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We study the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. To identify social influence properly, we introduce latent...
As firms become more customer-centric, concepts such as customer equity come to the fore. Any serious attempt to quantify customer equity requires...
- 2020
- Working Paper
Is Accounting Useful for Forecasting GDP Growth? A Machine Learning Perspective
By: Srikant Datar, Apurv Jain, Charles C.Y. Wang and Siyu Zhang
We provide a comprehensive examination of whether, to what extent, and which accounting variables are useful for improving the predictive accuracy of GDP growth forecasts. We leverage statistical models that accommodate a broad set of (341) variables—outnumbering the...
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- February 2021
- Case
Digital Manufacturing at Amgen
By: Shane Greenstein, Kyle Myers and Sarah Mehta
This case discusses efforts made by biotechnology (biotech) company Amgen to introduce digital technologies into its manufacturing processes. Doing so is complicated by the fact that the process for manufacturing biologics—or therapeutics made from living cells—is...
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Keywords:
Digital Technologies;
Change;
Change Management;
Decision Making;
Cost vs Benefits;
Decisions;
Information;
Data and Data Sets;
Innovation and Invention;
Innovation and Management;
Innovation Leadership;
Innovation Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Jobs and Positions;
Knowledge;
Leadership;
Organizational Culture;
Science;
Strategy;
Technology;
Technology Adoption;
Biotechnology Industry;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
United States;
California;
Puerto Rico;
Rhode Island
- January 2021
- Article
Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ryan Allen and Michael G. Endres
Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used for exploratory inductive or abductive research, or for post-hoc analysis of regression results to detect...
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- November 2020
- Article
Disrupting the Disruptors or Enhancing Them? How Blockchain Re‐Shapes Two‐Sided Platforms
By: Daniel Trabucchi, Antonella Moretto, Tommaso Buganza and Alan MacCormack
The importance of platform‐based businesses in the modern economy is growing continuously and becoming increasingly relevant. Specifically, the deployment of digital technologies has enhanced the applicability of two‐sided business models, enabling companies to act not...
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- September–October 2020
- Article
The Air War Versus the Ground Game: An Analysis of Multi-Channel Marketing in U.S. Presidential Elections
By: Lingling Zhang and Doug J. Chung
This study jointly examines the effects of television advertising and field operations in U.S. presidential elections, with the former referred to as the “air war” and the latter as the “ground game.” Specifically, the study focuses on how different campaign...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Conflicting Interests and the Effect of Fiduciary Duty—Evidence from Variable Annuities
By: Mark Egan, Shan Ge and Johnny Tang
We examine the drivers of variable annuity sales and the impact of a proposed regulatory change. Variable annuities are popular retirement products with over $2 trillion in assets in the United States. Insurers typically pay brokers a commission for selling variable...
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- June 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Vanguard Retail Operations (A)
By: Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno
The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or...
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- June 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Supplement
Vanguard Retail Operations (B)
By: Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno
The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or...
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- March 2020
- Article
Diagnosing Missing Always at Random in Multivariate Data
By: Iavor I. Bojinov, Natesh S. Pillai and Donald B. Rubin
Models for analyzing multivariate data sets with missing values require strong, often assessable, assumptions. The most common of these is that the mechanism that created the missing data is ignorable—a twofold assumption dependent on the mode of inference. The first...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach
By: Nicolas Padilla and Eva Ascarza
The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Estimating Models of Supply and Demand: Instruments and Covariance Restrictions
By: Alexander MacKay and Nathan H. Miller
We consider the identification of empirical models of supply and demand. As is well known, a supply-side instrument can resolve price endogeneity in demand estimation. We show that, under common assumptions, two other approaches also yield consistent estimates of the...
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- September 2018
- Article
Assembling the Sales Team
Data and analytical tasks have lengthened productivity ramp-up times in many sales contexts, making each hire a bigger sunk cost for a longer time. Most companies adopt two common practices: They hire on the basis of “experience” and/or look at their best reps and try...
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- September 2018
- Article
Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services
By: Maria Ibanez, Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
Work-scheduling research typically prescribes task sequences implemented by managers. Yet employees often have discretion to deviate from their prescribed sequence. Using data from 2.4 million radiological diagnoses, we find that doctors prioritize similar tasks...
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Keywords:
Discretion;
Scheduling;
Queue;
Healthcare;
Learning;
Experience;
Decentralization;
Operations;
Service Operations;
Service Delivery;
Performance;
Performance Effectiveness;
Performance Efficiency;
Performance Improvement;
Performance Productivity;
Decisions;
Time Management;
Cost vs Benefits;
Health Industry
- June 2018
- Article
Personal and Social Usage: The Origins of Active Customers and Ways to Keep Them Engaged
By: Clarence Lee, Elie Ofek and Thomas Steenburgh
We study how digital service firms can develop an active customer base, focusing on two questions. First, how does the way that customers use the service postadoption to meet their own needs (personal usage) and to interact with one another (social usage) vary across...
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- February 2018 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
People Analytics at Teach For America (A)
By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Julia Kelley
As of mid-2016, national nonprofit Teach For America (TFA) had struggled with three consecutive years of declining application totals, and senior management was re-examining the organization's strategy, including recruitment and selection. A few months earlier, former...
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- 2018
- Article
Multiple Imputation Using Gaussian Copulas
By: F.M. Hollenbach, I. Bojinov, S. Minhas, N.W. Metternich, M.D. Ward and A. Volfovsky
Missing observations are pervasive throughout empirical research, especially in the social sciences. Despite multiple approaches to dealing adequately with missing data, many scholars still fail to address this vital issue. In this paper, we present a simple-to-use...
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- January–February 2018
- Article
Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye
By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Bruce G.S. Hardie
We investigate the increasingly common business setting in which companies face the possibility of both observed and unobserved customer attrition (i.e., “overt” and “silent” churn) in the same pool of customers. This is the case for many online-based services where...
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- 2017
- Article
Inflation Bets or Deflation Hedges? The Changing Risks of Nominal Bonds
By: John Y. Campbell, Adi Sunderam and Luis M. Viceira
The covariance between U.S. Treasury bond returns and stock returns has moved considerably over time. While it was slightly positive on average in the period 1953–2009, it was unusually high in the early 1980s and negative in the 2000s, particularly in the downturns of...
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- 2016
- Working Paper
Meet the Oligarchs: Business Legitimacy, State Capacity and Taxation
By: Rafael Di Tella, Juan Dubra and Alejandro Lagomarsino
We analyze the role of people’s beliefs about the rich in the determination of public policy in the context of a randomized online survey experiment. A question we study is the desirability of government-private sector meetings, a variable we argue is connected to...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Discretionary Task Ordering: Queue Management in Radiological Services
By: Maria Ibanez, Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
Work scheduling research typically prescribes task sequences implemented by managers. Yet employees often have discretion to deviate from their prescribed sequence. Using data from 2.4 million radiological diagnoses, we find that doctors prioritize similar tasks...
View Details
Keywords:
Discretion;
Scheduling;
Queue;
Healthcare;
Learning;
Experience;
Decentralization;
Delegation;
Behavioral Operations;
Operations;
Service Operations;
Service Delivery;
Performance;
Performance Effectiveness;
Performance Efficiency;
Performance Improvement;
Performance Productivity;
Decisions;
Time Management;
Cost vs Benefits;
Health Industry