Publications

25 Sep 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Purpose and Firm Ownership

Keywords: by Claudine Gartenberg and George Serafeim

25 Mar 2011
News

Family Firms Need Professional Management

2008
Working Paper

The Decentering of the Global Firm

By: Mihir A. Desai

This paper describes recent changes in the relationship between firms and nation states. Firms are typically linked to the nation in which they began and are considered to have fixed national identities. While firms have reallocated various activities around the world... View Details

Keywords: Business Headquarters; Geographic Location; Globalized Firms and Management; Policy; Business and Government Relations

15 Jul 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger & Andrew F. Newman

2011
Working Paper

The Organization of Firms Across Countries

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Multinational Firms and Management; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Asia; Europe; United States

31 Jan 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Boardroom Centrality and Firm Performance

Keywords: by David F. Larcker, Eric C. So & Charles C.Y. Wang

2008
Other Unpublished Work

Are Private Equity Firms Better Managed?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity,... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Management Practices and Processes; Production; Performance Improvement; Manufacturing Industry; Asia; Europe; United States

13 Jun 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Firm Selection and Corporate Cash Holdings

Keywords: by Juliane Begenau and Berardino Palazzo

23 Aug 2016
Working Paper Summaries

CEO Personality and Firm Policies

Keywords: by Ian D. Gow, Steven N. Kaplan, David F. Larcker, and Anastasia A. Zakolyukina; Financial Services

2016
Working Paper

CEO Personality and Firm Policies

By: Ian D. Gow, Steven N. Kaplan, David F. Larcker and Anastasia A. Zakolyukina

Based on two samples of high quality personality data for chief executive officers (CEOs), we use linguistic features extracted from conferences calls and statistical learning techniques to develop a measure of CEO personality in terms of the Big Five traits:... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Personal Characteristics; Management Teams

1990
Book

Managing the Global Firm

By: Christopher A. Bartlett, Y. Doz and G. Hedlund

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management

2018
Working Paper

Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms

By: Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers

We provide the first large-sample evidence on the behavior and impact of non-practicing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual property space. We find that on average, NPEs appear to behave as opportunistic “patent trolls.” NPEs sue cash-rich firms—and target cash in... View Details

Keywords: Patent Trolls; NPEs; PAEs; Innovation; Patents; Ethics; Lawsuits and Litigation; Innovation and Invention; Corporate Finance

October 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

DLA Piper: Becoming a Global Firm

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Alexis Chernak

Focuses on DLA Piper, a global law firm resulting from the merger of the combined U.S. firm Piper Rudnick Gray Cary and the British firm DLA. At the time of the merger, the firms had similar strategies for the future and approaches to clients. While figuring out some... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Global Strategy; Leadership; Alignment; Expansion; Legal Services Industry; United States

Educators

January 2012
Case

Family Firm Governance Vignettes

By: Lena G. Goldberg

Keywords: Family Ownership; Governance

Educators

Article

Do Firm Boundaries Matter?

By: David S. Scharfstein and Sendhil Mullainathan

March 2006
Module Note

Financing Decisions within the Firm

By: Mihir A. Desai and Kathleen Luchs

Describes a core module in the International Finance course at Harvard Business School. The module focuses on the financial and managerial issues that confront managers who make financial decisions within multinational firms: how subsidiaries should be financed and... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; International Finance; Taxation; Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Framework; Performance Evaluation; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

Article

Family Control of Firms and Industries

We test what explains family control of firms and industries and find that the explanation is largely contingent on the identity of families and individual blockholders. Founders and their families are more likely to retain control when doing so gives the firm a... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Cost vs Benefits; Governance Controls; Family Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Competitive Advantage

March 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Module Note

The Social Purpose of the Firm

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau

The Social Purpose of the Firm (SPF) is a short module designed to explore how, and under what circumstances, business leaders can harness the power of capitalism and markets to “make a difference in the world” – that is, to address a significant societal problem as a... View Details

Keywords: Social Accounting; Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Enterprise; Mission and Purpose; United States; Sweden; Kenya; Netherlands