Publications

14 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

You're Right! You Are Working Longer and Attending More Meetings

period, Sadun suspects that employees adopted more fluid schedules to accommodate interruptions from, say, a child struggling with virtual learning or a sick family member. [div class=infogram-embed data-id=_/PHD0Oe3IKZEzoXHByJOS][/div]... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

closed a number of stores with less traffic to better enable deliveries to seniors, those with disabilities, and those in quarantine or self-isolation. Connect emotionally. To accommodate such demands, firms such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats,... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Retail; Service

September–October 2021
Article

Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Nitin Mehta, Param Singh and Kannan Srinivasan

We study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Our empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s introduction of the algorithm and its voluntary adoption by hosts as a quasi-natural experiment. Among... View Details

Keywords: Smart Pricing; Pricing Algorithm; Machine Bias; Discrimination; Racial Disparity; Social Inequality; Airbnb Revenue; Revenue; Race; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Price; Mathematical Methods; Accommodations Industry

SSRN

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2014
Working Paper

Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com

By: Benjamin Edelman and Michael Luca

Online marketplaces often contain information not only about products, but also about the people selling the products. In an effort to facilitate trust, many platforms encourage sellers to provide personal profiles and even to post pictures of themselves. However,... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Internet and the Web; Race; Trust; Renting or Rental; Accommodations Industry; Accommodations Industry

SSRN

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06 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

Four Strategies for Making Concessions

that the cost estimates are accurate (and perhaps conservative) given the complexity of the project and the short deadline. If the project manager is willing to make a concession, she might say: "This isn't easy for us, but we've made some adjustments on price to... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

24 Jan 2011
HBS Case

Terror at the Taj

On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists simultaneously struck sites. Of the five locations—all well-known landmarks—the beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower would become most closely associated with the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Accommodations

22 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Want Hybrid Work to Succeed? Trust, Don’t Track, Employees

Many employees are seeking a permanent change to their schedules and companies are adapting. A recent McKinsey survey found that 90 percent of companies are willing to accommodate them with plans for hybrid workplaces. "You have to trust... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

29 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Income Inequality Is Rising. Are We Even Measuring It Correctly?

inequality over time, researchers often use the Gini coefficient to capture the concentration of income in geographic locations. And in many cases, the Gini coefficient is a useful metric that accommodates such comparisons. However, the... View Details

Keywords: by Jon M. Jachimowicz, Kristin Blesch, and Oliver P. Hauser

September 2016
Case

Hotel Vertu: Analyzing the Opportunity in the Boutique Hotel Industry

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Michael J. Roberts DBA

Two soon-to-be MBA graduates are considering a business opportunity in the boutique hotel industry. Having found a seemingly attractive property in Savannah, Georgia, Yvonne D'Arcy and Elisabeth Whiting face questions about career issues, planning, financing, and the... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Entrepreneurship; Planning; Accommodations Industry

20 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

Panama Canal: Troubled History, Astounding Turnaround

maximum throughput in terms of the number of ships. Rather, the reason is that 35 percent of the planet's commercial shipping consists of ships too large to fit through the current locks, and Panama wants a piece of that business. The current locks measure 1,050' x... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Transportation

March 2008
Case

Shangri-La Hotels

By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan

In November 2006, Symon Bridle, the newly appointed chief operating officer of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, was thinking about a number of organizational issues that presented challenges to Shangri-La's rapid expansion strategy. There were three major issues at hand:... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Growth and Development Strategy; Standards; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Accommodations Industry; China; Europe; North America

25 May 2021
Research & Ideas

White Airbnb Hosts Earn More. Can AI Shrink the Racial Gap?

White people who host rental properties on Airbnb earn significantly more per year than Black hosts, but a “race blind” pricing algorithm could help close that income gap, new research shows. Black hosts who rely on Airbnb’s algorithm to set enticing prices instead of... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Accommodations; Accommodations

21 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

How to Predict if a New Business Idea is Any Good

In 2008, entrepreneur Brian Chesky and his two San Francisco roommates made the rounds of Silicon Valley VC firms with what they thought was a great idea: a website and mobile app that would allow homeowners to open their homes to strangers to sleep on their floor... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Accommodations; Accommodations

04 Dec 2019
Book

Creating the Experimentation Organization

When customers log onto Booking.com—the world’s largest online accommodations platform—they might naturally assume they are seeing the same website as every other customer logged on at the same time. In fact, Booking is running... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

18 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Monetary Policy Drivers of Bond and Equity Risks

Keywords: by John Y. Campbell, Carolin E. Pflueger & Luis M. Viceira

04 Feb 2022
Book

Beyond the Cold War: Reinventing Socialism in 5 Countries

exchange whose impacts have endured beyond the bipolar competition. Despite these burgeoning fields of scholarship, however, it is unclear how our overall picture of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has actually changed to View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

December 2002 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Four Seasons Goes to Paris: '53 Properties, 24 Countries, 1 Philosophy'

By: Roger H. Hallowell, David Bowen and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Illustrates how Four Seasons manages hotels in countries with strong and distinct national cultures. Focuses on how the chain meets its exacting service standards in a variety of settings worldwide, with special attention on France. View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Global Range; Global Strategy; Standards; Accommodations Industry; Paris

September 2017 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Marriott International: The Next 90 Years

By: Chiara Farronato and Gary Pisano

The case examines how Marriott should respond to the potential threats from new home-sharing platforms and the rise of online travel agencies. In 2017 Marriott was the largest hotel chain, with more than one million rooms and 7% of worldwide room supply. In the... View Details