Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,695)
- Faculty Publications (292)
- September 2011 (Revised February 2013)
- Case
Trucost: Valuing Corporate Environmental Impacts
By: Michael W. Toffel and Stephanie van Sice
Trucost provided corporate environmental performance data and analysis to institutional investors and corporate managers, but after operating for a decade had yet to achieve profitability. Trucost was struggling to effectively differentiate its high quality products... View Details
- September 2011
- Module Note
Orientation to Leadership Intelligence Days, 2011
By: Joshua D. Margolis and Anthony J. Mayo
Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details
- June 2011 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
Sephora Direct: Investing in Social Media, Video, and Mobile
By: Elie Ofek and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details
- June 28, 2011
- Article
Using Implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates
By: Katherine L Milkman, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We evaluate the results of a field experiment designed to measure the effect of prompts to form implementation intentions on realized behavioral outcomes. The outcome of interest is influenza vaccination receipt at free on-site clinics offered by a large firm to its... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity: An Open Innovation Analysis
By: Andrew A. King and Karim R. Lakhani
Technological advancement and innovation requires the integration of both external knowledge and internal inventiveness. In this paper, we unpack the concept of absorptive capacity and separately explore the effect of different types of prior experience on the capacity... View Details
- January – February 2011
- Article
How to Design a Winning Business Model
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart
Most executives believe that competing through business models is critical for success, but few have come to grips with how best to do so. One common mistake is enterprises' unwavering focus on creating innovative models and evaluating their efficacy in standalone... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Lawful but Corrupt: Gaming and the Problem of Institutional Corruption in the Private Sector
This paper describes how the gaming of society's rules by corporations contributes to the problem of institutional corruption in the world of business. "Gaming" in its various forms involves the use of technically legal means to subvert the intent of society's rules in... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
Learning from Customers: Individual and Organizational Effects in Outsourced Radiological Services
By: Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
The ongoing fragmentation of work has resulted in a narrowing of tasks into smaller pieces that can be sent outside the organization and, in many instances, around the world. This trend is shifting the boundaries of organizations and leading to increased outsourcing.... View Details
- October 2010
- Article
The Emerging Capital Market for Nonprofits
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Allen S. Grossman
Many of our largest and most successful companies today did not exist 50 years ago. During this same time interval, companies that ranked among top in the 1960s have disappeared, been merged out of existence, or become much smaller presences in the U.S. industrial... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries
By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger and Andrew F. Newman
We study how trade policy affects firms' ownership structures. We embed an incomplete contracts model of vertical integration choices into a standard perfectly-competitive international trade framework. Integration decisions are driven by a trade-off between the... View Details
- May 2010
- Article
Bye Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels
By: Anita Elberse
Fueled by digital distribution, unbundling is prevalent in many information industries. What is the effect of this unbundling on sales? And what bundle characteristics drive this effect? I empirically examine these questions in the context of the music industry, using... View Details
- May 2010
- Article
Modern Management: Good for the Environment or Just Hot Air?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Ralf Martin and Raffaella Sadun
We use an innovative methodology to measure management practices in over 300 manufacturing firms in the U.K. We then match this management data to production and energy usage information for establishments owned by these firms. We find that establishments in better... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Measuring and Managing Macrofinancial Risk and Financial Stability: A New Framework
By: Dale F. Gray, Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie
This paper proposes a new approach to improve the way central banks can analyze and manage the financial risks of a national economy. It is based on the modern theory and practice of contingent claims analysis (CCA), which is successfully used today at the level of... View Details
- Article
Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We present a survey of recent contributions in empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries... View Details
Keywords: Economics; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Geographic Location; Motivation and Incentives; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Competition; Human Capital; Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Multinational Firms and Management; India; Brazil; United States
- March 2010
- Article
The Desire to Win: The Effects of Competitive Arousal on Motivation and Behavior
By: Deepak Malhotra
The paper theoretically elaborates and empirically investigates the "competitive arousal" model of decision making, which argues that elements of the strategic environment (e.g., head-to-head rivalry and time pressure) can fuel competitive motivations and behavior.... View Details
- 2009
- Other Paper
Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries
By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Andrew F. Newman and Harald Fadinger
We examine how trade policy affects firms' organizational choices. We embed a model of firms' vertical integration decisions into a standard perfectly-competitive international trade framework. In the model, integration decisions are driven by a trade-off... View Details
- October 2009
- Case
Low-k Dielectrics at IBM
By: Willy C. Shih and Giovanni Carraro
Innovations at the frontiers of technology carry enormous risk of making wrong choices. This case examines a decision made by IBM in its semiconductor process technology strategy: a material to use as a dielectric insulator in its leading edge silicon chip technology.... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Systemic Risk and the Refinancing Ratchet Effect
By: Amir E. Khandani, Andrew W. Lo and Robert C. Merton
The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market—rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities—led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Systemic Risk and the Refinancing Ratchet Effect
By: Amir E. Khandani, Andrew W. Lo and Robert C. Merton
The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market-rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities-led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is... View Details
- Article
Mission-Driven Governance
By: Raymond Fisman, Rakesh Khurana and Edward Martenson
The purpose of this paper is to provide a useful, easily applied theory of governance performance. The existing model is fundamentally adversarial, rooted in the paradigm of principal-agent conflict. At its base is an image of governance as a never-ending struggle... View Details