Publications

April 2018
Case

Wilderness Safaris: Ecotourism Entrepreneurship

By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard

Wilderness Safaris sees itself as a conservation company that is built on a business model of providing high-end, premium-priced wildlife safaris in various locations in Africa. Dependent on functioning, healthy ecosystems for its long-term survivability as a business,... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Conservation Planning; Corporate Social Responsibility; Ecotourism; Strategy; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Tourism Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Travel Industry; Africa; Botswana

March 2012
Case

Schuberg Philis

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Daniela Beyersdorfer

The Dutch professional service firm Schuberg Philis has within a few years grown into a well-known player in the Dutch IT outsourcing market and regularly wins high customer- satisfaction marks. The growing workload and 100% promise to customers have increased the... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Management Style; Alignment; Information Technology Industry; Netherlands

Research Summary

Overview

By: Shikhar Ghosh

I am focused on exploring the human side of developing early stage entrepreneurial ventures. These enterprises are characterized by the pursuit of opportunity, shortage of resources to pursue their goals and uncertainty at every step of the journey. Some of the... View Details

Keywords: Scale; Exit; Founders' Agreements; Success Measures; Entrepreneurial Risk; Founding Teams; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Europe; Middle East; Asia

August 2002 (Revised December 2002)
Case

Quality Imaging Products (QIP)

Martin Stein, a recent business school graduate, is the new owner of Quality Imaging Products (QIP), a $10-million-a-year remanufacturer of printer and copier ink cartridges. Within weeks of buying the company, QIP's vp for finance, gives an ultimatum: a raise or he... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Organizational Culture; Crisis Management; Manufacturing Industry

2023
Book

Deeply Responsible Business.: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership

By: Geoffrey Jones

Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should... View Details

July 2009 (Revised October 2011)
Case

VeeV on the Rocks?

By: Joshua D. Margolis, Christopher Marquis and Laura Winig

Three pressing challenges (equity split, extent of commitment to social responsibility, and product discoloration) confront VeeV, the world's first alcoholic beverage infused with acai berries. Brothers Courtney and Carter Reum founded VeeV in 2007 and the firm has... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Food; Business Growth and Maturation; Ethics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Equity; Food and Beverage Industry

06 Nov 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Top-Down Resource Allocation on the Rise?

drew attention to the resource allocation process (RAP) with his seminal study of four organizations in 1970. He concluded that a bottom-up process of idea generation begun by operational managers and shaped by middle management works... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

09 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

How Social Entrepreneurs Can Increase Their Investment Impact

Both impact investing and traditional philanthropy are on the rise after the decade-long economic boom following the Great Recession. But when does an impact investment make a bigger difference than a grant? The question is far more complicated than simply evaluating... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

May 2008 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Chi Mei Optoelectronics

By: Willy C. Shih, Chintay Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Ho Howard Yu

Chi Mei is a Taiwanese industrial group that makes a major diversification into the technology intensive TFT-LCD flat panel display industry. Because the diversification is far away from its core competence in petrochemicals, it is an opportunity to examine how the... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Information Technology; Electronics Industry; Manufacturing Industry; China; South Korea; Taiwan

Article

Matching Firms, Managers, and Incentives

By: Oriana Bandiera, Luigi Guiso, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

We combine unique administrative and survey data to study the match between firms and managers. The data include manager characteristics, firm characteristics, detailed measures of managerial practices, and outcomes for the firm and the manager. A parsimonious model of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Talent and Talent Management; Organizations; Management Teams

04 May 2021
Blog Post

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month at HBS

Association (AABA), in collaboration with students and organizations across campus, is proud to share and honor the stories of our community members. We hope these stories showcase the history, richness, and diversity of the AAPI... View Details

23 Aug 2006
Op-Ed

The Real Wal-Mart Effect

to the study, "By far the most important factor in that [growth] is Wal-Mart." There is hard evidence that Wal-Mart has grown the economic pie available to be divided among its various stakeholders. Second, most of the value... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat & Ken A. Mark; Retail

July–August 2013
Article

Relaxing the Taboo on Telling Our Own Stories: Upholding Professional Distance and Personal Involvement

By: Michel Anteby

Scholars studying organizations are typically discouraged from telling, in print, their own stories. The expression "telling our own stories" is used as a proxy for field research projects that, in their written form, explicitly rely on a scholar's personal involvement... View Details

Keywords: Fieldwork; Research Practiced; Distance; Involvement; Taboo; Practice; Ethics; Education Industry

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04 Aug 2003
What Do You Think?

Are We Facing an Attitude Shortage?

management and less hierarchy and bureaucracy. Their "attitudes approach" has had time to get communicated far and wide. Additionally, the rigors of competing in an economy with constrained demand have given further impetus to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

February 2001 (Revised November 2009)
Case

Amazon.com (D)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dickson Louie and William A. Sahlman

At the end of 1999, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos--just named Time Magazine's Man of the Year--ponders the next moves for his company. Having expanded into numerous categories in 1999, ranging from Z-shops to Auctions to E-cards as well as increasing the number... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Online Technology; Retail Industry

April 2010
Case

Globalization at Komatsu

By: Michael Y. Yoshino

The case captures the challenges Komatsu, the second largest manufacturer of the earth moving equipment faced during the past five decades as it sought to globalize its operations. By 2007, it had become the second largest manufacturer of the earth moving equipment... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Distribution Channels; Production; Organizational Culture; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Manufacturing Industry; Japan