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June 2019 (Revised November 2019)
Technical Note

Sustaining Corporate Culture in a Growing Organization

By: Dennis Campbell and Tatiana Sandino

An organization’s culture can be a significant source of sustainable competitive advantage. For the organization, it can attract job candidates who fit and align employees working in different teams around common goals. For employees, a strong culture can generate... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Growth and Development; Mission and Purpose; Values and Beliefs; Management Systems

September 1991 (Revised December 1993)
Case

Tombow Pencil Co. Ltd.

Tombow Pencil Co. Ltd., one of Japan's two premier pencil manufacturers, has been using a subcontractor network in order to respond to changing market conditions. The system currently faces a new challenge as Tombow moves to address a volatile business market for... View Details

Keywords: Production; Supply Chain Management; Manufacturing Industry; Japan

23 Sep 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Operational Failures and Problem Solving: An Empirical Study of Incident Reporting

Keywords: by Julia Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer & Michael W. Toffel; Health

Julie Battilana

Julie Battilana is the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and the Alan L. Gleitsman Professor of Social Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, where she is also the founder and faculty... View Details

September 2013 (Revised February 2016)
Case

GlaxoSmithKline: Sourcing Complex Professional Services

By: Heidi K. Gardner and Silvia Hodges Silverstein

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) uses an innovative new approach to procuring outside legal counsel: it replaces relationship-based selection and law firms' traditional time-based billing with data-driven decision making and an online reverse auction. In... View Details

Keywords: Legal Industry; Procurement; Professional Service Firms; Pricing; Competition; Change Management; Supply Chain Management; Legal Liability; Business Processes; Legal Services Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

2000
Other Unpublished Work

Career Concerns and Staged Investment: Evidence from the Venture Capital Industry

By: Malcolm Baker

I develop a model in which career concerns lead to inefficient reinvestment decisions. Managers have incentives to inflate interim returns by continuing bad projects and delaying write-offs. In the venture capital industry, the syndication of follow-on investments can... View Details

Keywords: Performance Efficiency; Valuation; Venture Capital; Investment; Decisions; Motivation and Incentives; Quality

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08 Sep 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Blinded by Experience: Prior Experience, Negative News and Belief Updating

Keywords: by Bradley R. Staats, KC Diwas & Francesca Gino

September 1988
Case

Frontier Airlines, Inc. (A) (Condensed)

By: F. Warren McFarlan

Describes a regional airline that is on the losing end of a strategic application of information technology. Management is focusing on internal data processing issues while its principal, and larger, competitor is using its computerized reservations system to gain... View Details

Keywords: Adoption; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry

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02 Mar 2018
News

Trump’s Tariffs Will Take Their Toll

2007
Book

When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance

By: Thomas J. DeLong, John J. Gabarro and Robert Lees

For too long, professional services firms (PSFs) have relied on the "producer-manager" model, which works well in uncomplicated business environments. However, today's managing directors must balance conflicting roles, more demanding clients, tougher competitors, and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Service Operations; Performance Effectiveness; Strategy

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May 1987 (Revised November 1998)
Case

John Deere Component Works (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The division has recognized the inadequacies of its existing, traditional cost system for estimating product costs. Describes the innovative activity-based system that was developed to more accurately trace overhead costs to individual products. Provides students with... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Cost Accounting; Cost Management; Cost vs Benefits; Production; Budgets and Budgeting; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Consumer Products Industry

April 2003 (Revised December 2006)
Case

ZARA: Fast Fashion

By: Pankaj Ghemawat and Jose Luis Nueno

Focuses on Inditex, an apparel retailer from Spain, which has set up an extremely quick response system for its ZARA chain. Instead of predicting months before a season starts what women will want to wear, ZARA observes what's selling and what's not and continuously... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Multinational Firms and Management; Competitive Advantage; Manufacturing Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; Spain

2008
Working Paper

Open to Negotiation: Phenomenological Assumptions and Knowledge Dissemination

By: Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn

Phenomenological assumptions-assumptions about the fundamental qualities of the phenomenon being studied and how it relates to the environment in which it occurs-affect the dissemination of knowledge from subfields to the broader field of study. Micro-process research... View Details

Keywords: Citations; Knowledge Dissemination; Negotiation; Research

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February 1989 (Revised October 1994)
Case

Asahi Breweries Ltd.

By: Malcolm S. Salter

Focuses on competitive repositioning, organizational renewal, and personal leadership. Describes how Asahi Breweries was faced with a major capacity expansion decision after succeeding in increasing market share dramatically in the traditionally stable Japanese beer... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Leadership; Organizational Structure; Product Launch; Management Teams; Business or Company Management; Marketing Strategy; Supply Chain Management; Mission and Purpose; Food and Beverage Industry; Japan

August 1988 (Revised September 1988)
Case

Productivity and Performance Systems: A Comparative Analysis of Northern Telecom and United Parcel Service

Explores the issue of measuring and improving service quality and productivity by examining the radically different approaches of Northern Telecom and United Parcel Service. View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; Performance Evaluation; Service Industry; United States

17 Oct 2006
First Look

First Look: October 17, 2006

signal and infer quality of difficult-to-observe management practices. Prior evaluations of voluntary management programs have focused on those that lack verification... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Mar 2012
Article

Rethinking School

school systems are improving, it will take 80 years to catch up to where China is now. New approaches, including personalized technology, online videos, and innovations that combine software with classroom programs, could be the... View Details

March 1990 (Revised November 2004)
Case

O.M. Scott & Sons Co. Leveraged Buyout

By: George P. Baker III and Karen Wruck

Documents the organizational changes that took place at O.M. Scott & Sons Co. in response to their leveraged buyout. Provides the opportunity for students to discuss the effects of high leverage on management decision making, and the differences between operating as a... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Capital Structure; Borrowing and Debt; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management; Business Conglomerates; Cost of Capital; Financial Services Industry