Publications

2023
Working Paper

Feature Importance Disparities for Data Bias Investigations

By: Peter W. Chang, Leor Fishman and Seth Neel

It is widely held that one cause of downstream bias in classifiers is bias present in the training data. Rectifying such biases may involve context-dependent interventions such as training separate models on subgroups, removing features with bias in the collection... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Prejudice and Bias

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October 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Wilderness Safaris: Impact Investing and Ecotourism Conservation in Africa

By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard

In 2018 the majority ownership of publicly owned Wilderness Safaris, the leading high-end ecotourism company in Africa with safari operations in eight countries, was acquired by The Rise Fund, one of the world’s largest private social impact investing funds, and by FS... View Details

Educators

02 Jul 2010
What Do You Think?

Is Profit as a “Direct Goal” Overrated?

illustration of that point; BP is very profitable, but there is official evidence that it continues to compromise safety.) Gerald Nanninga, on the other hand, argued that profit is a default measure, commenting that "It is easier to View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

March 1998 (Revised July 1998)
Case

United Way Community Services

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Describes in detail the fund development and distribution system of United Way Community Services. A key question is how to measure the outcome/impact of the work done by the agencies that receive United Way funding. A follow-on question is how to reinvent the... View Details

Keywords: Capital; Management Systems; Measurement and Metrics; Distribution Channels; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Outcome or Result; Nonprofit Organizations

08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

September 2017
Editorial

Helping Patients with Cancer Navigate Narrow Networks

By: Stephen M. Schleicher, Emeline M. Aviki and Thomas W. Feeley

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) was designed primarily to improve patient access to affordable health care. The access-expanding provisions of the ACA included federal- and state-based health insurance exchanges with minimum coverage requirements and preexisting... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Problems and Challenges; United States

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December 13, 2022
Article

6 Ways Companies Fail to Help Workers Grow

By: Joseph Fuller, Matthew Sigelman and Nik Dawson

The authors recently studied Fortune 250 companies and ranked them based on the lived experience of three million of their U.S. workers. One of their key findings was that even top-ranked firms fail to deliver consistently on worker advancement. To understand why this... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Training; Business Model; Outcome or Result; Performance Evaluation; Opportunities

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All teams would like to think they do their best work when the stakes are highest—when the company’s future or their own rests on the outcome of their projects. But too often something else happens. In extensive studies of teams at professional service firms,... View Details

September 2011
Article

Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality

By: Mark J. Roe and Jordan I. Siegel

We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of... View Details

Keywords: Financial Development; Political Instability; Government and Politics; Finance; Growth and Development; Economics; Equality and Inequality

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Roe, Mark J., and Jordan I. Siegel. "Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality." Journal of Comparative Economics 39, no. 3 (September 2011): 279–309. (We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of financial development. First, structural conditions first postulated by Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) as generating long-term inequality are shown here empirically to be exogenous determinants of political instability. Second, that exogenously-determined political instability in turn holds back financial development, even when we control for factors prominent in the last decade's cross-country studies of financial development. The findings indicate that inequality-perpetuating conditions that result in political instability are fundamental roadblocks for international organizations like the World Bank that seek to promote financial development. The evidence here includes country fixed effect regressions and an instrumental model inspired by Engerman and Sokoloff's (2002) work, which to our knowledge has not yet been used in finance and which is consistent with current tests as valid instruments. Four conventional measures of national political instability — Alesina and Perotti's (1996) well-known index of instability, a subsequent index derived from Banks' (2005) work, and two indices of managerial perceptions of nation-by-nation political instability — persistently predict a wide range of national financial development outcomes for recent decades. Political instability's significance is time consistent in cross-sectional regressions back to the 1960's, the period when the key data becomes available, robust in both country fixed-effects and instrumental variable regressions, and consistent across multiple measures of instability and of financial development. Overall, the results indicate the existence of an important channel running from structural inequality to political instability, principally in nondemocratic settings, and then to financial backwardness. The robust significance of that channel extends existing work demonstrating the importance of political economy explanations for financial development and financial backwardness. It should help to better understand which policies will work for financial development, because political instability has causes, cures, and effects quite distinct from those of many of the key institutions most studied in the past decade as explaining financial backwardness.)

11 Jan 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Does Shareholder Proxy Access Improve Firm Value? Evidence from the Business Roundtable Challenge

Keywords: by Bo Becker, Daniel B. Bergstresser & Guhan Subramanian; Financial Services

April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Supplement

Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (B)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

The epilogue to Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A), the B case details the outcome of the issues discussed in Case A; namely that Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor did implement the TSCC contract. Virginia Mason also kept the suture contract... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Supply Chain Management; Partners and Partnerships; Measurement and Metrics; Contracts; Health Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

October 2020
Case

Michael Phelps: 'It's Okay to Not Be Okay'

By: Boris Groysberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Michael Norris

In 2020, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, with 28 medals in various swimming events, was now retired. As he looked back on his 20+ year athletic career, he considered what had gone into making him the greatest of all time—the highs and lows,... View Details

Keywords: Mental Health; Talent and Talent Management; Training; Health; Success; Performance Improvement; Personal Development and Career; Family and Family Relationships; Sports; Competition; Sports Industry; United States; Baltimore; Arizona; Sydney; Athens; Beijing; London

Educators

13 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Diagnosing the Public Health Care Alternative

shifting costs to patients and providers. Regulations are needed to end coverage and price discrimination based on health risks and preexisting conditions. Value-based competition also demands the measurement of value, and plans must be... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

Web

Publications - Faculty & Research

contribution, we examine whether and in which settings satellite measurements may be effective at estimating both agricultural yields and treatment... View Details Keywords: Measurement and Metrics ;... View Details

10 Oct 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, October 10, 2017

groups across industries. The most common KPIs are closed deals and salesperson performance against quota, which, on average, firms measure monthly. But a closed deal is an outcome and lagging indicator.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Design and Testing of a Mobile Health Application Rating Tool

By: David Levine, Zo Co, Lisa Newmark, Alissa Groisser, A Jay Holmgren, Jennifer Haas and David Bates

Mobile health applications (“apps”) have rapidly proliferated, yet their ability to improve outcomes for patients remains unclear. A validated tool that addresses apps’ potentially important dimensions has not been available to patients and clinicians. The objective of... View Details

Keywords: Health; Mobile Technology; Design; Analysis

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March 2022 (Revised April 2023)
Case

Pittsburgh: A Successful City?

By: Karen Mills, Caroline Elkins, Vikram Gandhi, Gabriella Elanbeck and Zeke Gillman

Pittsburgh, PA, was once the crown jewel of American heavy industry. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city was an undisputed leader in steel production, boasting some of the largest companies and wealthiest individuals in the world. Its abundance of... View Details

Keywords: Economic And Social Disparities; Economic Development; Local Economic Development; Contextual Intelligence; Contextual Knowledge; Context; City Growth; City Innovation; City Leadership; Pittsburgh; Local Government; Local Stakeholders; Business And Community; Business And Community Relations; Community Engagement; Community Relations; Cross-sector Collaboration; Innovation; Innovation Economy; Innovation Clusters; Innovation Ecosystems; Shared Prosperity; Equality Of Opportunity; Equity; Inclusion; Business And Government; Business ＆ Government Relations; Business And Government Relations; Business And Society; Neighborhoods; Race And Ethnicity; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Household; Income; Economic Growth; Economic Sectors; Economics; Local Range; Urban Development; Urban Scope; City; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Government and Politics; Government Administration; Growth and Development; History; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Society; Civil Society or Community; Culture; Human Needs; Public Opinion; Public Sector; Social Issues; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Education Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Pittsburgh; Pennsylvania

Educators