Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(10,034)
- Faculty Publications (2,084)
- March 2003 (Revised August 2005)
- Case
National Parks Conservation Association
By: Forest L. Reinhardt and Briana Huntsberger
The National Parks Conservation Association seeks to help the U.S. National Park Service increase its efficiency by incorporating principles of business management so that American national parks will be better managed. Its efforts raise fundamental questions about the... View Details
- March 2003 (Revised November 2009)
- Case
Hudson Manufacturing Company
By: Paul A. Gompers and Vanessa del Valle Broussard
Concerns the decision by Brett Keith and Owen Colligan to purchase Hudson Manufacturing, a maker of heaters and air filtration units for the military. Keith and Colligan have organized a search fund and identified Hudson as a potential buyout. The decline in the... View Details
- February 2003 (Revised March 2007)
- Case
Safe to Say at Prudential Financial
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Corey B. Hajim
The CEO initiated a cultural change process at Prudential Financial to support a major business reorientation. Prudential, historically a privately held ("mutual") insurance company, went public in 2001. The cultural change was intended to prepare the organization to... View Details
- February 2003 (Revised March 2003)
- Case
Large Scale Change at The WSSC
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Corey B. Hajim
Describes the organizational transformation occurring at the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), a public utility. Faced with the possibility of privatization after decades of providing service in the absence of competition or performance pressures, the... View Details
- February 2003 (Revised October 2003)
- Case
Versity.com
By: Leslie A. Perlow
Versity.com has grown from four college students working out of a dorm to a $125 million venture capital-backed company. The young founders and new professional managers struggle to create a company vision and grapple with the question of whether to acquire another... View Details
- February 2003
- Case
Whitbread Hotel Company (A)
By: Michael Beer and James Weber
Alan Parker has developed an effective organization using organizational fitness profiling and other change methodologies. Parker knows that as Whitbread continues to grow, both internally and through acquisitions, the company will have to change its organization... View Details
- February 2003
- Case
Whitbread Hotel Company (B)
By: Michael Beer and James Weber
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
- February 2003 (Revised March 2006)
- Case
Asociacion Colombiana de Industrias Plasticas (Acoplasticos)
Acoplasticos was established in 1961 as a lobbying group for Colombia's major plastics manufacturing companies. In the early 1980s, the organization shifted its focus toward improving the productivity of the Colombian plastics and rubber cluster, which also included... View Details
- February 2003
- Supplement
Silvio Napoli Cross Cultural Management
Presents an interview with Silvio Napoli regarding cultural aspects of an Italian manager in a Swiss company opening an Indian subsidiary. Issues range from personal and family adjustment to management style, corporate culture, and differences in national... View Details
- January 2003 (Revised May 2005)
- Case
Zipcar: Refining the Business Model
By: Myra M. Hart, Michael J. Roberts and Julia Stevens
Zipcar is a start-up organized around the idea of "sharing" car usage via a membership organization. This case describes several iterations of the Zipcar business model and financial plan. These iterations include a very early version and a version developed just prior... View Details
- 2003
- Article
BMW Group's Sustainability Management System: Preliminary Results, Ongoing Challenges, and the UN Global Compact
By: Michael W. Toffel, Natalie Hill and Kellie McElhaney
This article describes preliminary results and ongoing challenges faced by Designworks/USA, an industrial design subsidiary of BMW Group, in its sustainability management efforts since it implemented the world's first certified Sustainability Management System (SMS).... View Details
- 2003
- Article
Developing a Management Systems Approach to Sustainability at BMW Group
By: Michael W. Toffel, Natalie Hill and Kellie McElhaney
This article describes how Designworks/USA, a subsidiary of BMW Group, developed a Sustainability Management System (SMS) by integrating the management of environmental, social, and traditional business issues. After several months of deploying the SMS throughout its... View Details
- December 2002 (Revised December 2017)
- Background Note
Teaching Old Companies New Tricks: The Challenge of Managing New Streams Within the Mainstream
Describes the challenge of starting new ventures or new activities in established companies, especially if they diverge from the mainstream of ongoing commitments. Fledgling ventures require a different kind of management that acknowledges their uncertainty, intensity,... View Details
- December 2002
- Article
Business Enterprises and Global Worlds
By: G. Jones
The role of business enterprise in integrating economies is one of the central historical themes of the last two centuries. Although globalization—both in its current iteration and in its nineteenth-century form—has been widely studied, the role of the firm, as opposed... View Details
- November 2002 (Revised May 2006)
- Case
Forest Stewardship Council
By: James E. Austin and Ezequiel Reficco
In just a few years the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) made impressive progress toward its mission of promoting "environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests." By 2001, 25.5 million hectares of forests in... View Details
- November 2002 (Revised May 2003)
- Case
ConAgra Foods
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Ingrid Vargas
In 2002, ConAgra Foods CEO Bruce Rohde was deliberating the next steps in the process of transforming the company from an agribusiness giant to a value-added food processor. ConAgra had become the second largest food company and number one food service supplier in the... View Details
- October 2002 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
Union Corrugating Company (A)
By: Paul W. Marshall and Julia Stevens
Lauri Union graduates from Harvard Business School and takes over her family's steel-corrugated roofing and siding manufacturing firm, which her mother has most recently run. The industry is mature, entry barriers to competitors are low, and the company is over 50... View Details
- Article
Control, Performance, and Knowledge Transfers in Large Multinationals: Unilever in the United States, 1945-1980
By: G. Jones
This article considers key issues relating to the organization and performance of large multinational firms in the post-Second World War period. Although foreign direct investment is defined by ownership and control, in practice the nature of that "control" is far from... View Details
- September 2002
- Case
World Trade Organization, The
By: David A. Moss and Nick Bartlett
Explores the origins and workings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), focusing particular attention on the special challenges of trade liberalization at the dawn of the 21st century. View Details
- September 2002
- Case
KaBOOM!
By: James E. Austin and Jose Miguel Porraz
KaBOOM! is a nonprofit organization developing playgrounds in partnership with corporations and communities. It has grown since 1995 to a national organization that has built 338 playgrounds in partnerships with over 40 companies. This case deals with the nature of... View Details