Publications

October 2013
Case

Mitch Daniels and the State of Indiana

By: Robert Steven Kaplan and Wendy K. Winer

Mitch Daniels, Governor of the State of Indiana, knew he had to make a difficult choice as he sat in his office in December 2010. Should he aggressively push the state legislature to pass comprehensive education reform—a major priority of his administration—or,... View Details

Keywords: Education Reform; Priorities; Leadership; Education; Government and Politics; Public Administration Industry; Public Administration Industry; Indiana

29 Sep 2015
First Look

September 29, 2015

the capital of Bangladesh. Over 1,100 people were killed in the worst industrial accident since the Union Carbide plant gas leak in Bhopal, India. Most of the victims worked for garment factories, whose... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

17 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 17

effectiveness of inspections by allowing cities to target restaurants that are most likely to have a hygiene violation. In this work, we report the first empirical study demonstrating the utility of review analysis for predicting restaurant inspection results.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Feb 2023
HBS Case

Is Sweden Still 'Sweden'? A Liberal Utopia Grapples with an Identity Crisis

Sweden has long seemed like a social-welfare capitalist dream come true, where companies and labor unions collaborate in harmony with government support. Swedish citizens are among the wealthiest in the world, and they enjoy publicly... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

28 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 28, 2015

country-level factors that limit firms' use of selective disclosure by intensifying scrutiny on them and by diffusing global norms to their headquarters countries. We test our hypotheses using a novel panel dataset of 4,750 public companies across many View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

December 2020 (Revised June 2021)
Case

France Télécom (A): A Challenging Restructuring

By: Cynthia A. Montgomery and Ashley V. Whillans

These cases explore the impacts of industry shocks, resulting corporate actions that had a devastating impact on employees, and the legal conviction of corporate leaders for “institutional harassment."

This case series follows the evolution of France... View Details

June 1995
Case

Polaroid Corporation: European Distribution System

By: Janice H. Hammond and Afroze A Mohammed

Describes distribution operations in Polaroid Europe. In the late 1980s, Polaroid senior management in the United States proposed moving from a system of 12 decentralized warehouses to a centralized distribution system in which all inventory for European retailers... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Operations; Risk Management; Distribution Channels; Logistics; Transition; Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Industry Structures; Consumer Products Industry; Europe; European Union; United States

17 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

What the Stockdale Paradox Tells Us About Crisis Leadership

be.” — Admiral James Stockdale. In August, while most developed nations’ rates of COVID-19 infections are falling, the rate in the United States continues to rise. States that had reopened or begun to, such as California and Texas, have reversed course, and the... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

Research Summary

Papers in progress

“The ‘Carbon Club’: Oil Companies, Climate Change & the Shaping of Public Policy”. Conspiracy theories abound, but the roles of the major oil companies in influencing public policy on climate change remain largely obscure. This... View Details

18 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Your Best Employees Are Burning Out: A Framework for Retaining Talent

covenant forged at the onset of the Industrial Age, the Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945, typically had the benefit of guaranteed pensions. The ability of corporations to provide pensions created a workforce that remained... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and MaShon Wilson

2014
Article

Corporate Governance and the Financial Crisis in Italy

By: Dante Roscini

The financial crisis hit Italy harder than many other Eurozone countries. In part this was due to the fact that the crisis came upon a system that was weakened by years of sub-par economic growth. One of the several endogenous factors that explain the stagnation of the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Corporate Governance; Italy; European Union

09 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Could Clean Hydrogen Become Affordable at Scale by 2030?

Hydrogen is poised to move from the sidelines of global clean energy as the industry learns to produce it more efficiently and at lower cost, according to newly published research led by Gunther Glenk, a climate fellow with Harvard Business School's Institute for the... View Details

Keywords: by Desmond Dodd; Energy; Green Technology

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

can make extreme means seem justifiable.” A company spiraling into debt France Télécom’s troubles started in the late 1990s, after the French government turned the national telephone monopoly into a publicly traded company, now known as Orange. The telecommunications... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

13 Dec 2016
First Look

December 13, 2016

which the inflow of elite talent into the financial industry affects the supply of innovators in science and engineering (S&E). I first show that finance does not systematically attract those who are best prepared at college... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

March 2025
Case

The Changing Climate on Wall Street

By: Clayton S. Rose, Maxim Pike Harrell and Michael Norris

Increasing and conflicting regulatory requirements and political pressures regarding climate change tested the leaders of U.S. financial institutions, as they struggled to determine how best to comply while managing their business and its risks.
In October 2024,... View Details

October 2020
Case

HOPE and Transformational Lending: Netflix Invests in Black Led Banks

By: John D. Macomber and Janice Broome Brooks

Following the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day in 2020, the large US corporation Netflix elected to make a "transformational deposit" of $10 million into Hope Credit Union (HCU), a small Black led community development finance institution (CDFI) based in... View Details

Keywords: Banking; Rural Entrepreneurship; Economic Development; Black Entrepreneurs; Economic Growth; Credit; Banks and Banking; Entrepreneurship; Rural Scope; Development Economics; Race; Investment; Decision Making; Banking Industry