Publications

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April 2008 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc.

By: Robert G. Eccles and David Lane

As CEO of leading executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles for the past 18 months, Kevin Kelly was pleased with his accomplishments so far but concerned about threats he perceived to Heidrick's position at the highest levels of the executive search business. In... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Recruitment; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Employment Industry; Service Industry

June 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Exchange-Traded Funds at Vanguard (A)

By: Robert C. Pozen and Steven Vickers

Vanguard Group management, led by CEO John Brennan, was considering whether to launch exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in early 2000. ETFs, first created in the early 1990s, combined aspects of traditional mutual funds and closed-end funds. The US ETF industry had reached... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Managerial Roles; Growth and Development Strategy; Experience and Expertise; Market Entry and Exit; Network Effects; Profit; Business and Shareholder Relations; Product Launch; Asset Management; Distribution Channels; Ownership; Financial Services Industry; United States

May 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Technical Note

Health Care Payment in the United States

By: Robert S. Huckman, Jeff Charca and Craig Garthwaite

This document provides an overview of how various actors (e.g., physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers) are paid in the United States health care system. It is particularly focused on features of the payment system that contribute to strategic decisions... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Health Industry

September 2012 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Addleshaw Goddard LLP (Abridged)

By: Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson and James Weber

Addleshaw-Goddard (AG), the 15th largest law firm in the UK, is seeking ways to serve larger clients on more important legal matters. Part of this strategy involves its "Client Development Centre (CDC)," an innovative idea and set of services launched by Dr. Jim Hever... View Details

Keywords: Price; Innovation and Invention; Service Operations; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Legal Services Industry; United Kingdom

Forthcoming
Article

Transaction Cost Economics in the Digital Economy: A Research Agenda

By: Frank Nagle, Robert Seamans and Steve Tadelis

Transaction cost economics theory explains when it is more efficient for a transaction between two parties to occur across the market or within an organization. How does transaction cost economics apply in the digital economy, which relies on digital transactions? In... View Details

Keywords: Transaction Cost Economics; Digital Economy; Economics; Cost; Markets; Research; Digital Transformation

January 2007 (Revised August 2007)
Case

Fulton County School System: Implementing the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Monica Nah Lee

Illustrates the adaptation and implementation of a private sector management tool, the Balanced Scorecard, to a public school district. As part of a continuous improvement initiative, the Director of Planning and Policy facilitates the development of a strategy map and... View Details

Keywords: Education; Governance; Leadership; Balanced Scorecard; Performance Improvement; Strategy; Education Industry

06 Sep 2016
First Look

September 6, 2016

negotiator who wants to be fair from the start ensure that his or her counterpart will be reasonable as well? The authors propose the final-offer arbitration challenge, which leverages an approach first applied in labor negotiations in the 1960s. You can employ this... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

10 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 10, 2008

managers will use the discretion given by such estimates to convey private information on future cash flows, while agency theory predicts managers will use the discretion opportunistically. We test these alternative hypotheses using a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Research Summary

Changing the World: Life Choices of Influential Leaders

By: Robert Simons

This project studies the life choices made by a variety of people who have left a lasting legacy. Using biographical data, we are examining the choices that high-impact individuals faced in their lives and the paths they chose to follow. The leaders we study come... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Personal Characteristics; Work-life Balance; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Success

February 2009 (Revised April 2011)
Supplement

Mistry Architects (B)

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Robert G. Eccles and Mona Sinha

This case is a follow-up of Mistry Architects: Innovating for Sustainability (A) (Case 609-044). In Case (A) Sharukh and Renu Mistry found and run an architectural firm dedicated to being both client-oriented and environmentally responsible. The case uses a difficult... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Emerging Markets; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Natural Disasters; Environmental Sustainability; Product Design; Innovation and Invention; Construction Industry

March 2022
Article

Assessing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Clinician Ambulatory Electronic Health Record Use

By: A Jay Holmgren, Lance Downing, Mitchell Tang, Christopher Sharp, Christopher Longhurst and Robert S. Huckman

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic changed clinician electronic health record (EHR) work in a multitude of ways. To evaluate how, we measure ambulatory clinician EHR use in the United States throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Materials and Methods: We use EHR... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Electronic Health Records; Productivity; COVID-19 Pandemic; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Information Technology; Performance Productivity; United States

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20 Aug 2013
First Look

First Look: August 20

Wall Street's expectations. Shares fell 5% based on this outlook. P&G results were lagging its peers by 4% in 2012 and 2% in the first quarter of 2013. Then, abruptly in late May, CEO Robert A. McDonald,... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

Article

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing in Emergency Medicine

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Brian J. Yun, Anand M. Prabhakar, Jonathan Warsh, John Brennan, Kyle E. Dempsey and Ali S. Raja

Value in emergency medicine is determined by both patient-important outcomes and the costs associated with achieving them. However, measuring true costs is challenging. Without an understanding of costs, emergency department (ED) leaders will be unable to determine... View Details

Keywords: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Emergency Room; Health Care and Treatment; Value; Cost Management; Activity Based Costing and Management

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08 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 8, 2008

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=608080 Bidding on Martha's Vineyard (A) Harvard Business School Case 908-044 To buy a desirable Martha's Vineyard property, Robert and Sally Franklin must craft a bidding... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

16 Jan 2007
First Look

First Look: January 16, 2007

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=206033 PublicationsManagement Accounting, 5th ed. Authors:Anthony A. Atkinson, Robert S. Kaplan, S. Mark Young, and Ella Mae Matsumura Publication:Upper Saddle River, N.J.:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

August 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Module Note

Strategy Execution Module 1: Managing Organizational Tensions

By: Robert Simons

This module reading lays the foundation for executing strategy using performance measurement and control systems. Properly applied, these systems can overcome the organizational blocks that impede the potential of all people who work in modern organizations. This... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Performance Measurement; Profit Planning; Organization Design; Profitable Growth; Management Attention; Organizational Conflict; Human Behavior; Strategy; Ethics; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Design; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance; Measurement and Metrics

August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

VTS

By: Mark Roberge and Michael Roberts

The case raises issues around sales force deployment and management issues in the SaaS industry. Specifically, VTS sells a software product to the real estate industry and has designed a Go-to-Market strategy for what the founders perceive to be the unique... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Managerial Roles; New York (city, NY)

February 2014
Article

Responses to Entry in Multi-Sided Markets: The Impact of Craigslist on Local Newspapers

By: Robert Seamans and Feng Zhu

How do firms respond to entry in multi-sided markets? We address this question by studying the impact of Craigslist, a website providing classified-advertising services, on local U.S. newspapers. We exploit temporal and geographical variation in Craigslist's entry to... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Market Entry and Exit; Internet and the Web; Newspapers; Advertising; Advertising Industry; Journalism and News Industry

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2023
Article

Comparison of COVID-19 Hospitalization Costs across Care Pathways: A Patient-level Time-driven Activity-based Costing Analysis in a Brazilian Hospital

By: Ricardo Bertoglio Cardoso, Miriam Allein Zago Marcolino, Milena Soriano Marcolino, Camila Felix Fortis, Leila Beltrami Moreira, Ana Paula Coutinho, Nadine Oliveira Clausell, Junaid Nabi, Robert S. Kaplan, Ana Paula Beck da Silva Etges and Carisi Anne Polanczyk

The COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness of the need to better understand where and how patient-level costs are incurred in health care organizations. This study used time-driven activity-based costing to estimate COVID-19 patient-level hospital costs in a Brazilian... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Health Industry; Brazil