Measuring the Efficacy of the World's Managers
| Published: | January 30, 2012 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 16 Comments posted |
Over the past seven years, Harvard Business School's Raffaella Sadun and a team of researchers have interviewed managers at some 10,000 organizations in 20 countries. The goal: to determine how and why management practices differ vastly in style and quality not only across nations, but also across various organizations and industries.
Published in 2011
Rethinking the Fairness of Organ Transplants
| Published: | November 28, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 16 Comments posted |
Because of an organ shortage, hundreds or even thousands of people miss out on needed organ transplants each year. Business researchers at Harvard and MIT are rethinking how kidney transplants are allocated to give patients longer lives. An interview with professor Nikolaos Trichakis.
Fairness, Efficiency, and Flexibility in Organ Allocation for Kidney Transplantation
| Authors: | Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias, and Nikolaos Trichakis |
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| Published: | October 28, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
For many people who suffer end-stage renal disease, a kidney transplant is considered a potentially life-saving gift. Allocation policies for kidneys from deceased donors are thus of central importance and have to accomplish major objectives in alleviating human suffering, prolonging life, and providing nondiscriminatory, fair, and equal access to organs for all patients. In this paper, the authors focused on national allocation policies in the United States and the recent effort to revise the current policy. Their design of a national allocation policy focuses on perhaps the simplest, most common and currently used priority method, namely a point system. They also present four case studies in which they designed new policies under different scenarios.
US Healthcare Reform and the Pharmaceutical Industry
| Author: | Arthur Daemmrich |
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| Published: | October 11, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) will restructure the US health care market in the coming years. For the pharmaceutical industry, the ACA is likely to prove a mixed blessing. In this paper, Assistant Professor Arthur Daemmrich analyzes the political economy of health care, specifically concerning health care reform. He then considers how the ACA will affect the pharmaceutical sector, both quantitatively in terms of the size of the prescription drug market and qualitatively in terms of industry structure and competitive dynamics. Daemmrich also places the current reforms into historical context and describes the political negotiations that enabled passage of the ACA.
Measuring Teamwork in Health Care Settings: A Review of Survey Instruments
| Authors: | Melissa A. Valentine, Ingrid M. Nembhard, and Amy C. Edmondson |
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| Published: | September 22, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
It is critical to accurately assess teamwork in health-care organizations. About 60 percent of primary-care practices in the United States use team-based models to coordinate work across the broad spectrum of health professionals needed to deliver quality care; in many other countries the percentage is almost 100 percent. While the benefits of effective teamwork are substantial, effective teamwork is often lacking in these settings, with negative consequences for patients. To date, little has been known about the survey instruments available to measure teamwork. In this paper Valentine, Nembhard, and Edmondson report the results of their systematic review of survey instruments that have been used to measure teamwork in various contexts. Their research helps to identify existing teamwork scales that may be most useful in testing theoretical models.
Experimental Researcher Helps Improve Health Care in Zambia
| Published: | July 13, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Report from the Field |
| Forum: | open for comment; 4 Comments posted |
In seven years of field work in Zambia, Africa, professor Nava Ashraf's work is helping get low-cost health care products and services to the people who need them most. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Making the Case for Consumer-Driven Health Care
| Published: | July 4, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 19 Comments posted |
Even as so-called Obamacare becomes a central issue in the 2012 presidential election, policymakers and academics continue the debate on how best to deliver affordable and efficient health care services to millions of Americans. In this video interview, professor Regina Herzlinger makes the case that consumers should have more say over their own care.
Empathy: The Brand Equity of Retail
| Published: | May 19, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 15 Comments posted |
Retailers can offer great product selection and value, but those who lack empathy for their customers are at risk of losing them, says professor Ananth Raman.
Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon
| Published: | April 4, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 7 Comments posted |
At a Harvard Business School panel discussion on health care management, experts looked to the retail industry as a possible model for delivering medical services more effectively. Participants included Harvard's Robert Huckman, Raffaella Sadun, David Cutler, and Atul Gawande.
Individual Rationality and Participation in Large Scale, Multi-Hospital Kidney Exchanges
| Authors: | Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | March 24, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
As kidney exchange moves from local networks to a national level, a new set of problems arises. One central issue, for example, is how individual hospitals can be motivated to participate. This paper by Itai Ashlagi (Sloan School of Management, MIT) and Alvin E. Roth (Harvard Business School) provides a theoretical framework to study and overcome the kinds of problems that can be anticipated.
Funding Unpredictability Around Stem-Cell Research Inflicts Heavy Cost on Scientific Progress
| Published: | January 5, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Op-Ed |
| Forum: | open for comment; 6 Comments posted |
Funding unpredictability in human embryonic stem-cell research inflicts a heavy cost on all scientific progress, says professor William Sahlman.
Published in 2010
How to Fix a Broken Marketplace
| Published: | November 8, 2010 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 5 Comments posted |
A pioneer in the field of market design, Harvard Business School professor Alvin E. Roth has helped to repair flawed market systems in fields ranging from kidney donation to high-school student placement.
The Work-Around Culture: Unintended Consequences of Organizational Heroes
| Published: | November 5, 2010 |
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| Feature: | HBS Faculty Research Symposium: 2010 |
Professor Anita Tucker shares findings from her research on the problems caused by "work-around cultures" in hospitals.
Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers
| Published: | August 30, 2010 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
To improve patient safety, hospitals hope their staff will use error-reporting systems. Question is, how can managers encourage employees to take the next step and ensure their constructive use? New research by Julia Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer, and HBS professor Michael W. Toffel.
Managerial Practices That Promote Voice and Taking Charge among Frontline Workers
| Authors: | Julia Rose Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer, and Michael W. Toffel |
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| Published: | August 25, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2010 (Updated September 2011) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
How can front-line workers be encouraged to speak up when they know how to improve an organization's operation processes? This question is particularly urgent in the US health- care industry, where problems occur often and consequences range from minor inconveniences to serious patient harm. In this paper, HBS doctoral student Julia Adler-Milstein, Harvard School of Public Health professor Sara Singer, and HBS professor Michael W. Toffel examine the effectiveness of organizational information campaigns and managerial role modeling in encouraging hospital staff to speak up when they encounter operational problems and, when speaking up, to propose solutions to hospital management. The researchers find that both mechanisms can lead employees to report problems and propose solutions, and that information campaigns are particularly effective in departments whose managers are less engaged in problem solving.
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
| Published: | June 28, 2010 |
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| Feature: | HBS Cases |
A recent Harvard Business School case by HBS professors Amy C. Edmondson and Anita Tucker explores how one hospital implemented its own version of health-care reform, taking overall performance levels from below average to the top 10 percent in the industry. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage
| Authors: | Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel Schneider, and Peter Tufano |
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| Published: | April 14, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The global economic crisis has taken a historic toll on national economies and household finances around the world. What is the impact of such large shocks on individuals and their behavior, especially on their willingness to seek routine medical care? In this research, Annamaria Lusardi of Dartmouth College, Daniel Schneider of Princeton University, and Peter Tufano of Harvard Business School find strong evidence that the economic crisis—manifested in job and wealth losses—has led to large reductions in the use of routine medical care. Specifically, more than a quarter of Americans reported reducing their use of such care, as did between 5 and 12 percent of Canadian, French, German, and British respondents.
Manager Visibility No Guarantee of Fixing Problems
| Published: | February 22, 2010 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Managers who merely put in time "walking the floor" are not doing enough when it comes to problem solving; in fact, it can make employees feel worse about their situation, says HBS professor Anita Tucker.
Going Through the Motions: An Empirical Test of Management Involvement in Process Improvement
| Author: | Anita L. Tucker |
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| Published: | January 21, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
How can managers better lead their organizations to improve work processes? Describing their study of hospitals over an 18-month period, HBS professor Anita L. Tucker and Harvard School of Public Health professor Sara J. Singer detail how and why managers' taking action was more effective than their communicating about actions taken. Findings suggest, first, that taking action on known problems in specific work areas on at least a quarterly basis may improve the organizational climate for improvement. Second, the study indicates that managers would be well advised to take action-preferably substantive and intense action-in response to frontline workers' communications about problems. Overall, the research provides insight for senior managers who want to improve their organization's climate for process improvement.
Published in 2009
Management's Role in Reforming Health Care
| Q&A with: | Richard M.J. Bohmer |
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| Published: | November 23, 2009 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Health care managers are the missing link in debate over reform. Their skills and ideas are needed to sustain and improve upon multiple advances in the delivery of health care for the benefit of patients. An interview with HBS professor Richard M.J. Bohmer, MD, and an excerpt from his book Designing Care: Aligning the Nature and Management of Health Care.
