Publications

April 2008 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Flying J (A)

By: Rohit Deshpande and Lauren Barley

The largest retailer of diesel fuel in the U.S., Flying J, is rethinking its growth strategy as the economy goes into a recession. Its major customer base, owner-operated truck drivers, are facing increasing costs of doing business. Yet Flying J is considering whether... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Growth and Development Strategy; Price; Consumer Behavior; Non-Renewable Energy; Energy Industry; United States

July 1988 (Revised October 1992)
Exercise

Sellars' Market

By: David E. Bell

A shop owner has limited shelf space for display of impulse purchase products near the cash register. He must select only nine to display. Exercise shows the relevance of opportunity cost or resource pricing. By setting an appropriate charge for the shelf space the... View Details

Keywords: Marketing

June 4, 2025
Editorial

Employee Stress Is a Business Risk—Not an HR Problem

By: Marion Chomse, Lydia Roos, Reeva Misra and Ashley Whillans

Workplace stress, on the rise for decades, has been treated by many organizations as a personal issue instead of a business-critical risk that merits executive oversight. This is likely due in part to the fact that companies have not effectively quantified and tracked... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Well-being; Risk Management; Competitive Advantage

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October 2022
Article

When Does Moral Engagement Risk Triggering a Hypocrite Penalty?

By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers

Society suffers when people stay silent on moral issues. Yet people who engage morally may appear hypocritical if they behave imperfectly themselves. Research reveals that hypocrites can—but do not always—trigger a “hypocrisy penalty,” whereby they are evaluated... View Details

Keywords: Hypocrite; Dishonesty; Social Issues; Moral Sensibility; Public Opinion; Perception

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Article

Shadow of the Contract: How Contract Structure Shapes Inter-Firm Dispute Resolution

By: Fabrice Lumineau and Deepak Malhotra

This paper investigates how contract structure influences inter-firm dispute resolution processes and outcomes by examining a unique dataset consisting of over 150,000 pages of documents relating to 102 business disputes. We find that the level of contractual detail... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Contracts; Rights; Negotiation; Conflict and Resolution; Power and Influence

February 2010 (Revised June 2022)
Case

Dollarama Inc.

By: Andre F. Perold

Dollarama is the leading operator of dollar stores in Canada. The firm performed extraordinarily well after a leveraged buyout in 2004 and recently executed a highly successful IPO. The company sources its goods primarily from Asia. It has strong brand recognition and... View Details

Keywords: Price; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Supply Chain; Competitive Advantage; Valuation; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Canada

28 Jun 2012
News

Health-Care Insiders Brace for Drastic Change

March 1996
Article

Does it Pay to be Green? An Empirical Examination of the Relationship Between Emission Reduction and Firm Performance

By: Stuart L. Hart and Gautam Ahuja

Evidence can be marshalled to support either the view that pollution abatement is a cost burden on firms and is detrimental to competitiveness, or that reducing emissions increases efficiency and saves money, giving firms a cost advantage. In an effort to resolve this... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Performance Efficiency; Environmental Sustainability; Business Strategy

Web

Admissions & Financial Aid | MBA

Scholarship Board uses the annual Cost of Attendance to determine financial aid awards. Amounts are based on student surveys of direct and indirect costs. Of course, living expenses will vary from person to person. The annual MS/MBA View Details

September 2011
Article

Information Risk and Fair Value: An Examination of Equity Betas

By: Edward J. Riedl and George Serafeim

Using a sample of U.S. financial institutions, we exploit recent mandatory disclosures of financial instruments designated as fair value level 1, 2, and 3 to test whether greater information risk in financial instrument fair values leads to higher cost of capital. We... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Assets; Cost of Capital; Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Corporate Disclosure; Information; Risk and Uncertainty; Value; United States

SSRN

Winter 2013
Article

How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business

By: Frank V. Cespedes, James P. Dougherty and Ben S. Skinner III

How can businesses achieve profitable growth so that their costs don’t grow faster than sales? This article focuses on scaling a venture’s sales process and provides a methodology for identifying core customers and some implications for governance criteria and... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Growth Management; Sales

24 May 2012
News

Businesses need an image repair

23 Sep 2016
News

Will Yahoo hack trigger better security checks?

Nov 2014
Report

Bridge the Gap: Rebuilding America's Middle Skills

The market for middle-skills jobs—those that require more education and training than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree—is consistently failing to clear. That failure is inflicting a grievous cost on the... View Details

September 2010 (Revised August 2011)
Background Note

Pricing, Profits, and Customer Value

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Benson P. Shapiro and Elliot B. Ross

This note discusses how some firms (start-ups and established companies) maximize customer value and profits via their pricing processes. It is aimed at companies that compete on the basis of performance initiatives rather than absolute cost advantages and low price.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Cost; Price; Profit; Performance Effectiveness; Sales; Competitive Strategy

For the first time in anybody's memory we're starting to see the biopharmaceutical industry and the medical industry at large affected by a recession. I think there are a couple of reasons. One is very high unemployment, and every time the unemployment rate goes up,... View Details

November 1991 (Revised April 2002)
Background Note

Note on Foreign Currency Swaps

By: W. Carl Kester

Provides descriptive background about the development of an international market for currency swaps and, by means of a detailed example, instructs readers in the determination of swap flows and all-in costs of financing using market swap rates. A rewritten version of... View Details

Keywords: Currency