Publications

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September 2011
Article

The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value

By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton

A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Perception; Valuation; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Performance Effectiveness; Customer Satisfaction; Service Industry

06 Feb 2019
News

Unlike Trump, most CEOs have very little ‘executive time’

summer 2003
Article

Patents, Invalidity, and the Strategic Transmission of Enabling Information

By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao

The patent system encourages innovation and knowledge disclosure by providing exclusivity to inventors. Exclusivity is limited, however, because a substantial fraction of patents have some probability of being ruled invalid when challenged in court. The possibility of... View Details

Keywords: System; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Dissemination; Courts and Trials; Competition; Patents; Corporate Disclosure

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11 Jan 2022
News

Sales Management That Works with Frank Cespedes

February 1984
Case

AT&T Co.--1983

Describes the financing problems facing AT&T in 1983 prior to divestiture of the local telephone operating companies on Jan. 1, 1984. Leads up to the decision to issue equity, which AT&T did in early 1983 and which reduced AT&T's market value by $2 billion. The case is... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Finance; Telecommunications Industry

29 May 2020
News

G.E., Which Traces Its Roots to Thomas Edison, Sells Its Lighting Business

September 2007
Article

(Noisy) Communication

By: Bharat Anand and Ron Shachar

Communication is central to many settings in marketing and economics. A focal attribute of communication is miscommunication. We model this key characteristic as a noise in the messages communicated, so that the sender of a message is uncertain about its perception by... View Details

Keywords: Communication Intention and Meaning; Interpersonal Communication; Cost vs Benefits; Marketing Communications; Performance Improvement; Mathematical Methods

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13 Jun 2019
News

Uber Must Go Slow When Drivers Rate Riders

06 May 2017
News

Trump loves his new desk in the Oval Office. But it also has its downsides.

July 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Case

AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow

By: William R. Kerr, Joseph B. Fuller and Carl Kreitzberg

By the late 2000s, rapid changes in the telecommunications industry forced AT&T’s management team to take on a task that CEO Randall Stephenson called the “biggest logistical challenge” they had ever seen: retraining 100,000 workers by 2020. In 2012, internal company... View Details

27 Oct 2021
News

If Money Is Tight, That’s Nothing to Be Ashamed Of

January 2017 (Revised December 2017)
Case

Merging American Airlines and US Airways (A)

By: David G. Fubini, David A. Garvin and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In February 2013, US Airways announced that it would merge with American Airlines to create the world’s largest airline. Doug Parker, the CEO of US Airways, would become CEO of the new American Airlines Group (AAL). The case describes a number of critical decisions... View Details

Keywords: Airlines; Merger; Takeover; Integration Strategy; Merger Integration; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Making; Governance; Management Teams; Operations; Organizational Culture; Air Transportation Industry; United States

2021
Book

Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Selling is changing, but the impact on sales of megatrends like ecommerce, big data, and AI is often misunderstood and not supported by empirical data. Managers who fail to separate fact from hype will make decisions based on bad assumptions and, in a competitive... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Strategy; Salesforce Management; Change; Adaptation

January 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Supplement

Fair Value Accounting at Noble Group (B)

By: Siko Sikochi, Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

Following a series of reports by Iceberg Research alleging that Noble Group was too aggressive in its fair value accounting for contracts and investments in producers, Noble’s stock price continued to fall and stakeholders began to call for improved transparency in... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Contracts; Valuation

October 2024
Article

Canary Categories

By: Eric Anderson, Chaoqun Chen, Ayelet Israeli and Duncan Simester

Past customer spending in a category is generally a positive signal of future customer spending. We show that there exist “canary categories” for which the reverse is true. Purchases in these categories are a signal that customers are less likely to return to that... View Details

Keywords: Churn; Churn Management; Churn/retention; Assortment Planning; Retail; Retailing; Retailing Industry; Preference Heterogeneity; Assortment Optimization; Customers; Retention; Consumer Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction; Retail Industry

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2016
Working Paper

Paying (for) Attention: The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Bayesian Inference

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Xiaosheng Mu and Alexander Peysakhovich

Human information processing is often modeled as costless Bayesian inference. However, research in psychology shows that attention is a computationally costly and potentially limited resource. We study a Bayesian individual for whom computing posterior beliefs is... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Economics

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August 2021
Technical Note

Brand You: Crafting Your Personal Brand

By: Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald

Selling oneself is something that we have to do every day in both professional and personal settings. We face it when we apply for a job, advocate for a promotion or a raise, vie for a leadership position, attempt to land a new client, write a dating profile, or meet a... View Details

Keywords: Personal Brand; Brand Management; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Identity; Opportunities; Talent and Talent Management; Jobs and Positions; Strength and Weakness; Communication

February 2003 (Revised September 2009)
Background Note

Nonverbal Communication in Negotiation

By: Michael A. Wheeler and Dana Nelson

This case distills the practical implications of current research on nonverbal communication. The first section sketches different kinds of nonverbal behavior: facial expressions, eye movements, physical gestures, paraverbal cues, posture, and "personal space." The... View Details

Keywords: Nonverbal Communication; Negotiation Participants; Situation or Environment; Behavior; Power and Influence