Publications

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2008
Working Paper

Can the Virtuous Mouse and the Wealthy Elephant Live Happily Ever After?

By: James E. Austin and Herman B. Leonard

What happens when small iconic socially-oriented businesses are acquired by large corporations? Such mergers create significant opportunities for creating both business value and substantially expanded social value, but also pose unusually difficult challenges because... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Management Style; Agreements and Arrangements; Social Enterprise; Social Issues

January 2002 (Revised November 2010)
Case

Strategic Planning at NFTE

By: Allen S. Grossman and Daniel F. Curran

The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), is a successful nonprofit poised on the verge of explosive growth. The senior management contracted with McKinsey consultants to help guide the process. The founders of NFTE brought it from a small program... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Partners and Partnerships; Nonprofit Organizations

2013
Working Paper

Who Is Governing Whom? Executives, Governance and the Structure of Generosity in Large U.S. Firms

By: Christopher Marquis and Matthew Lee

We examine how organizational structure influences strategies over which corporate leaders have significant discretion. Corporate philanthropy is our setting to study how a differentiated structural element—the corporate foundation—constrains the influence of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Leadership; Managerial Roles; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; United States

SSRN

Based on a ten-year examination of control systems in over 50 U.S. businesses, this book broadens the definition of control and establishes a critical bridge between the disciplines of strategy and accounting and control. In addition to the more traditional diagnostic... View Details

March 2011
Article

The New M&A Playbook

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Alton, Curtis Rising and Andrew Waldeck

Companies spend more than $2 trillion on acquisitions every year, yet the M&A failure rate is between 70% and 90%. Executives can dramatically increase their odds of success, the authors argue, if they understand how to select targets, how much to pay for them, and... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Integration

Find at Harvard

11 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Feeling Seen: What to Say When Your Employees Are Not OK

crucial, especially for managers trying to lead widely dispersed teams during difficult times, says Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Julian Zlatev. Many managers... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

Teaching Interest

Negotiation

By: Alison Wood Brooks

Negotiation is an Elective Curriculum course for HBS MBA students. Success at work and at home requires the ability to negotiate. Whether you are forging an agreement with your suppliers, trying to ink a deal with potential customers, raising money from investors,... View Details

March 2017
Teaching Note

Showpad

By: Frank Cespedes

Showpad is a startup that provides a sales enablement platform and tools. The venture has grown 100% annually since its founding four years ago, and the founders are evaluating growth options and decisions in three areas: adding product features, possible pricing... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Sales

30 Apr 2022
News

The Easy Way To Become Fluent In The Language Of Digital

Research Summary

Developing Organizational Capabilities to Compete

By: Michael Beer

Michael Beer’s current research focuses on the question of what makes an Effective Organization. Based on his extensive research and practice about this question Beer has identified six highly interrelated core capabilities:

Capacity of the... View Details

July 2015 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Proxy Contest at DuPont

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Emily McTague

On January 9, 2015, Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management launched a proxy fight for four out of the twelve seats on the DuPont board. The fund had previously published a public letter addressed to shareholders outlining its proposal to break the company into three... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Hedge Fund; Activist Investing; Activist Investors; Proxy Fight; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Investment Activism; Chemical Industry; United States

24 Oct 2006
First Look

First Look: October 24, 2006

Working PapersManaging Functional Biases in Organizational Forecasts: A Case Study of Consensus Forecasting in Supply Chain Planning Authors:Rogelio Oliva and Noel Watson Abstract To date, little research has been done on managing the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2007
Case

Tetra Pak Argentina

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Gustavo A. Herrero

Deals with the hands-on management of a difficult situation facing the subsidiary of a multinational corporation (Tetra Pak) in a developing country (Argentina). The situation arises from a major economic, social, and institutional breakdown that jeopardizes the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Currency Exchange Rate; Sovereign Finance; Multinational Firms and Management; Crisis Management; Business and Government Relations; Argentina

2010
Working Paper

Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster

By: Nelson P. Repenning and Rebecca Henderson

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Performance Improvement; Competitive Advantage; Earnings Management; Management Practices and Processes; Revenue; Quality; Competency and Skills; Motivation and Incentives; Auto Industry; United States

December 2012
Case

Delwarca Software Remote Support Unit

By: Roy D. Shapiro and Paul E. Morrison

Delwarca Software provides business software to large corporate clients around the world. The firm serves customers who prefer to assemble corporate solutions using a combination of software programs from various suppliers rather than implementing a single enterprise... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Mathematical Methods; Applications and Software; Problems and Challenges; Customer Satisfaction; Information Technology Industry

12 PM – 1 PM EDT, 21 Mar 2023
Webinars: Career

LinkedIn for Job Searching

Data can reveal what matters most in today's job market, and this interactive webinar from CPD and Jeremy Schifeling, LinkedIn's former head of student and alumni education, will share behind-the-scenes insights that can help you optimize LinkedIn for both job hunting... View Details

2014
Working Paper

Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' & the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster

By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Nelson P. Repenning and Rebecca Henderson

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"―delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer term investments―makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details

Keywords: Earnings Management; Competitive Advantage

2016
Working Paper

Managers' Cultural Background and Disclosure Attributes

By: Francois Brochet, Gregory S. Miller, Patricia Naranjo and Gwen Yu

We examine how a manager’s ethnic cultural background affects managers’ communication with investors. Using a sample of earnings conference calls transcripts with 26,430 executives from 42 countries, we find that managers from ethnic groups that have a more... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure Tone; Individualism; Conference Calls; Ethnic Group; Management Style; Communication Intention and Meaning; Ethnicity; Corporate Disclosure; Financial Reporting

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