Publications

April 1964 (Revised September 1982)
Case

Empire Glass Co. (B)

Details the behavior of line managers, management staff, and workers in response to long-established control system developed by corporation headquarters. View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Management Systems; Employees; Manufacturing Industry

Yiwei Li is a Doctoral student of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He concentrates on managerial accounting research, with interest in topics like incentive scheme and management control system. He pursues the goal of applying research output into... View Details

Kyle R. Myers

Kyle Myers is an assistant professor of business administration in the Technology and Operations Management unit. He teaches the first-year Technology and Operations Management course.

Professor Myers studies the economics of innovation. His research is at... View Details

Keywords: health care; biotechnology; pharmaceuticals; energy; high technology

02 Aug 2004
What Do You Think?

For Greater Transparency, Is Section 404 an Effective Response?

an entire group of lower level functions and staff." Rich Lanza pointed out that "(Section 404) is a necessary step ... (but) more continuous controls monitoring is needed that independently... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2017
Working Paper

Crime and Violence: Desensitization in Victims to Watching Criminal Events

By: Rafael Di Tella, Lucía Freira, Ramiro H. Gálvez, Ernesto Schargrodsky, Diego Shalom and Mariano Sigman

We study desensitization to crime in a lab experiment by showing footage of criminal acts to a group of subjects, some of whom have been previously victimized. We measure biological markers of stress and behavioral indices of cognitive control before and after treated... View Details

Keywords: Crime; Biological Markers; Experiment; Victimization; Desensitization; Crime and Corruption; Perspective; Attitudes; Behavior

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May 2016 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Pal's Sudden Service—Scaling an Organizational Model to Drive Growth

By: Gary P. Pisano, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats

Pal's Sudden Service has developed a unique operating model and organizational culture in the quick service restaurant business. With a deep emphasis on process control and improvement, zero defects, extensive training, and a high level of employee engagement, Pal's... View Details

Keywords: Growth Strategy; Corporate Culture; Operations Strategy; Motivation; Values; Motivation and Incentives; Strategy; Values and Beliefs; Service Operations; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

August 31, 2017
Article

CEOs Should Get Personally Involved in Talent Development

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Jay Galeota and Michael Wong

Estimates indicate that, globally, human capital has a value about 2.3 times that of physical capital. This difference is likely to widen in increasingly service-driven economies. Yet, most companies maintain their equipment better than their people. The issue is not... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employees; Training

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March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
Exercise

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades is an exercise in which students are asked to analyze and make a recommendation on the basis of simulated experimental data. The setting is a hypothetical restaurant review company called RestaurantGrades (RG), which shows... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Digital Marketing

2015
Working Paper

Replicating Private Equity with Value Investing, Homemade Leverage, and Hold-to-Maturity Accounting

By: Erik Stafford

Private equity funds tend to select relatively small firms with low EBITDA multiples. Publicly traded equities with these characteristics have high risk-adjusted returns after controlling for common factors typically associated with value stocks. Hold-to-maturity... View Details

Keywords: Value Investing; Endowments; Investment Management; Asset Pricing; Private Equity; Investment; Management; United States

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Article

Why Hospitals Don't Learn from Failures: Organizational and Psychological Dynamics That Inhibit System Change

By: A. Tucker and A. Edmondson

The importance of hospitals learning from their failures hardly needs to be stated. Not only are matters of life and death at stake on a daily basis, but also an increasing number of U.S. hospitals are operating in the red. This article reports on in-depth qualitative... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

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Jung Koo Kang is an assistant professor in the Accounting and Management Unit. He teaches the Financial Reporting and Control course in the MBA required curriculum.

Professor Kang’s research focuses on financial technology and innovation, alternative data,... View Details

July 2005 (Revised February 2011)
Case

Tanpin Kanri: Retail Practice at Seven-Eleven Japan

By: Rajiv Lal and Arar Han

Toshifumi Suzuki, chairman and CEO of Seven and I Holding Co., was widely credited as the mastermind behind Seven-Eleven Japan's spectacular rise. Although Seven-Eleven Japan began as a small licensee of U.S. convenience store chain 7-Eleven, Inc. (then Southland... View Details

Keywords: Framework; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Demand and Consumers; Distribution; Logistics; Technology; Retail Industry; Japan

January 2000 (Revised September 2002)
Case

Hitting the Wall: Nike and International Labor Practices

By: Debora L. Spar and Jennifer Burns

In the mid-1990s Nike, one of the world's most successful footwear companies, is hit by a spate of alarmingly bad publicity. After years of high-profile media attention as the company that can "just do it," Nike is suddenly being portrayed as a firm that relies on... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Developing Countries and Economies

June 1989 (Revised July 2006)
Case

Chaircraft Corporation, 1988

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Illustrates the difficulty of effective production planning and production control in a multistage production process affected by seasonal demand. A rewritten version of an earlier case by S.C. Wheelwright. View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Demand and Consumers; Production; Performance Effectiveness; Planning

09 Nov 2017
HBS Seminar

Alfonso Gambardella, Bocconi University

October 1992 (Revised August 1994)
Case

Allied-Signal: Managing the Hazardous Waste Liability Risk

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Edward Prewitt

Allied-Signal, Inc., one of the world's oldest chemical companies and today a diversified conglomerate, is liable for clean-up costs of old hazardous waste sites. These costs are substantial: reserves grew to nearly $500 million in 1991. Attempting to avoid further... View Details

Keywords: Wastes and Waste Processing; Environmental Sustainability; Programs; Cost Management; Policy; Government Legislation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Governance Compliance; Legal Liability; Chemical Industry; United States; Europe

March 2001
Case

Veltvest Corporation

The founder and president of the company find it difficult to relinquish control to the next generation. View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Management Succession

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20 May 2019
News

Why Do We Let Political Parties Act Like Monopolies?

April 1991 (Revised December 1997)
Case

Southland Corp. (A)

By: Richard S. Ruback

Examines the Thompson's $4.9 billion leveraged buyout of the Southland Corp. in 1987. As the original founders of Southland, the Thompsons were concerned about losing control over the company upon learning of the Belzberg family's acquiring interest. The teaching... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Governance Controls; Corporate Governance; Bids and Bidding; Valuation; Forecasting and Prediction; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Strategy; Cash Flow