Publications

August 2002 (Revised February 2003)
Case

Siebel Systems: Anatomy of a Sale, Part 2

By: John A. Deighton and Das Narayandas

How does a $2 million software sale happen? This case traces efforts by Siebel Systems to sell lead management software to discount broker Quick & Reilly. The buying process is mapped out over four years. Covers in detail the last six months--from Siebel's initial... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Leadership; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Structure; Behavior; Competition; Applications and Software; Technology Industry

August 2002 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Siebel Systems: Anatomy of a Sale, Part 1

By: John A. Deighton and Das Narayandas

How does a $2 million software sale happen? This case traces efforts by Siebel Systems to sell lead management software to discount broker Quick & Reilly. The buying process is mapped out over four years. Covers in detail the last six months—from Siebel's initial... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Structure; Behavior; Competition; Applications and Software; Technology Industry

April 2011
Article

What Can We Learn from 'Great Negotiations'?

By: James K. Sebenius

What can one legitimately learn-analytically and/or prescriptively-from detailed historical case studies of "great negotiations," chosen more for their salience than their analytic characteristics or comparability? Taking a number of such cases compiled by Stanton... View Details

Keywords: Learning; International Relations; History; Agreements and Arrangements; Negotiation Process; Conflict and Resolution

Article

Culture Is Not the Culprit: When Organizations Are in Crisis, It's Usually Because the Business Is Broken

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Emily McTague

When organizations get into big trouble, fixing the culture is usually the prescription. That's what most everyone said GM needed to do after its recall crisis in 2014—and ever since, CEO Mary Barra has been focusing on creating "the right environment" to promote... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Cultural Reform; Organizational Culture; Crisis Management; Business Processes

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02 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 2

equity-bondholder conflicts are economically important, determine capital structure choices, and affect welfare. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-070.pdf The Many Faces of Nonprofit Accountability Author:Alnoor... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

Benchmarking certainly has its virtues. Comparing production time or the cost of a standard process to that of peer companies can yield important insights about your own efficiencies—and ultimately, competitiveness. But benchmarking also... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

09 Nov 2010
First Look

First Look: November 9, 2010

experiments, and surveys of practice. The research has studied the interface among accounting information, capital markets, standard setters, and financial analysts and how managers make accounting choices.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2002
Case

Siebel Systems: Anatomy of a Sale, Part 3

By: John A. Deighton and Das Narayandas

How does a $2 million software sale happen? This case traces efforts by Siebel Systems to sell lead management software to discount broker Quick & Reilly. The buying process is mapped out over four years. Covers in detail the last six months--from Siebel's initial... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Decision Choices and Conditions; Competitive Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Product Marketing; Information Technology Industry

September 2005 (Revised May 2006)
Case

iMergent (A)

iMergent's core business consists of proprietary virtual storefront software aimed at small businesses and entrepreneurs. For idea-rich entrepreneurs who lack technological skills, iMergent provides an all-inclusive program that covers all needs from order processing... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Financial Statements

Research Summary

Financial reporting quality and its consequences

Does reporting quality have real economic consequences? Professor Yu addresses this question in her research, which examines the channels through which reporting quality affects the behavior of economic agents, namely managers and investors. Her particular focus is... View Details

Research Summary

Analyst Disagreement, Forecast Bias and Stock Returns

We present evidence of inefficient information processing in equity markets by documenting that biases in analysts' earnings forecasts are reflected in stock prices. In particular, investors fail to account for analysts' tendency to withhold negative views and to issue... View Details

August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Revenue Recognition at HBP

By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi

In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details

Keywords: Accrual Accounting; Budgets and Budgeting; Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Publishing Industry; Education Industry; United States

24 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Value Maximization and Stakeholder Theory

Contending with that value maximization approach is "stakeholder theory" which says that managers should make decisions so as to take into account all of the interests of all stakeholders in a firm. (Stakeholders, he notes,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen

August 2000 (Revised January 2006)
Case

Sears, Roebuck and Co. vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

This case is designed to familiarize students with the use of financial ratios. Two retailers, Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., have a very similar value for return on equity (ROE) in the 1997 fiscal year. Students use the information in the case and... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Financial Statements; Retail Industry; United States

September 2009
Article

Hidden Roadblocks in Cross-Border Talks

By: James K. Sebenius

While most analysts and dealmakers are aware of "cultural" differences in negotiations that cross national borders--different protocol and process expectations, differences in the role of the individual versus the group, differences in attitudes toward risk and time,... View Details

Keywords: Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Negotiation Tactics; Risk Management; Time Management; Strategy; Governance; Performance Expectations; Attitudes; Culture; Decision Making

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2009
Working Paper

Technology Innovation and Diffusion as Sources of Output and Asset Price Fluctuations

By: Diego A. Comin, Mark Gertler and Ana Maria Santacreu

We develop a model in which innovations in an economy's growth potential are an important driving force of the business cycle. The framework shares the emphasis of the recent "new shock" literature on revisions of beliefs about the future as a source of fluctuations,... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Economic Growth; Asset Pricing; Technological Innovation; Mathematical Methods; System Shocks; Technology Adoption

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11 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Budgeting Kills Your Company

keep a tight rein on costs—but the dynamics of the budgeting process often undermine this effort. "In tough times like these, any significant real cost growth feels imprudent and is hard to justify for most businesses," writes... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gary

February 2003 (Revised August 2004)
Case

Flextronics: Deciding on a Shop Floor System for Producing the Microsoft Xbox

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Jim McCusker must guide a group decision-making process aimed at getting input and buy-in from key people in California, Mexico, and Austria to choose a shop floor IT system for Flextronics. McCusker is Flextronics' account manager for the Microsoft Xbox project.... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Geographic Location; Problems and Challenges; Leadership; California; Mexico; Austria