Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(585)
- Faculty Publications (170)
- March 2006
- Background Note
Influencing Customer Behavior in Service Operations
By: Frances X. Frei and Amy C. Edmondson
Explores ways in which service firms can influence the behavior of their customers. Drawing from research on employee motivation and applying it to customer motivation, the note describes two levels of managerial control: instrumental control, which shapes behavior... View Details
- February 2005
- Article
European Integration and Corporate Restructuring: The Strategy of Unilever c1957-c1990
By: Geoffrey Jones and Peter Miskell
This article examines the role of the large Anglo-Dutch consumer products company in promoting European integration. It shows that Unilever contributed financially to campaigns to support the creation of the European Union, and its subsequent expansion, despite a... View Details
- December 2004 (Revised April 2006)
- Case
Managing a Public Image: Kevin Knight
By: Robin J. Ely and Ingrid Vargas
Kevin Knight recounts an uncomfortable situation he faced as an African-American student at Harvard Business School. Concerned with maintaining an image as a calm and rational person, he is appalled when he finds himself in a heated classroom exchange in defense of an... View Details
- September 2004
- Article
Rational Overoptimism (and Other Biases)
Rational agents with differing priors tend to be overoptimistic about their chances of success. In particular, an agent who tries to choose the action that is most likely to succeed, is more likely to choose an action of which he overestimated, rather than... View Details
- February 2004
- Case
Note on Human Behavior: Reason and Emotion
By: Nitin Nohria and Bridget Gurtler
Human beings are driven by reasons and emotions. On the one hand, as rational choice theorists assert, human beings are resourceful and evaluative as they strive to maximize their own interests. An individual's interests can converge or diverge from the interests of... View Details
- October 2003
- Article
Capture by Threat
By: Ernesto Dal Bo and Rafael Di Tella
We analyze a simple stochastic environment in which policy makers can be threatened by “nasty” interest groups. In the absence of these groups, the policy maker’s desire for reelection guarantees that good policies are implemented for every realization of the shock.... View Details
- July 2003
- Article
Probabilistic Representation of Complexity
By: Nabil I Al-Najjar, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Emre Ozdenoren
We study individuals' behavior in an environment that is deterministic, but too complex to permit tractable deterministic representation. Under mild conditions, behavior is represented by a unique probabilistic model in which the agent's inability to think through all... View Details
- April 2003
- Article
Toward More Rational CEO Succession
By: Rakesh Khurana
Keywords: Management Succession
- 2002
- Book
Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs
By: Rakesh Khurana
Corporate CEOs are headline news. Stock prices rise and fall at word of their hiring and firing. Business media debate their merits and defects as if individual leaders determined the health of the economy. Yet we know surprisingly little about how CEOs are selected... View Details
- January 2002 (Revised November 2010)
- Case
Strategic Planning at NFTE
By: Allen S. Grossman and Daniel F. Curran
The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), is a successful nonprofit poised on the verge of explosive growth. The senior management contracted with McKinsey consultants to help guide the process. The founders of NFTE brought it from a small program... View Details
- June 2001
- Case
GE's Early Dispute Resolution Initiative (A)
By: Michael A. Wheeler and Gillian Morris
GE's chief litigation counsel sought to rationalize litigation flow by viewing it as a manufacturing process. By applying the principles of Six Sigma, P.D. Villareal created an Early Dispute Resolution (EDR) system that enabled both lawyers and managers to work... View Details
- July 1998
- Article
On the Power of a Clear Definition of Rationality
By: M. H. Bazerman and D. M. Messick
- March 1998 (Revised April 1998)
- Case
Lehigh Steel
By: V.G. Narayanan and Laura Donohue
Lehigh Steel is a specialty steel manufacturer that plummeted from record profits to record losses in less than three years, driven by an inability to distinguish between profitable and unprofitable business. The scale and growth of service activities and overhead... View Details
- October 1997
- Article
Does Competition Kill Corruption?
By: Christopher Bliss and Rafael Di Tella
Corrupt agents (officials or gangsters) exact money from firms. Corruption affects the number of firms in a free-entry equilibrium. The degree of deep competition in the economy increases with lower overhead costs relative to profits and with a tendency toward similar... View Details
- September 1997 (Revised November 1997)
- Case
Siam Cement Group,The: Corporate Philosophy (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Prompilai Khunaphante
In the face of Thailand's 1990 cement shortage, managers at Siam Cement Co., Thailand's largest cement provider, must decide how to allocate available supply and whether to attempt to uphold government-controlled prices among the company's agents. At issue is the... View Details
- January 1996
- Article
Shortcomings of Neutrality in Mediation: Solutions Based on Rationality
By: K. Gibson, L. L. Thompson and M. H. Bazerman
Keywords: Negotiation