In 2015, the top management of French tire-maker Michelin, was evaluating Michelin’s approach to divesting its rubber plantations ten years after incorporating a novel strategy.
In 2004, Michelin had a Brazilian rubber challenge. Its Bahía plantation had been hit... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Background Note
Digital Commerce and Delivery: Preparing Food and Retail Value Chains for a 50-50 World
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor, Paige Boehmcke and Will Ensor
Increasing digitalization of grocery retail and quick commerce reveals insights about managing complex supply chains at scale and shifting revenue streams from product sales to data monetization. How are the roles of retailers changing? What happens if marginal cost... View Details
Keywords: Grocery Delivery; Grocery; Digitalization; Fulfillment; Delivery; Supply Chain; Disruption; Food; Supply Chain Management; Market Design; Trends; Value Creation; Goods and Commodities; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Transformation; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; China
- 2022
- Working Paper
Machine Learning Models for Prediction of Scope 3 Carbon Emissions
By: George Serafeim and Gladys Vélez Caicedo
For most organizations, the vast amount of carbon emissions occur in their supply chain and in the post-sale processing, usage, and end of life treatment of a product, collectively labelled scope 3 emissions. In this paper, we train machine learning algorithms on 15... View Details
- June 2022
- Case
Business Implications from Regulating Carbon Emissions in the EU
By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta
In the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union (the EU) had led the global fight against climate change with a wide array of policy measures. The EU’s primary approach to climate policy had been taxation via the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU... View Details
- June 2022
- Case
Worten Portugal: Becoming a Digital Marketplace
By: Antonio Moreno, Pedro Amorim and Tonia Labruyere
With Amazon's entry into Portugal, Miguel Mota Freitas, CEO of Portuguese electronics chain Worten, is reflecting on their strategy of building a competitive marketplace. View Details
- May 2022
- Case
Byte
By: Boris Groysberg, Katherine Connolly Baden and Julia Kelley
In January 2021, Byte co-founders Scott Cohen and Blake Johnson reflected on how far their Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer (DTC) orthodontics company had come since launching its clear aligners just a little over two years earlier. Cohen and Johnson were both... View Details
- Article
We Need Better Carbon Accounting. Here's How to Get There.
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
Any effective system of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting needs to measure each company’s supply-chain carbon impacts accurately. Such information would provide visibility and incentives for the company to make more climate-friendly product-specification and purchasing... View Details
- April 6, 2022
- Article
In Uncertain Times, Big Companies Need to Take Care of Their Suppliers
By: Willy C. Shih
Many large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have long been ruthless with their suppliers, demanding extremely low prices and loading them up with risks. Given that the current turmoil buffeting global supply chains is unlikely to end anytime soon, OEMs should... View Details
- March 21, 2022
- Article
Are the Risks of Global Supply Chains Starting to Outweigh the Rewards?
By: Willy C. Shih
The conflict in Ukraine is only the latest jolt to global supply chains. Disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, climate-related events, and geopolitical tensions were already undermining their rationale. As companies rethink sourcing, they will have to consider... View Details