Publications

January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Comcast New England: A Journey of Organizational Transformation

By: Michael Beer and Anita Arun

This case describes how Kevin Casey, Comcast's New England Region general manager, transformed a low commitment and performance organization. When he took charge of this Comcast region he inherited an organization that was bureaucratic, had low customer satisfaction,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Satisfaction; Employee Relationship Management; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Performance Improvement; Telecommunications Industry; New England

15 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

High Ambition Leadership

and physical assets, not creating social value." Higher-ambition leaders, as the authors call them, also make decisions about long-term relationships with all their stakeholders in mind. "Consider United Stationers' strategy of 'enabling... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

11 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Four Ways to Create Lasting Change

generations of a customer-satisfaction program at a large American retailer, dubbed "Alpha Corporation" for the sake of confidentiality. The first of Alpha's customer satisfaction programs, launched in the early 1990s, fell... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

26 Mar 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety Through Access to Human Contact

Keywords: by Michelle A. Shell and Ryan W. Buell; Health

11 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Adding Time to Activity-Based Costing

generate increased profits. They provide the link between customer satisfaction and improved financial performance. Scorecard measures of the incidence of unprofitable customers and the magnitude of losses from unprofitable View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

19 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Your Customers: Use Them or Lose Them

her course for Harvard MBA students, Managing Service Operations, which explores interactions between firms and customers. Defy Conventional Wisdom Commerce Bank entered a mature industry where the overall level of customer satisfaction... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

03 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 3

leadership development programs for residents. The authors first present a definition of clinical leadership and highlight evidence that effective frontline clinical leadership improves both clinical outcomes and satisfaction for patients... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

September 2010 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Emergia: Driving Profitability on Help Desk Contracts

Emergia wants to keep its customer happy with its contact center service, but the margins on the help desk contract are dangerously low. Can Miguel Neira, the COO, increase margins while preserving the customer relationship? View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Service Operations; Performance Capacity; Performance Evaluation; Mathematical Methods; Service Industry

17 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 17

studies of live dyadic conversations, we identify a robust and consistent relationship between question-asking and liking: people who ask more questions are better liked by their conversation partners. When people are instructed to ask... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 1999 (Revised February 2004)
Case

WebSpective Software, Inc. (A)

By: Michael J. Roberts, Joseph B. Lassiter III, John T. Gourville and Sun Ming Wong

Describes the situation at WebSpective, a software company that develops products to help companies manage the network of servers that support their Websites. Describes the use of "concept engineering" tools to interview customers, determine their needs and the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Management Practices and Processes; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Communication Intention and Meaning; Product Development; Product Marketing; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Customer Satisfaction; Marketing Strategy; Information Technology Industry

15 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 15

increases in perceived bias against Whites—a relationship not observed in Blacks' perceptions. Moreover, these changes in Whites' conceptions of racism are extreme enough that Whites have now come to view anti-White bias as a bigger... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

09 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 9, 2008

H.Watson, Yu-Sheng Zheng Abstract In this paper, we study managers' errors in decision making for inventory replenishment and how these errors affect their inventory system. In particular, primarily for its expected relationship with the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Cisco Systems (2001): Building and Sustaining a Customer-Centric Culture

By: Ranjay Gulati

Customer centricity has been an important part of the culture at Cisco Systems since its inception. While part of this is attributable to values put in place by the founders and retained by subsequent management, it is also closely interwoven with its organizational... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Research and Development; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Employees; Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Business Units

05 Sep 2012
What Do You Think?

Will Business Management Save US Health Care?

for-profit health care organization led to better patient outcomes at the same time that "provider engagement and feeling of satisfaction have increased, our costs have fallen and our net profit has increased." One of the basic... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

16 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 16

forthcoming Abstract Capitalism, as defined in this book, is an indirect, three-level system of governance for economic relationships (i.e., economic, administrative, and political). Whereas economic markets can coordinate supply and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

14 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: February 14

(TMTs) by creating psychological conditions of trust and facilitating learning from failures in their teams. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses of survey data collected from 77 TMTs indicate that the relationship between CEO... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

March 2021 (Revised February 2025)
Teaching Note

Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma

By: Antonio Moreno and Anibha Singh

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-086. In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online... View Details