Publications

SSRN

May 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Gap, Inc., 2000

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

From humble beginnings as a Levi jeans store, by 2000 Gap, Inc. had grown to become the world's leading specialist clothing retailer. Its CEO, Millard S. Drexler, the "merchant prince," was credited with transforming Gap into a global empire, leading the company... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Change; Fashion; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Performance Consistency; Problems and Challenges; Globalized Firms and Management; Competitive Strategy; Business Growth and Maturation; Strategy; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States

Educators

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26 May 2021
Video

Oded Navon (MBA 2022)

August 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Technical Note

Congruence Model Note

By: Shon R. Hiatt and James Weber

This note describes the Congruence Model, a method by which an organization can assess whether its building blocks (critical tasks, formal organizational arrangements, people, and culture) are aligned (congruent) with its strategy. The model postulates that... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Business Processes; Alignment

Educators

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11 Jul 2017
Blog Post

Summer Snapshot: Interning in the Education Sector

summer, I'm interning at KIPP, a public charter school network that aims to lower the achievement gap in K-12 education by serving underserved communities. I'm currently working on two projects: developing a 4-year strategic plan for the... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

January 2025
Article

Everyone Steps Back?: The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators When Migration Fear Is High

By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug Yorulmaz

We study funding gaps on Kickstarter across multiple ethnic groups from 2009 to 2021. Scaling the concept of racially salient events, we quantify the close co-movement of minority funding gaps in crowd-funding to inflamed political rhetoric surrounding migration. The... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Immigration; Public Opinion

Article

How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay

By: Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton

Do people from different countries and different backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? Using survey data from 40 countries (N = 55,238), we compare respondents' estimates of the wages of people in different... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Justice; Wage; Cross-cultural; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Fairness; Income; Employees; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

November 2017
Comment

Discussion: Do Common Inherited Beliefs and Values Influence CEO Pay?

By: Lauren Cohen

The origin of preferences is something we know strikingly little about in economics. Given the central importance of preferences, we have not invested nearly the time we should into this concept. And so, as an overarching research direction, I am heartened by the push... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Values and Beliefs; Ethnicity

31 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

From SpinPop to SpinBrush: Entrepreneurial Lessons from John Osher

inspiration for Dr. John's huge hit, the SpinBrush. After his successes with SpinPop and various baby products, Osher discovered that one of the keys to building a successful company and creating a product that people love is to find and exploit a View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Consumer Products

May 19, 2021
Article

Why America Needs a Better Bridge Between School and Career

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Rachel Lipson

As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, America faces a critical opportunity to close gaps that leave many workers behind, say Joseph Fuller and Rachel Lipson. What will it take? View Details

Keywords: Workforce; Talent Management; Education; Employment; Labor; Training; Talent and Talent Management

25 Jun 2019
Blog Post

Learning the Language of Business and Science – The MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences Program

misalignments can lead to inefficiencies that waste money and slow the development of important treatments. While the science-business gap in biotechnology poses a significant challenge, it also presents an opportunity. Professionals... View Details

September 2019 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Gap, Inc., 2019

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2000, The Gap, Inc. (Gap) was the world’s largest player in specialty fashion retailing, and companies such as Inditex of Spain, H&M of Sweden, and Fast Retailing of Japan were less than a quarter of Gap’s size. But after two decades of growth, Gap’s progress... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Change; Fashion; Multinational; Brands; Fast Fashion; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Performance Improvement; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Change Management; Strategy; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sweden; Spain; United States

Educators

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12 Apr 2016
News

Equality Takes Work

12 PM – 1 PM EDT, 17 May 2017
Webinars: Trending@HBS

Fintech and Washington: Defining the Future of Small Business Lending

Small businesses have often faced gaps in access to credit. An explosion of new online lenders are providing small dollar loans to businesses within days, with easy online applications and innovative credit algorithms. Is this a good development for Americas small... View Details

2016
Article

Do External Labor Market Job Switches Affect the Gender Compensation Gap?

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Eric Lin

This paper investigates how external mobility influences the gender compensation gap for job switching executives. Using proprietary data for 2,034 executive placements from a global search firm, we find job switching narrows the gender gap by 45%, from 11% to 6%. We... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Gender