General Management

- May 2026
- Article
Vertical Integration and Cream Skimming of Profitable Referrals: The Case of Hospital-Owned Skilled Nursing Facilities

By: David M. Cutler, Leemore Dafny, David C. Grabowski, Steven Lee and Christopher Ody

We examine whether vertical integration of hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) could lessen competition by foreclosing rival SNFs’ access to lucrative referrals. We find that it could: among integrated providers, a one percent increase in SNF reimbursement for a given patient discharged from the upstream hospital increases the self-referral rate to the hospital’s downstream SNF(s) by 1.8 percent. We find no evidence of offsetting benefits for patients and payers: these increased self-referrals have an imprecisely estimated zero effect on patient outcomes and Medicare spending.
- May 2026
- Article
Vertical Integration and Cream Skimming of Profitable Referrals: The Case of Hospital-Owned Skilled Nursing Facilities

By: David M. Cutler, Leemore Dafny, David C. Grabowski, Steven Lee and Christopher Ody

We examine whether vertical integration of hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) could lessen competition by foreclosing rival SNFs’ access to lucrative referrals. We find that it could: among integrated providers, a one percent increase in SNF reimbursement for a given patient discharged from the upstream hospital increases the...
- April 2026
- Case
IBM: Arvind Krishna and the Unlocking of Potential

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, A.M. (Toni) Sacconaghi Jr. and Matthew Keeley

In early 2020, Arvind Krishna became the CEO of IBM, a hundred-year-old technology company that had become risk-averse. A technologist by training, Krishna was not most analysts’ choice for the next CEO of IBM. This case examines how, over the next six years, Krishna reoriented IBM’s portfolio, managed spinoffs and acquisitions, and more than tripled the stock price. It requires students to consider leadership style, long-term strategy, ongoing shifts in the tech sector, and the proper balance of research and monetization.
- April 2026
- Case
IBM: Arvind Krishna and the Unlocking of Potential

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, A.M. (Toni) Sacconaghi Jr. and Matthew Keeley

In early 2020, Arvind Krishna became the CEO of IBM, a hundred-year-old technology company that had become risk-averse. A technologist by training, Krishna was not most analysts’ choice for the next CEO of IBM. This case examines how, over the next six years, Krishna reoriented IBM’s portfolio, managed spinoffs and acquisitions, and more than...
- April 2026
- Case
Hermès

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Lena Duchene and Nikolina Jonsson

This case examines how Hermès, a sixth-generation family-owned company, continued to grow amid a slowdown in the global luxury market in 2024. While other industry players saw flat or declining sales, Hermès reported a 15% increase in revenue, driven by its focus on three long-standing pillars: creation, craftsmanship, and exclusivity. Under Executive Chairman Axel Dumas, the company maintained tight control over production, expanded its network of leather workshops, and avoided traditional marketing strategies in favor of product-led storytelling. The case traces Hermès’ evolution from a 19th-century harness maker to one of the world’s most valuable luxury brands and explores its efforts to balance heritage with innovation, and exclusivity with accessibility. As consumer expectations shifted and the resale market grew, Dumas and his team faced key decisions: how to manage supply without diluting the brand, whether to expand more aggressively into entry-level categories, and how to plan for long-term resilience in an increasingly unpredictable industry.
- April 2026
- Case
Hermès

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Lena Duchene and Nikolina Jonsson

This case examines how Hermès, a sixth-generation family-owned company, continued to grow amid a slowdown in the global luxury market in 2024. While other industry players saw flat or declining sales, Hermès reported a 15% increase in revenue, driven by its focus on three long-standing pillars: creation, craftsmanship, and exclusivity. Under...

About the Unit

The General Management Unit is concerned with the leadership and management of the enterprise as a whole. This concern encompasses:

the personal values and qualities of effective general managers and enterprise leaders;
the philosophies, values, and strategies that inform successful enterprises; and
the relation of enterprise to the broader community and other external constituencies.

The Unit's work is conceived and carried out principally in four interest groups, each of which has its own leadership, research agenda, and teaching programs:

Management Policy and Process
Management Information Systems
Society and Enterprise
Leadership, Values, and Corporate Responsibility

Recent Publications

Vertical Integration and Cream Skimming of Profitable Referrals: The Case of Hospital-Owned Skilled Nursing Facilities

By: David M. Cutler, Leemore Dafny, David C. Grabowski, Steven Lee and Christopher Ody

May 2026 |
Article |
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We examine whether vertical integration of hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) could lessen competition by foreclosing rival SNFs’ access to lucrative referrals. We find that it could: among integrated providers, a one percent increase in SNF reimbursement for a given patient discharged from the upstream hospital increases the self-referral rate to the hospital’s downstream SNF(s) by 1.8 percent. We find no evidence of offsetting benefits for patients and payers: these increased self-referrals have an imprecisely estimated zero effect on patient outcomes and Medicare spending.

Keywords: Antitrust; Competition; Monopoly; Vertical Integration; Customer Value and Value Chain; Health Industry; United States

Citation

IBM: Arvind Krishna and the Unlocking of Potential

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, A.M. (Toni) Sacconaghi Jr. and Matthew Keeley

April 2026 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In early 2020, Arvind Krishna became the CEO of IBM, a hundred-year-old technology company that had become risk-averse. A technologist by training, Krishna was not most analysts’ choice for the next CEO of IBM. This case examines how, over the next six years, Krishna reoriented IBM’s portfolio, managed spinoffs and acquisitions, and more than tripled the stock price. It requires students to consider leadership style, long-term strategy, ongoing shifts in the tech sector, and the proper balance of research and monetization.

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Corporate Strategy; Technology Industry

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Hermès

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Lena Duchene and Nikolina Jonsson

April 2026 |
Case |
Faculty Research

This case examines how Hermès, a sixth-generation family-owned company, continued to grow amid a slowdown in the global luxury market in 2024. While other industry players saw flat or declining sales, Hermès reported a 15% increase in revenue, driven by its focus on three long-standing pillars: creation, craftsmanship, and exclusivity. Under Executive Chairman Axel Dumas, the company maintained tight control over production, expanded its network of leather workshops, and avoided traditional marketing strategies in favor of product-led storytelling. The case traces Hermès’ evolution from a 19th-century harness maker to one of the world’s most valuable luxury brands and explores its efforts to balance heritage with innovation, and exclusivity with accessibility. As consumer expectations shifted and the resale market grew, Dumas and his team faced key decisions: how to manage supply without diluting the brand, whether to expand more aggressively into entry-level categories, and how to plan for long-term resilience in an increasingly unpredictable industry.

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Culture; Luxury; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; France

Citation

Educators

The Battle over Knowledge: Multinationals, Diffusion, and Governance

By: Laura Alfaro, Maggie X. Chen and Beata S. Javorcik

2026 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are the dominant institutions for creating and distributing knowledge across borders. Their activities generate geopolitical externalities when cross-border knowledge spillovers enhance a rival state’s strategic capabilities in ways neither internalized by firms nor priced by markets. This review examines MNC-mediated knowledge creation and diffusion and the governance regime that has emerged in response. We distinguish three types of knowledge—codified, tacit, and organizational—that differ in their transmission channels and governability, and trace how each is created within MNC networks, diffused within and across firm boundaries, and targeted by policy instruments. Evidence shows that controls induce compensating responses, including redirected innovation, supply-chain reconfiguration, and organizational restructuring, with uncertain net effects. Linking the theory of the multinational firm to the economics of geopolitical rivalry, the review highlights the trade-offs that knowledge governance imposes on the global economy.

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Knowledge Sharing; Governance

Citation

Read Now

Opening Doors for The Little Cocoa Bean Company

By: Brian Trelstad and Amy Zhang

April 2026 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Emerging Technologies and Public Health Preparedness

By: Ben Creo, Michael Lingzhi Li, John S. Brownstein, Benjamin Rader, Yulin Hswen, Richard J. Boxer, Eugene Schneller and Regina E. Herzlinger

2026 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

Importance: During past public health crises, from mass casualty events to the COVID-19 pandemic, countless patients suffered needless morbidity and mortality because the availability of nearby, crucially needed resources was not visible to over-capacity providers and other stakeholders. Residents of rural areas, lower income communities, Black patients, and those with chronic conditions suffered disproportionately. Data about reduced availability of needed resources were transmitted irregularly to the federal government. Governments and many sites of care lacked the analytic tools to create coordinated resource allocation at the local level. Future crisis situations and the increasing shortage of hospital beds require that sites of care and public health entities abate unnecessary morbidity and mortality by improving the alignment of capacity with projected demand. Observations: Systems exist for real time data transmission, artificial intelligence-driven predictive modeling, and real-time resource allocation. They can anticipate demand and rapidly direct patient flow and redistribute critical care resources to prevent overwhelming individual sites of care. They harmonize disparate data in a coherent, actionable, local resource management framework with criteria such as local capacity and patient acuity. A counterfactual simulation framework, leveraging artificial intelligence-driven optimization to estimate the impact of inter-hospital transfers under a transparent data environment, conservatively estimated a mortality decrease of 3-5% that could now avoid a detrimental load imbalance for the more than 400,000 patient arrivals at the hospitals studied. Conclusions and Relevance: Federal government requirements for real-time disclosure of resource data and artificial intelligence modeling for emergency public health medical care can reduce the morbidity and mortality that occurred when healthcare entities faced sudden, substantial demands for critically needed resources. These measures can also enable internal hospital quality and efficiency innovations to control costs, improve access, and reduce inequity. As in prior requirements for disclosure, existing federally mandated incentives or penalties and mechanisms for assuring data collection and implementation of incentives or penalties can apply to these requirements. The data, their transmission, the incentives, and the artificial intelligence models should be routinely assessed and adjusted to ensure their effectiveness, equity, and compliance with up-to-date standards.

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Health; Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science

Citation

Read Now

UniCredit: The Power of Empowerment

By: Hubert Joly and Elena Corsi

March 2026 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Between 2021 and 2025, Andrea Orcel, an investment banker by training, turned around UniCredit by empowering the bank's frontliners. When Orcel joined UniCredit as CEO in April 2021, the bank had gone through a period of restructuring and retrenchment. Orcel had since led an effort to reignite the bank’s performance. A key element of the plan had entailed building a culture of empowerment and accountability by decentralizing credit decision-making and moving it much closer to the clients. By 2025, management layers had been reduced from 9 to 4, and a new culture of empowerment and accountability had begun to take root; revenue was up 37% compared to 2021 at 24.5 billion, while net profit increased tenfold to 10.6 billion. After restoring UniCredit to a position of leadership, the bank needed to raise its ambition once again to avoid the natural pull of complacency and stay ahead in a landscape being reshaped by new entrants.

Keywords: Leadership Style; Management Practices and Processes; Change Management; Talent and Talent Management; Human Capital; Organizational Culture; Restructuring; Leading Change; Organizational Structure; Performance Improvement; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Italy; Europe; Germany; Austria

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Dara Khosrowshahi Drives Uber

By: Hubert Joly, Leonard A. Schlesinger and James Barnett

March 2026 |
Case |
Faculty Research

This case examines Uber’s transformation under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi from a crisis-ridden, growth-at-all-costs startup into a more disciplined and profitable global platform. Upon taking leadership in 2017, Khosrowshahi addressed cultural dysfunction and regulatory conflicts while repositioning the company around operational rigor and stakeholder trust. Central to this shift was improving the experience of Uber’s drivers through product changes and policy reforms. The company also sharpened its strategic focus by expanding Uber Eats, exiting certain geographies and non-core initiatives, and prioritizing profitability. By 2025, Uber had achieved market leadership with its earners and customers, an enhanced reputation, and sustained profitability, and could look from a position of strength and stability at future challenges, including preparing for the long-term impact of autonomous vehicles.