Publications

14 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Amazon vs. Whole Foods: When Cultures Collide

prices and fast shipping, and they became intensely loyal: According to one survey, 85 percent of Amazon Prime members visit the site, and 46 percent buy something at least once a week. After Amazon’s acquisition, Whole Foods pushed forward with the inventory system... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

02 Aug 2021
Blog Post

ALUMNI WORK TO REVERSE BIAS THROUGH PHILANTHROPY

Thought, one of the organizations that has received a grant from the New Commonwealth Racial Equity and Social Justice Fund. Photo by Noelia Castillo/Elevated Thought The high-profile deaths last year of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd were... View Details

October 1982 (Revised September 1988)
Case

Steven B. Belkin

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Richard O. von Werssowetz

Steven Belkin, 26 years old and 2 1/2 years out of HBS, has decided to leave a group travel company he has run for the last year to start his own similar business. In the course of several months he has written a business plan, attracted several partners and employees,... View Details

Keywords: Business Plan; Business Startups; Decisions; Equity; Investment; Personal Finance; Recruitment; Resignation and Termination; Failure; Partners and Partnerships

September 2016
Case

Designing Performance Metrics at GoDaddy

By: C. Fritz Foley and Michael Lemm

Scott Wagner has recently joined GoDaddy, a leading provider of cloud-based software and services that helped individuals and small businesses establish a web presence, in the dual role of chief operating officer and chief financial officer. One of his first tasks is... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Web Services Industry

2011
Working Paper

The Impact of Forward-Looking Metrics on Employee Decision Making

By: Pablo Casas-Arce, F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and V.G. Narayanan

This paper analyzes the effects of providing forward-looking metrics on employee decision making. We use data from a southern European bank that, in April 2002, started providing its branch managers with customer lifetime value (CLV) information about mortgage... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mortgages; Employees; Information; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Service Delivery; Banking Industry; Europe

Web

Measure Outcomes & Cost for Every Patient - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

since when costs are reduced one must be sure that outcomes are not made worse. Outcomes are also essential parts of value based payment plans like bundled payment. In regional and national expansion of delivery organizations, they are important in determining how to... View Details

27 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique?

labor costs, and concerns about relying on suppliers who potentially abuse the human rights of workers or pay less than a standard living wage. Victor and William Fung are the new type of Asian leaders—will... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

14 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age

This is the third and final article of the "Leading in the Digital Era" series. Read parts one and two. Leaders who set out to reshape their companies to compete in a fast-evolving digital world often come to a daunting realization: To transform their organizations,... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards; Technology

26 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 26, 2019

March 2019 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Thin Slices of Workgroups By: Satterstrom, Patricia, Jeffrey T. Polzer, Lisa Kwan, Oliver P. Hauser, Wannawiruch Wiruchnipawan, and Marina Burke Abstract—In this paper, we... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2024
Working Paper

Smaller than We Thought? The Effect of Automatic Savings Policies

By: James J. Choi, David Laibson, Jordan Cammarota, Richard Lombardo and John Beshears

Medium- and long-run dynamics undermine the effect of automatic enrollment and default savings-rate auto-escalation on retirement savings. Our analysis of 401(k) plans incorporates the facts that employees frequently leave firms (often before matching contributions... View Details

Keywords: Personal Finance; Saving; Retirement; Behavioral Finance; Compensation and Benefits

Read Now

12 Sep 2023
What Do You Think?

Who Gets the Loudest Voice in DEI Decisions?

medium-sized, for-profit retailing organization. You have been asked to approve changes to the company’s orientation program that probably would not have crossed your desk several years ago. Your human resources group has proposed changes... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Web

HBS - The year in Review

the Harvard Business Analytics Program’s 400 participants who had attended virtual immersions in 2020 and 2021. Celebrating 100 Years of the Case Method The 2021-22 academic year marked the centennial of the introduction of the case method at Harvard Business School.... View Details

September 2018
Case

Kevin Ryan Inc.

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Greg Marsh

The case focuses on the hiring process for a CEO. Kevin Ryan had a solid trajectory as a serial entrepreneur of well-known ventures like Gilt Group, DoubleClick, Business Insider, among others. Ryan tended to involve himself in all aspects of his ventures: ideation,... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Team Building; Interviews; CEO; Human Resources; Selection and Staffing; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; United States; North America

December 2001 (Revised June 2002)
Case

Compensation at Level 3 Communications

Level 3's unique compensation plan rewarded managers for the firm's performance only if the firm's stock price movement exceeded that of the market. This design was intended to maximize shareholder value by tying manager's performance more closely to that of the firm,... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Telecommunications Industry