Publications

September 2, 2020
Article

What Really Prevents Companies from Thriving in a Recession

By: Ranjay Gulati and Mark Wiedman

Even in the best of times, many companies fail to fund and staff new opportunities. As decades of research have shown, leaders fear threats to their status and power and so become attached to existing businesses and budgets, regarding them as entitlements and as a... View Details

Keywords: Recessions; Resource Allocation; Budgets and Budgeting

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Article

Price and Quality Decisions by Self-Serving Managers

By: Marco Bertini, Daniel Halbheer and Oded Koenigsberg

We present a theory of price and quality decisions by managers who are self-serving. In the theory, firms stress the price or quality of their products, but not both. Accounting for this, managers exploit any uncertainty about the cause of market outcomes to credit... View Details

Keywords: Causal Reasoning; Self-serving Bias; Strategic Orientation; Managerial Decision-making; Price; Quality; Decision Making; Theory

February 2020
Case

Highfields Capital and McDonald's

By: Mark Egan and Robin Greenwood

McDonald’s reported its fifth consecutive quarter of declining same-store sales growth in early 2015. Despite McDonald’s recent poor performance, Jonathon S. Jacobson, the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Boston-based Highfields Capital Management, had initiated... View Details

Keywords: McDonald's; Stocks; Performance Improvement; Operations; Finance; Restructuring; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry

January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
Case

Rumo: Infrastructure for a Healthier Economy

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Mariana Cal, Ruth Costas and Natalie Kindred

Brazilian logistics company Rumo operated 13,500 km in railway networks, port terminals, and inland transshipment terminals, connecting major Brazilian ports to the agriculture hubs of Mato Grosso and São Paulo state. Controlled by Cosan, Brazil's leading sugar and... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Customer Relationship Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Logistics; Rail Transportation; Value Creation; Rail Industry; Transportation Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Latin America; Brazil

September 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Gun Safety in America: Three Leaders Propose Innovative Solutions

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joseph Paul

Gun violence was a significant problem in America. Three Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellows Christy Wood, Russell Sternlicht, and Gareth Glaser each decided to do something about gun safety. They each used their professional and leadership experience to... View Details

August 2018
Case

Christine Lagarde (A): A French Prime Minister Calls

By: Julie Battilana and Carin-Isabel Knoop

This case covers formative events and influences in Christine Lagarde’s childhood and her trajectory from studying political science and law to heading the world’s largest law firm. As she prepares to transition back to practice in 2005, the new Prime Minister of... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Power and Influence; Decision Making

2017
Working Paper

Knowledge Flows within Multinationals—Estimating Relative Influence of Headquarters and Host Context Using a Gravity Model

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Mike Horia Teodorescu and Tarun Khanna

From the perspective of a multinational subsidiary, we employ the classic gravity equation in economics to model and compare knowledge flows to the subsidiary from the MNC headquarters and from the host country context. We also generalize traditional economics gravity... View Details

Keywords: Multinationals; Knowledge Flows; Cosine Similarity; Gravity Model; Multinational Firms and Management; Knowledge Dissemination; Business Headquarters; Immigration

July 3, 2014
Comment

Comment on the Final Round of Iranian Nuclear Talks Before the Joint Plan of Action Expires (on July 20, 2014)

By: James K. Sebenius

As six months of talks soon end with wide gaps likely remaining on key issues, P5+1 and Iranian diplomats will undoubtedly cite some tangible progress, then argue for a six-month extension. This will likely become a pattern, with some version of the interim deal... View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Deal; Iran; United States

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2014
Working Paper

The Founder's Resource‐Dependence Challenge

By: Noam Wasserman

Does the degree to which founders keep control of their startups affect company value? I argue that founders face a "control dilemma" in which a startup's resource dependence drives a wedge between the startup's value and the founder's ability to retain control of... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Value; Business Startups

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March 2007
Article

Gender Effects and Stock Market Reactions to the Announcement of Top Executive Appointments

This study uses Kanter's token status theory to link announcements of top executives to shareholder reactions, highlighting possible gender effects. Using a sample of top executive announcements from 1990 to 2000, our results show that investor reactions to the... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Management Succession; Gender; Management Teams

The long-standing argument that focused operations outperform others stands in contrast to claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. Within the literature on corporate strategy, this tension between focus and breadth is reconciled by the concept of... View Details

Article

The Lives and Deaths of Jobs: Technical Interdependence and Survival in a Job Structure

By: Sharique Hasan, John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning

Prior work has considered the properties of individual jobs that make them more or less likely to survive in organizations. Yet little research examines how a job’s position within a larger job structure affects its life chances and thus the evolution of the... View Details

Keywords: Jobs; Natural Language Processing; Jobs and Positions; Organizational Structure

Web

Online Business Courses & Certifications | HBS Online

provide a competitive edge and build customer loyalty. 4 weeks, 5-6 hrs/week Pay by July 24 $1,850 Certificate Power and Influence for Positive Impact Professor Julie Battilana Understand how power really works and develop your own to... View Details

29 Jan 2021
Blog Post

My HBS Student Loan Story: John Cortines (MBA 2015)

MBA, you are likely thinking about what repayment might look like post-graduation. HBS graduates pursue careers in a variety of industries and positions around the world. With a median starting salary of $148,750, and median signing bonus... View Details

09 Jul 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Limits of Nonprofit Impact: A Contingency Framework for Measuring Social Performance

Keywords: by Alnoor Ebrahim & V. Kasturi Rangan

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

everyone.” “We have to get away from this position of a mother hen,” he reportedly told managers, according to the research. “It will be a bit more authoritarian than in the past. It’s our only chance to get the 22,000 [job cuts].” In... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

24 Mar 2022
Research & Ideas

Rituals at Work: Teams That Play Together Stay Together

other rated both the ritual and the brainstorming task as more meaningful. They also reported greater affinity for their group members. Such affinity in a workplace setting can positively impact company culture and performance by... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

March 2023
Article

Authentic First Impressions Relate to Interpersonal, Social, and Entrepreneurial Success

By: David M. Markowitz, Maryam Kouchaki, Francesca Gino, Jeffrey T. Hancock and Ryan L. Boyd

This paper examines how verbal authenticity influences person perception. Our work combines human judgments and natural language processing to suggest verbal authenticity is a positive predictor of interpersonal interest (Study 1: 294 dyadic conversations), engagement... View Details

Keywords: Authenticity; Impression Formation; Natural Language Processing; First Impressions; Communication; Perception; Success

March 2021 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Philips: Redefining Telehealth

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Alec Petersen, Natalie Kindred and Sara M. McKinley

As one of the world’s largest healthcare companies, Philips sought to reach beyond the walls of the hospital and expand its hospital-to-home program to gain future competitive advantage through technology solutions combining predictive analytics with care delivery. By... View Details