Publications

August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Revenue Recognition at HBP

By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi

In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details

Keywords: Accrual Accounting; Budgets and Budgeting; Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Publishing Industry; Education Industry; United States

29 Jul 2020
Video

Sizwe Nxasana

Sizwe Nxasana, the founding partner of SizweNtsalubaGobodo, the largest Black accounting firm in South Africa, as well as the former CEO of Telkom and FirstRand Group, describes how his accounting firm... View Details

16 Aug 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The International Politics of IFRS Harmonization

Keywords: by Karthik Ramanna; Accounting

19 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

The History of Beauty

impact of television both in helping define beauty and in developing the industry? A: During the late 1940s, television spread rapidly across the United States, and soon afterwards elsewhere. Television offered remarkable new... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics

Spring 2021
Article

Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19

By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang

The coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp market decline while raising heterogeneous responses across companies related to their employees, supply chain, and repurposing of operations to provide needed products and services. We study whether during the 2020 COVID-19... View Details

SSRN

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August 2009
Case

The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien, Chintay Shih and Jack Chang

When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and... View Details

Keywords: Disruption; Customer Relationship Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cost; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Production; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan

Research Summary

Strategy, Governance and Valuation

By: Krishna G. Palepu

Professor Palepu's current research focuses on strategy and governance. In the area of strategy, his recent focus has been on the globalization of emerging markets, particularly India and China, and the resulting opportunities and challenges for western multinationals... View Details

16 Feb 2023
HBS Case

ESG Activists Met the Moment at ExxonMobil, But Did They Succeed?

The impact-investment hedge fund Engine No. 1 made a big splash in May 2021 when it managed to get three nominees elected to the ExxonMobil board of directors. It was an open effort to prod the oil giant toward renewable energy and test whether activist investing could... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Financial Services

25 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

The Economic Cost of Physician Burnout

an organization level, that number comes out to $7,600 per physician per year. Most of that cost, they determined, comes from turnover, which had five times the impact of reduced hours, due to all of the associated costs of filling a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

August 2009
Supplement

The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (CW)

By: Willy C. Shih

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Disruption; Customer Focus and Relationships; Cost; Cost Management; Business or Company Management; Time Management; Network Effects; Production; Hardware; Manufacturing Industry; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan

31 May 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Stock Price Synchronicity and Material Sustainability Information

Keywords: by Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann, and George Serafeim; Accounting; Accounting

Vikram Gandhi

Vikram S. Gandhi is the Gerald P. Kaminsky Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the General Management Unit. He has developed and teaches two new courses in the Elective Curriculum of the MBA Program. The first is a finance and investing course, Sustainable... View Details

Keywords: financial services

July 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Revenue Recognition at Stride Funding: Making Sense of Revenues for a Fintech Startup

By: Paul M. Healy and Jung Koo Kang

The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Governance Compliance; Accrual Accounting; Financial Services Industry; United States

July–August 2024
Article

Disclosing Downstream Emissions

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

An increasing number of companies are using the E-liability carbon-accounting method as an important tool for tracking progress toward reducing global emissions in their supply chains. The system does not require formal accounting for downstream emissions—those... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Environmental Accounting; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Disclosure; Environmental Sustainability

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23 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

Financial Reporting Goes Global

their time considering the implications of a set of global standards. My work, and that of others in the area, shows that global differences in accounting have important economic impacts. For example, in my peer-reviewed research I have... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell; Accounting; Accounting

23 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

As Climate Fears Mount, More Investors Turn to 'ESG' Funds Despite Few Rules

Investor interest in social responsibility has skyrocketed in the past three years, even as US regulations to hold companies accountable remain in flux and the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) label itself draws backlash. Investors are willing to pay a... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

May 2014 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Unilever's Lifebuoy in India: Implementing the Sustainability Plan

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Unilever's new Global Brand VP must not only revitalize Lifebuoy soap's sagging market performance, but simultaneously impact the health of one billion people worldwide. The latter challenge comes from Unilever's new CEO who has introduced the Unilever Sustainable... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Management; Corporate Social Responsibility; Strategy Implementation; Marketing Strategy; Mission And Purpose; Change Management; International Business; Global; Fast-moving Consumer Goods; Soap; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Health Care and Treatment; Environmental Sustainability; Global Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Health Industry; India