Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(5,538)
- Faculty Publications (488)
- February 2014
- Article
Accountability of Independent Directors—Evidence from Firms Subject to Securities Litigation
By: Francois Brochet and Suraj Srinivasan
We examine which independent directors are held accountable when investors sue firms for financial- and disclosure-related fraud. Investors can name independent directors as defendants in lawsuits, and they can vote against their re-election to express displeasure over... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised March 2014)
- Case
SAP 2014: Reaching for the Cloud
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Noah Fisher
In May 2014, Bill McDermott will become the sole CEO of SAP AG, the world leader in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) field. The case occurs in January 2014 at SAP's investors meeting, at a time when the company's stock is near record high. A 2010 strategy... View Details
- December 2013
- Case
Clique Pens: The Writing Implements Division of U.S. Home
By: Frank V. Cespedes and James Kindley
The Clique Pens Writing Implements division of U.S. Home is a manufacturer of a full line of pens, pencils, markers, and art supplies. Despite solid sales, division president Elise Ferguson has seen gross margins drop from 42% in 2010 to just over 36% in 2012 as a... View Details
- December 2013 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
Atlanta Schools: Measures to Improve Performance
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
The widespread cheating scandal that rocked the Atlanta public school system in 2010 and 2011 illustrates how high-stakes performance pressure, without sufficient risk controls, can drive dangerous behavior. After becoming superintendent of the low-income and... View Details
Keywords: Atlanta; Test; Testing; Standardized Test; Standardized Testing; No Child Left Behind; NCLB; Cheating; Performance Pressure; Measurement; Incentives; Atlanta Public Schools; Management; Leadership; Ethics; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Performance Expectations; Risk Management; Education; Education Industry; United States; Georgia (state, US); Atlanta
- November 2013
- Exercise
People Management (Abridged)
By: Boris Groysberg
Highlights critical gaps between research and practice in the field of strategic human resources management. Also, aims to debunk some myths and preconceptions that general managers bring to their HR decisions. Before class, participants fill out a true-or-false... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised February 2016)
- Case
A Long, Bumpy and Unfinished Road: Education Reform in Memphis, Tennessee
By: Allen Grossman, J. Puckett and Nithya Vaduganathan
In 2010 the Memphis City School District merged with the neighboring Shelby County School system under the supervision of a single board of education and superintendent. It promised much more than just administrative synergies—it was an opportunity to change a... View Details
- October 2013 (Revised September 2014)
- Case
The TELUS Share Conversion Proposal
By: Lucy White, Benjamin C. Esty and Lisa Mazzanti
On February 21, 2013, TELUS announced a proposal to convert the firm's non-voting shares into voting shares on a one-to-one basis, thereby eliminating the firm's dual class structure. Shareholders were scheduled to vote on the proposal at the firm's annual general... View Details
Keywords: Proxy Contest; Proxy Battle; Proxy Advisor; ISS; Glass Lewis ＆ Co.; Hedge Fund; Short Selling; Share Lending; Telecommunications; Voting Rights; Empty Voting; Equity Decoupling; Share Unification; Dual Class Shares; Canada; Exchange Ratio; Shareholder Activism; Shareholder Votes; Investment Activism; Public Equity; Capital Structure; Investment Return; Corporate Governance; Corporate Finance; Ownership Stake; Business and Shareholder Relations; Valuation; Telecommunications Industry; Canada; British Columbia; United States; New York (city, NY)
- September 2013
- Case
United Rentals (A)
By: Jay W. Lorsch, Kathleen Durante and Emily McTague
In December 1997 United Rentals (URI) went public on the NYSE. Ten years later, during the peak of the economic meltdown, the company's performance was in decline. United Rentals had experienced its share of problems in the prior years and was still struggling to... View Details
- September 2013 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
IBM and the Reinvention of High School (A): Proving the P-TECH Concept
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
IBM's Corporate Citizenship office created a social and organizational innovation in public education through a business-school partnership. IBM's Stanley Litow was the key architect in designing Pathways in Technology Early College High School, known as P-TECH. The... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
NBC and the 2012 London Olympics: Unexpected Success
By: Stephen A. Greyser and Vadim Kogan
"The 2010 Vancouver Winter Games lost $223 million, astonishing for a 17-day event. Next year's London Summer Games, which cost a record Olympic rights fee of $1.18 billion, are expected to lose at least as much..." wrote Richard Sandomir in The New York Times. "NBC... View Details
- September 2013
- Teaching Note
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm
By: Nancy F. Koehn and Nora N. Khan
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm is the story of one entrepreneur's vision and journey to create a market-leading, environmentally responsible business founded on the principles of product quality, organizational alignment and sustainability. A former... View Details
- August 2013
- Course Overview Note
Building Life Science Businesses Fall 2013: Course Outline and Syllabus
This Course Outline and Syllabus gives an overview of the Fall 2013 class Building Life Science Businesses. View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Accountability of Independent Directors—Evidence from Firms Subject to Securities Litigation
By: Francois Brochet and Suraj Srinivasan
We examine which independent directors are held accountable when investors sue firms for financial and disclosure related fraud. Investors can name independent directors as defendants in lawsuits, and they can vote against their re-election to express displeasure over... View Details
- June 2013 (Revised June 2013)
- Teaching Note
Brazil's Enigma: Sustaining Long-Term Growth & Currency Wars
By: Laura Alfaro and Hilary White
Over the past decade, Brazil's future as a leading world economic power appeared certain. An expanding middle class and commodity boom had fueled economic growth, with GDP growth hitting a peak of 7.5% in 2010. However, the high cost of conducting business in Brazil,... View Details
Keywords: Exchange Rate; Inflation; Inflation Targeting; Industrialization; Infrastructure; Currency; Capital Controls; Stimulus; Commodity Prices; Manufacturing Costs; Globalization; Productivity Growth; Economics; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Inflation and Deflation; Macroeconomics; Public Sector; Brazil; South America; Latin America
- May 2013
- Case
Bridgewater Associates
By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Heidi K. Gardner
Bridgewater Associates was the world's largest hedge fund with approximately $120 billion in assets under management in mid-2012, and its leaders attribute its record-beating performance to the firm's culture of "radical transparency." The founder, Ray Dalio, was... View Details
- May 2013 (Revised September 2013)
- Case
The Kashagan Production Sharing Agreement (PSA)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Florian Bitsch
When discovered in the 1990s, the Kashagan oil field was the second largest oil field in the world. The project sponsors (equity investors) signed a 40-year production sharing agreement (PSA) with the Kazakh government in 1997, with the expectation the field would... View Details
Keywords: Contracts; Oil ＆ Gas; Project Finance; Kazakhstan; Asia; ENI; Risk Management; Economic Development; Project Management; Expropriation; Product Sharing Agreement; Negotiation; Agreements and Arrangements; Development Economics; Energy Sources; Capital Budgeting; International Finance; Valuation; Joint Ventures; Energy Industry; Asia; Kazakhstan; Italy
- Article
Experiments in Open Innovation at Harvard Medical School
By: Eva C. Guinan, Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Harvard Medical School seems an unlikely organization to open up its innovation process. By most measures, the more than 20,000 faculty, research staff and graduate students affiliated with Harvard Medical School are already world class and at the top of the medical... View Details
- March 2013 (Revised July 2014)
- Supplement
Bay Partners (B)
By: Josh Lerner and Lauren Barley
In December 2012, Salil Deshpande has rejoined Bay Partners (Bay), which had been restructured following the 2010 departures of three of its general partners. Life was good for Deshpande: his firm had distributed roughly $1 billion to its limited partners (LPs) over... View Details
- February 2013
- Article
Does Shareholder Proxy Access Improve Firm Value? Evidence from the Business Roundtable Challenge
By: Bo Becker, Guhan Subramanian and Daniel B. Bergstresser
We use the Business Roundtable's challenge to the SEC's 2010 proxy access rule as a natural experiment to measure the value of shareholder proxy access. We find that firms that would have been most vulnerable to proxy access, as measured by institutional ownership and... View Details
- 2013
- Case
Ningbo FOTILE Kitchen Ware Co., Ltd.
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Zheng Xiaoming, Yuren Fang and Hong Zhang
Since 2008, FOTILE has actively introduced philosophies of the traditional Chinese culture—such as benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and faith—into its management, which it believes to compensate for deficiencies in Western management concepts and creates a new... View Details
Keywords: Human Resource Management; China; Human Resources; Leadership; Management; Strategy; China