Publications

19 Sep 2023
News

Strike Is a High-Stakes Gamble for Autoworkers and the Labor Movement

February 2017 (Revised May 2018)
Case

The Flint, Michigan Sit-Down Strike

By: Tom Nicholas, Christopher T. Stanton and Matthew Preble

For roughly six weeks between late December 1936 and February 1937, a major strike at several critical General Motors (GM) plants in Flint, Michigan, essentially halted the corporation’s U.S. production and resulted in significant gains for the nascent United... View Details

July 1980 (Revised November 1981)
Case

Strike in Space

A three-man skylab crew, after repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to influence Houston Mission Control to slow down the work pace, turns off radio communication and refuses to talk. Questions for the class: What leads up to this break? How does one repair it? View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Conflict and Resolution; Aerospace Industry; Houston

2011
Article

Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives, and Evaluation

By: Christopher Parsons, J. Sulaeman, M. Yates and D. Hamermesh

Major League Baseball umpires express their racial/ethnic preferences when they evaluate pitchers. Strikes are called less often if the umpire and pitcher do not match race/ethnicity, but mainly where there is little scrutiny of umpires. Pitchers understand the... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Prejudice and Bias; Ethnicity; Race; Performance Productivity; Sports; Sports Industry

July 1979
Case

Coal Strike of 1977-78 (B)

By: D. Quinn Mills and Richard O. von Werssowetz

Keywords: Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Mining Industry

July 1979 (Revised December 1981)
Case

Coal Strike of 1977-78 (A)

By: D. Quinn Mills and Richard O. von Werssowetz

Keywords: Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Mining Industry

July 1979 (Revised December 1984)
Case

Coal Strike of 1977-78 (C)

By: D. Quinn Mills and Richard O. von Werssowetz

Keywords: Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Mining Industry

01 Jun 2024
News

Turning Point: On the Line

Leonard Dick (MBA 1990) (Illustration by Gisela Goppel) Leonard Dick (MBA 1990) (Illustration by Gisela Goppel) Day 116 was bizarrely poetic. Or poetically bizarre. And not just because I was an HBS grad participating in his second strike. To that point in last year’s... View Details

Keywords: labor strike; television; media; unions

February 2016 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Labor, Capital, and Government: The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902

By: David Moss and Marc Campasano

In late October 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt felt relieved after months of anxiety and uncertainty. Workers in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal industry had been on strike for five months, threatening to leave eastern cities in the cold without enough heating fuel... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Agreements and Arrangements; Business and Government Relations; Labor; Law; Policy; Mining; History; Mining Industry; Pennsylvania

November 1976 (Revised June 1979)
Background Note

Simplified, Highly Structured, Union-Management Strike Game

By: Howard Raiffa

Keywords: Labor and Management Relations

October 1982 (Revised September 1986)
Case

Coal Strike of 1977-78 (A) (Condensed)

By: D. Quinn Mills

Keywords: Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Mining Industry

01 Jun 1997
News

A Better Way to Go on Strike

W hen President Clinton imposed a cooling-down period in the American Airlines pilots' strike, he recognized that a strike would impose huge costs on those not involved in the labor dispute - from travelers... View Details

Keywords: David Lax and Professor James K. Sebenius

February 24, 1997
Article

A Better Way to Go on Strike

By: James K. Sebenius and David Lax

Keywords: Labor; Disruption

28 Aug 2020
Video

Sanjay Bansal

Sanjay Bansal, former head of Ambootia tea estates in Darjeeling, India, discusses the near-feudal conditions which prevailed in the tea industry in this region, and the acute social problems faced by the Nepalese-speaking labor force, which was predominately female.... View Details

November 2007 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Haier Hefei Electronics Co. (A)

By: Lynn Sharp Paine

The Haier Group, the first mainland Chinese company to make the Financial Times list of Asia's "most admired companies," attributes its success in large measure to the new value system it has sought to instill throughout the organization. However, when Haier takes over... View Details

Keywords: Public Ownership; Business and Government Relations; Organizational Culture; Transformation; Ethics; Labor and Management Relations; Business or Company Management; Contracts; Electronics Industry; China

October 1976 (Revised October 1985)
Case

Washington Post (A)

Concerns the 1975 strike of the pressmen against the Washington Post. Illustrates the importance of past practices of both unions and management and collective bargaining. Also illustrates implementation problems associated with new technologies as well as problems... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Labor Unions; Journalism and News Industry; District of Columbia

Video

Sanjay Bansal

Sanjay Bansal, former head of Ambootia tea estates in Darjeeling, India, discusses the causes and consequences of the Darjeeling tea workers strike in 2017 which crippled the industry.

View Details

January 2006 (Revised December 2006)
Case

Wal-Mart's Business Environment

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee

In 2004, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. proposed to build a new supercenter in Inglewood, a low-income community near Los Angeles. The proposal was a part of Wal-Mart's strategy to bring its supercenter format to California. Introduced in the late 1980s, supercenters added a... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Corporate Strategy; Labor Unions; Conflict and Resolution; Retail Industry; Los Angeles