Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(774)
- Faculty Publications (185)
- April 2010 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A) (Abridged)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
Owens & Minor (O&M) performed lean inventory services for Virginia Mason (VM) as its Alpha Vendor, but the outdated industry pricing model created perverse incentives and could not capture O&M's costs. Together, O&M and VM created an activity-based pricing model: Total... View Details
- February 2010
- Teaching Note
Sealed Air China (TN)
By: Regina M. Abrami, William C. Kirby and F. Warren McFarlan
Teaching Note for [308051]. View Details
- December 2009
- Article
Strategy-proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the NYC High School Match
By: Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag A. Pathak and Alvin E. Roth
The design of the New York City (NYC) High School match involved tradeoffs among efficiency, stability, and strategy-proofness that raise new theoretical questions. We analyze a model with indifferences—ties—in school preferences. Simulations with field data and the... View Details
- September 2009
- Article
A Detailed Analysis of the Reduction Mammaplasty Learning Curve: A Statistical Process Model for Approaching Surgical Performance Improvement
By: Matthew Carty MD, Rodney Chan, Robert S. Huckman, Daniel C. Snow and Dennis Orgill
Background: The increased focus on quality and efficiency improvement within academic surgery has met with variable success among plastic surgeons. Traditional surgical performance metrics, such as morbidity and mortality, are insufficient to improve the... View Details
- September 2009
- Article
Are You Having Trouble Keeping Your Operations Focused?
As a business broadens over time, it can lose the operational edge that led to its original success. Core strengths atrophy, efficiency or quality suffers, and sharper rivals close in to take advantage of the loss of focus. In his classic article "The Focused Factory"... View Details
- September – October 2009
- Article
Critical Decisions in Software Development: Updating the State of the Practice
By: Alan MacCormack, Michael A. Cusumano, Chris Kemerer and Bill Crandall
This article focuses on how to choose the "right" software development process, how to structure global software design chains, how to manage the interaction of project structure and software design, and how to balance innovation and efficiency in a software business. View Details
- April 2009
- Journal Article
Perspectives on the Productivity Dilemma
By: Paul S. Adler, Mary Benner, David James Brunner, John Paul MacDuffie, Emi Osono, Bradley R. Staats, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Michael Tushman and Sidney G. Winter
For more than a century, operations researchers have recognized that organizations can increase efficiency by adhering strictly to proven process templates, thereby rendering operations more stable and predictable. For several decades, researchers have also recognized... View Details
- January 2009
- Teaching Note
Bunge: Food, Fuel, and World Markets (TN)
By: Tarun Khanna, Santiago Mingo and Jonathan West
Teaching Note for [708443]. View Details
- October 2008 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
JetBlue Airways: Managing Growth
By: Robert S. Huckman and Gary P. Pisano
Considers the situation facing David Barger, President and CEO of JetBlue Airways, in May 2007 as he addresses the airline's need to slow its growth rate in the response to increasing fuel costs and the effects of major operational crisis for the airline in February... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Cook Composites and Polymers Co.
By: Deishin Lee, Michael W. Toffel and Rachel Gordon
This case describes how a company improves resource efficiency and process quality in its manufacturing process by developing a waste by-product into a new product. The case describes how CCP cleans production equipment between batches using styrene, which becomes a... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Future of Social Enterprise
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Herman B. Leonard and Susan McDonald
The Future of Social Enterprise considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. We trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to... View Details
- April 2008
- Teaching Note
Viagen: Revolutioning the Livestock Industry (TN)
By: David E. Bell, Mary L. Shelman and Eliot Sherman
Teaching Note for [507021]. View Details
- 2008
- Article
Ambidexterity as a Dynamic Capability: Resolving the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Charles O'Reilly and Michael Tushman
How do organizations survive in the face of change? Underlying this question is a rich debate about whether organizations can adapt—and if so, how. One perspective, organizational ecology, presents evidence suggesting that most organizations are largely inert and... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised May 2009)
- Case
Offering the Right Service in the Right Place: Growing Orthopedics at the Brigham and Women's/Faulkner (BW/F) Hospitals
By: V.G. Narayanan, Michael G. Wilson and Rachel Gordon
After the merger of two local hospitals, hospital leaders much decide how to reorganize services to take advantage of newly created efficiencies. Focuses on the Orthopedics department at one of the hospitals. View Details
- October 2007 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Advanced Energy: Programs for Energy Conservation
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Brooke Barton
Describes the dilemma facing Advanced Energy (AE), a $6 million nonprofit engaged in energy conservation in North Carolina. Most of the money for its programs comes from a Public Benefits Fund (PBF) enacted by the state legislature. With renewed effort by activists in... View Details
- September 2007 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Buildings and Energy
By: Forest L. Reinhardt and Nazli Uludere
Presents data on opportunities to conserve energy in buildings, which account for about a third of all energy use. Encourages readers to think about the impediments to energy efficiency in the buildings sector and the ways in which entrepreneurs can profitably surmount... View Details
- June 2007
- Article
Does Employment Protection Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States
By: David H Autor, William R. Kerr and Adriana D. Kugler
Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distorting production choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiring below efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affect... View Details
Keywords: Theory; Production; Selection and Staffing; Cost; Employment; Capital; Performance Productivity; United States
- June 2007
- Article
Efficient Kidney Exchange: Coincidence of Wants in a Structured Market
By: A. E. Roth, Tayfun Sonmez and M. Utku Unver
Patients needing kidney transplants may have donors who cannot donate to them because of blood or tissue incompatibility. Incompatible patient-donor pairs can exchange donor kidneys with other pairs only when there is a "double coincidence of wants." Developing... View Details
- January 2007
- Article
Introducing the First Management Control Systems: Evidence from the Retail Sector
By: Tatiana Sandino
Focusing on a sample of US retailers, I study the management control systems (MCS) that firms introduce when they first invest in controls, and identify four categories of initial MCS, which are defined in terms of the purposes these MCS fulfill. The first category,... View Details