Publications

September 1998 (Revised August 1999)
Case

IBM's Lotus Development in 1999

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Kelley Porter

Describes Lotus' acquisition by IBM, its movement from proprietary standards to open standards, and its current market position. Microsoft is gaining ground with its Exchange Server, and Lotus has received unfavorable press. View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Product Marketing; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry

December 2008 (Revised October 2009)
Case

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

By: David E. Bell and Brian Matthew Milder

In 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation joined together to form a new organization, AGRA, to tackle the historic challenge of increasing agricultural production in Africa. Launched with much fanfare and led by former U.N.... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Investment Funds; Food; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business and Government Relations; Non-Governmental Organizations; Poverty; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa

03 Oct 2005
What Do You Think?

What’s the Future of Globally Organized Labor?

single, typically developed economies. The question is whether the concept of cooperation and individual sacrifice for the common good will work in a global labor market populated by large multinational employers. Organized labor has... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

30 Nov 2018
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Administrative Approach to Climate Change?

Summing Up: Should a 'Montreal Protocol' for Administering Global Warming Be Pursued? Climate change and how to manage it is a daunting subject. Nevertheless, several readers of this month’s column were willing to venture a model or two for administering a system... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Energy

16 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

Has COVID-19 Broken the Global Value Chain?

paradigm behind global value chains, generally a production network, suggests that firms should outsource to the countries with the lowest overall costs. (Firms could potentially source particular intermediate inputs View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

Global Supply Chains: The Looming “Great Reallocation”

By: Laura Alfaro

Global supply chains have come under unprecedented stress as a result of US-China trade tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and geopolitical shocks. We document shifts in the pattern of US participation in global value chains over the last four decades, in terms of... View Details

November 2005 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Beijing Hualian

By: David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman

China's fifth largest domestic retailer faced intensifying competition from Wal-Mart and Carrefour with the opening of China's fast-growing retail market in January 2005. In response, Beijing Hualian developed a new "Family Store" format targeted at the nation's... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Consumer Behavior; Competition; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; China

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January 2009
Article

FDI, Productivity, and Financial Development

By: Laura Alfaro, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Selin Sayek

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth by focusing on the complementarities between FDI inflows and financial markets. In our earlier work, we found that FDI is beneficial for growth only if the host country has well-developed... View Details

Keywords: Human Capital; Income; Performance Productivity; Financial Markets; Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Institutions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

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June 2022
Case

The SAH Group: The Time is Right

By: Juan Alcacer and Alpana Thapar

In January 2021, Jalila Mezni, cofounder and CEO of the SAH Group, was preparing to present the company’s future growth plans to its board of directors. The Tunisian company was a leading producer and distributor of personal care and packaged hygiene products. In 2019,... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Expansion; Business Divisions; Product Positioning; Brands and Branding; Competition; Presentations; Consumer Products Industry; Tunisia; Kenya

03 Apr 2006
Research & Ideas

The Competitive Advantage of Global Finance

corporate profits attributable to foreign operations has escalated from 5 percent in the 1960s to 30 percent today. Second, multinational firms, once characterized as a web of autonomous subsidiaries serving... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

23 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 23

of multinationals from developed countries in developing countries. The central argument is that strategies were shaped by the trade-off between opportunity and risk. Three broad environmental factors... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

30 Jul 2008
Op-Ed

Why the U.S. Should Encourage FDI

relative to local firms. In countries with weak capital markets and burdensome regulatory regimes, multinational firms can use their internal capital and product markets to access global resources while... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

13 Jul 2022
Book

Reimagining the Economy: What Would It Take to Put People First?

Dauphine, the essays offer a new architecture for the future of work. Book Excerpt Democratize Work: The Case for Reorganizing the Economy Essay by Julie Battilana When Sandra arrived in Boston from her hometown of Vitória, Brazil,... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

16 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Now Is the Time for Entrepreneurs to Play Offense

different from the executive team you can attract today.” 2. Uplevel executive teams It’s difficult to admit, but the executive team you were able to attract a year ago may be very different from the... View Details

Keywords: by Jeffrey Bussgang

15 Jul 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries

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

2023
Working Paper

Can Evidence-Based Information Shift Preferences Towards Trade Policy?

By: Laura Alfaro, Maggie X. Chen and Davin Chor

Amid public skepticism about trade, we investigate whether evidence-based information--a concise statement of a research ﬁnding--can shape preferences towards trade policy. Across survey experiments conducted over 2018-2022 on U.S. general population samples, we... View Details

Keywords: Evidence; Preference; Trade Policy; Information; Trade; Policy; Attitudes

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25 Apr 2023
Op-Ed

How SHEIN and Temu Conquered Fast Fashion—and Forged a New Business Model

information technology to directly match consumer demand to dispersed production by a collection of factories in China. This method of reaching customers should inspire any business that provides products or... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

Article

The Social Contract Model of Corporate Purpose and Responsibility

By: Nien-he Hsieh

Of the many developments in business ethics that Thomas Donaldson has helped pioneer, one is the application of social contract theory to address questions about the responsibilities of business actors. In Corporations and Morality, Donaldson develops one of the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

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