Publications

October 1991 (Revised November 1993)
Case

Play Time Toy Co.

By: Thomas R. Piper

The president of a toy company is considering the adoption of level production in a business characterized by highly seasonal sales. The issues include balancing the cost savings and the inventory risk, estimating the seasonal financing need, and determining the... View Details

Keywords: Production; Cost Management; Banks and Banking; Sales; Goods and Commodities; Financial Management; Risk Management; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

April 1993 (Revised June 1998)
Case

Time Inc.'s Entry into the Entertainment Industry (A)

Richard Munro, Time Inc.'s chairman and CEO, must respond to a hostile tender offer from Paramount Communications. Paramount conditioned its bid on cancellation of Time's plans to merge with Warner Communications. Several months before the hostile Paramount bid, Time... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Market Entry and Exit; Mergers and Acquisitions; Global Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

12 May 2020
Research & Ideas

It’s Time To Relaunch Your Remote Team

availability at certain times of the day. In these circumstances, it’s crucial to know how team members are coping with the added demands so that the team is able to support members, manage deadline... View Details

Keywords: by Tsedal Neeley

Program

Owner/President Management

Summary Building, leading, and growing a successful business can be an all-consuming challenge that leaves little time to focus on leadership and personal growth. But as your business challenges expand, so should your strategic vision and... View Details

2017
Working Paper

Learning by Doing: The Value of Experience and the Origins of Skill for Mutual Fund Managers

By: Elisabeth Kempf, Alberto Manconi and Oliver Spalt

Learning by doing matters for professional investors. We develop a new methodology to show that mutual fund managers outperform in industries where they have obtained experience on the job. The key to our identification strategy is that we look "inside" funds and... View Details

Keywords: Fund Managers; Experience and Expertise; Performance; Forecasting and Prediction

SSRN

February 2010 (Revised January 2013)
Case

The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Mona Sinha

Describes the Mumbai-based Dabbawala organization, which achieves very high service performance (6 Sigma equivalent or better) with a low-cost and very simple operating system. The case explores all aspects of their system (mission, information management, material... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Logistics; Alignment; Management Systems; Human Resources; Innovation and Invention; Mumbai

09 Feb 2009
Research & Ideas

Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times

Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage describes organizations that, Beer says, "are diametrically opposite to the firms we saw fail on Wall Street. The book's perspective also leads to answers to the question... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

03 Jun 2015
What Do You Think?

Is the Time Right for Self-Management?

The more thoughtful of them provide a primer on applying the concept. Deborah Nixon's comment echoed several others when she said the idea has been around a long time in other forms, by other names. "The larger an organization... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

June 2020 (Revised July 2023)
Case

Time Out: The Evolution from Media to Markets

By: Kate Barasz and Eva Ascarza

In February 2020, Time Out’s chief executive officer Julio Bruno is evaluating the strategic direction of the company. Over the span of five decades, Time Out — the global media and entertainment brand — had gone from a self-published counterculture publication in... View Details

Keywords: Branding; Media Businesses; Hospitality; Hospitality Industry; Digital; Brands and Branding; Media; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United Kingdom; United States

April 1996 (Revised January 2006)
Case

Times Mirror Company PEPS Proposal Review

By: Peter Tufano

Times Mirror Co. (TMC) owns a substantial block of Netscape common stock purchased prior to Netscape's IPO, on which it has substantial unrealized gains. TMC is restricted from selling the stock in a public offering and is therefore considering a proposal by Morgan... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Stocks; Taxation; Corporate Finance; Telecommunications Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States

November 2019
Case

Edita: Making Choices in Uncertain Times

By: Caroline M. Elkins, Juan Alcácer, Alpana Thapar and Youssef Abdel Aal

After 15 years of steady growth and expansion, Edita, a leading Egyptian snack producer, faced a series of challenges in the wake of the Arab Spring. In January 2011, the Egyptian Revolution sparked political and economic turmoil that reflected the waves of protest and... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Developing Countries and Economies; Economy; Business or Company Management; Price; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Distribution; Risk and Uncertainty; Business Strategy; Expansion; Currency; Food and Beverage Industry; Egypt; Africa; Middle East

2022
Article

How Does Working from Home during COVID-19 Affect What Managers Do? Evidence from Time-Use Studies

By: Thomaz Teodorovicz, Raffaella Sadun, Andrew L. Kun and Orit Shaer

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on 1,192 knowledge workers (out of which 973 are... View Details

Keywords: Time-use; Working-from-home; COVID; Managers; Knowledge Workers; Health Pandemics; Time Management

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Program

Managing Turbulence

all-out war for scarce talent. How do the best business leaders manage through these disruptions? What strategies have proven successful in unstable environments with few certainties? How do leaders continue to grow when faced with... View Details

April 2008
Teaching Note

Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad (Brief Case)

By: Michael Beer and Elizabeth Collins

Teaching note for case # 2175 View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Human Resource Management; Incentives; Motivation; Manufacturing; Motivation and Incentives; Leadership; Change Management; Production; Organizations; Human Resources; Manufacturing Industry

September – October 2011
Article

The Manufacturer's Incentive to Reduce Lead Times

By: Santiago Kraiselburd, Richard Pibernik and Ananth Raman

It is generally a well acknowledged fact that, ceteris paribus, reducing the lead times between downstream and upstream parties in a supply chain is desirable from an overall system perspective. However, an upstream party (e.g., a manufacturer) may have strong... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Demand and Consumers; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Production; Supply Chain Management; Sales; Manufacturing Industry; Retail Industry

Find at Harvard

2021
Working Paper

Time and the Value of Data

By: Ehsan Valavi, Joel Hestness, Newsha Ardalani and Marco Iansiti

Managers often believe that collecting more data will continually improve the accuracy of their machine learning models. However, we argue in this paper that when data lose relevance over time, it may be optimal to collect a limited amount of recent data instead of... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of AI; Machine Learning; Non-stationarity; Perishability; Value Depreciation; Analytics and Data Science; Value

SSRN

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September 2000 (Revised November 2000)
Case

Panda Management Company, Inc.

Panda Management Co. is the largest Chinese restaurant chain in the United States. At the time of the case, Panda is facing multiple problems in operations, mostly stemming from rapid growth, and must choose a path for expansion. View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Service Operations; Food and Beverage Industry; United States