Context - Publications - Faculty & Research

21 Nov 2015
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Stella McCartney Combines High Fashion with Environmental Values

the context of luxury is just fascinating because on the one hand they seem very contradictory, luxury and sustainability. Luxury for many people is all about excessiveness and waste. “Such products do not feel luxurious to more ethically... View Details

Keywords: by Brian Kenny; Fashion

04 Feb 2010
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Way to Make Careful Decisions?

information available, history, experience, the number of deciders, and so forth. Nevertheless, several comments reflected an uneasy fondness for a good dose of intuition in the mix. Guy Gould-Davies' comment was particularly insightful: "The idea of using feeling... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Jun 2022
News

The Exchange: Same Great Price, Now with Fewer Chips

what might lead a brand to try to disguise a price hike.—JMF John, can you give us some historical context to explain this phenomenon? John Gourville: The first instance of shrinkflation that I found was in 1988, when Chock full o’ Nuts... View Details

Keywords: Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

18 Dec 2019
Book

6 Skills That Wise Companies Harness for World-Changing Innovation

interactive,” he says. “Leaders should be conscious about creating these contexts to foster a wise company.” Honda knew how to create this kind of buzz. “In the old days,” Takeuchi says, “it was OK to have drinks after work, and he would... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

04 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Is Web Surfing Distracting Your Workers?

the energy spent resisting temptation takes attention away from other tasks, but no one had ever investigated it in the context of a work environment. "Our idea was to investigate this theory that says when we resist temptation we... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Research Summary

Understanding Customers

In conventional business case studies, protagonists almost never have the option of stepping back to seek a new understanding of the customer. But to be effective in practice, managers need both the self-assurance and ability to initiate and pursue, with rigor and... View Details

11 Oct 2013
HBS Seminar

Sen Chai, Post-Doc Labor & Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School, and NBER

02 Aug 2020
What Do You Think?

Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?

level. Their work has been both influenced by and reported recently by several academics. Harvard Business School professors Michael Luca and Max Bazerman track experimentation in decision-making back to the Book of Daniel, BC 167-164. They put forward a View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

2015
Working Paper

Competitiveness and Clusters: Implications for a New European Growth Strategy

By: Christian H.M. Ketels

This paper develops policy recommendations on the use of cluster-based economic policies and the adoption of a new concept of competitiveness in the context of the new growth path that WWWforEurope aims to outline.
A first section discusses and derives an... View Details

Keywords: Competitiveness; Clusters; Economic Policy; European Union; Competition; Industry Clusters; Policy; Economic Growth; European Union

Citation

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Research Summary

Models of optimal experience (flow)

Flow is a state of profound task-absorption, involvement, and intrinsic enjoyment that makes the person feel one with the activity. Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory states that flow is more likely to occur in situations in which the person feels that the activity is very... View Details

Web

Sexual Harassment - Race, Gender & Equity

experiences and reactions in the context of their current workplaces. In the results below, we focus on women who are working full time. About half of alumnae had recently experienced some kind of harassment, ranging from sexually... View Details

13 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

Don't Turn Your Marketing Function Over to AI Just Yet

departments within the firm could query it for answers to questions ranging from optimal pricing to product design. What prevents this from materializing? After all, machine learning is delivering self-driving cars and beating human players on Jeopardy! The answer:... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

04 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Are the Big Four Audit Firms Too Big to Fail?

Big Five era (1999-2002), and the Big Four era (2003-2006). All but the final consolidation were due to mergers and acquisitions; the last contraction was due to the collapse of Arthur Andersen. The researchers studied how often and in what View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting

24 Jun 2021
Blog Post

Celebrating the Past, Crafting the Future Part 2: The First HBS/HKS Class

joint degree to make a difference in the world. Gupta shared, “I was in corporate VC looking at technology in agriculture, specifically for the African context which led me to start thinking about innovative models to address food... View Details

Blog

What Black Executives Really Want

insecure, and unable to deliver their best work because of the environment in which they were operating. They were surviving, but not thriving. WHAT SOLUTIONS DID YOUR RESEARCH SUBJECTS OFFER? I put it to them this way. "If you were going to create the workplace View Details

Web

Power and Influence for Positive Impact | HBS Online

which influence styles and behaviors you use most frequently in various contexts 4-7 hrs Module 4 Encountering Entrenched Power Explain how power hierarchies develop and perpetuate themselves and understand and apply organizational and... View Details

23 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovative Ways to Encourage Personal Savings

have too little income. In addition, there is a whole host of reasons why people put off savings, especially in the context of an economy where consumerism is common. A variety of levers can be used to support people who want to save (not... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

12 Oct 2017
News

Fighting Poverty One Neighborhood at a Time

all residents,” he notes. Majors emphasizes that he and his colleagues are careful to “listen first and talk later.” “Each neighborhood’s context and assets are unique. There is no cookie-cutter solution. Many clients have been battling... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg

04 Jun 2018
What Do You Think?

Are There Conditions Under Which Directors Should Consider Hiring a CEO Fired Elsewhere for Inappropriate Behavior?

important that they act aggressively towards competitor companies However, it seems crucial that they have the behavioral flexibility to act very differently towards subordinates and co-workers.” These comments were advanced in the View Details