Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,240)
- Faculty Publications (657)
- January 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
People Analytics at McKinsey
By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Olivia Hull
A private equity–backed fast food chain has hired McKinsey’s new People Analytics group to help it improve performance. As the final client workshop approaches, Associate Partner Alex DiLeonardo ponders the best way to present the team’s findings, especially those that... View Details
Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Customer Relationship Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Cost Management; Human Resources; Employees; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Measurement and Metrics; Performance; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; Consulting Industry; Service Industry
- January 2018
- Technical Note
Business at the Base of the Pyramid: Understanding Impact and Impact Evaluations
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg
Unlike financial success, there is no clear consensus regarding how best to define and measure social impact. This HBS Technical Note written for students of the HBS MBA course Business at the Base of the Pyramid (BBOP), offers readers pragmatic perspectives on how the... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Do Banks Have an Edge?
By: Juliane Begenau and Erik Stafford
Overall, no! We show that the level and time series variation in cash flows for most bank activities are well matched by capital market portfolios with similar interest rate and credit risk to what banks report to hold. Ignoring operating expenses, bank loans earn high... View Details
Keywords: Banks; Market Efficiency; Bank Capital; Bank Debt; CAPM; Banking; Bank Deposits; Bank Funding Advantage; Leverage; Maturity Transformation; Replicating Portfolio; Efficiency; Banks and Banking; Capital Markets; Performance Evaluation; Performance Efficiency; Banking Industry; United States
- December 2017 (Revised December 2018)
- Case
OCP Group
By: Kristin Fabbe, Forest Reinhardt, Natalie Kindred and Alpana Thapar
This case explores the strategy of OCP Group, the 95% state-owned Moroccan firm charged with managing the North African country’s vast reserves of phosphate. Phosphate was one of the most vital macronutrients for plant health, along with nitrogen and potassium, and... View Details
- Article
Scenario Generation for Long Run Interest Rate Risk Assessment
By: Robert F. Engle, Guillaume Roussellet and Emil N. Siriwardane
We propose a statistical model of the term structure of U.S. treasury yields tailored for long-term probability-based scenario generation and forecasts. Our model is easy to estimate and is able to simultaneously reproduce the positivity, persistence, and factor... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
The Real Exchange Rate, Innovation and Productivity
By: Laura Alfaro, Alejandro Cuñat, Harald Fadinger and Yanping Liu
We evaluate manufacturing firms' responses to changes in the real exchange rate (RER) using detailed firm-level data for a large set of countries for the period 2001–2010. We uncover the following stylized facts about regional variation of manufacturing firms'... View Details
- November 7, 2017
- Article
Temporary Sharing Prompts Unrestrained Disclosures That Leave Lasting Negative Impressions
By: Reto Hofstetter, Roland Rüppell and Leslie John
With the advent of social media, the impressions people make on others are based increasingly on their digital disclosures. Yet digital disclosures can come back to haunt, making it challenging for people to manage the impressions they make. In field and online... View Details
- October 2017 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Coaching Makena Lane
By: Ethan Bernstein and Om Lala
Makena Lane has a gift for producing results, even in the challenging retail context of the 2010s, but she also has a knack for “ruffling some feathers” in the process. Recruited to a Fortune 500 grocery and pharmacy retailer after climbing to Associate Principal in... View Details
Keywords: Executive Coaching; Employee Promotions; Career Transition From Consulting To Operating Role; 360-degree Feedback; Retail; Organizational Behavior; Personal Strategy ＆ Style; Mentoring; Coaching; Talent and Talent Management; Growth and Development; Employees; Leadership Style; Leadership Development; Management Style; Performance Evaluation; Personal Development and Career; Retail Industry; Australia; Europe; Canada; South Africa; United States; Asia
- September 2017
- Case
Blackstone's Julia Kahr at the Summit
By: Paul A. Gompers, John D. Dionne and Amram Migdal
In 2009, Blackstone, the New York-based alternative asset and financial services firm, committed to invest up to $750 million into Summit Materials, a new company in the aggregates sector (i.e., construction materials, such as crushed stone, sand, gravel, cement,... View Details
Keywords: Roll Up; Private Equity Roll Up; Aggregates; Aggregates Materials; Construction Materials; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Leveraged Buyouts; Business Growth and Maturation; Engineering; Construction; Finance; Capital; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Investment; Housing; Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Personal Development and Career; Management Teams; Planning; Problems and Challenges; Value; Valuation; Value Creation; Construction Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States
- September–October 2017
- Article
The Surprising Power of Online Experiments: Getting the Most Out of A/B and Other Controlled Tests
By: Ron Kohavi and Stefan Thomke
In the fast-moving digital world, even experts have a hard time assessing new ideas. Case in point: At Bing, a small headline change an employee proposed was deemed a low priority and shelved for months until one engineer decided to do a quick online controlled... View Details
- August 22, 2017
- Article
Find the Right Metrics for Your Sales Team
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Robert Marsh
This article reports the results of a survey of key performance indicators (KPIs) used by more than 800 sales groups across industries. The most common KPIs are closed deals and salesperson performance against quota, which, on average, firms measure monthly. But a... View Details
- July 2017 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
GM's Capital Allocation Framework
By: C. Fritz Foley, F. Katelynn Boland and Michael Lemm
In March of 2015, General Motors announced the details of a newly established capital allocation framework. This framework provided a target for return on invested capital, guidelines for capital structure choices, and policies related to payouts. Senior managers face... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth
By: Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy and Ethan Rouen
We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the... View Details
- May 2017 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
ATH Technologies (A): Making the Numbers
By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard
An exercise that takes students through five stages of growth in an entrepreneurial start-up in the medical devices industry: 1) founding, 2) growth, 3) push to profitability, 4) refocusing process, and 5) takeover by new management. At each stage, students must... View Details
Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Balancing Innovation And Control; Performance Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Profit; Geographic Location; Governance Controls; Innovation and Invention; Management Succession; Performance Evaluation; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
- May 2017
- Case
ATH Technologies: Making the Numbers
By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard
An exercise that takes students through five stages of growth in an entrepreneurial start-up in the medical devices industry: 1) founding, 2) growth, 3) push to profitability, 4) relocation process, and 5) takeover by new management. At each stage, students must... View Details
Keywords: Balancing Innovation And Control; Performance Evaluation; Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Risk Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Profit; Geographic Location; Governance Controls; Innovation and Invention; Management Succession; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
- May 2017
- Supplement
Buffer.com (B)
By: Susanna Gallani, Tiffany Y. Chang, Brian J. Hall and Jee Eun Shin
Buffer decided to release its salaries and compensation calculation formula to the public, and the public reaction was greater and more positive than they would have imagined. The company experienced both an increase in volume and a change in the kinds of inbound... View Details
Keywords: Compensation; Compensation Design; Company Values; Culture; Transparency; Attraction; Selection; Performance Measurement; Performance Measures; Performance Metrics; Startup Management; Compensation and Benefits; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics
- 2018
- Working Paper
How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Many production processes are subject to inspection to ensure they meet quality, safety, and environmental standards imposed by companies and regulators. Inspection accuracy is critical to inspections being a useful input to assessing risks, allocating quality... View Details
- April 2017
- Case
The Future of Patent Examination at the USPTO
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Sarah Mehta
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the federal government agency responsible for evaluating and granting patents and trademarks. In 2015, the USPTO employed approximately 8,000 patent examiners who granted nearly 300,000 patents to inventors. As of April... View Details
Keywords: Machine Learning; Telework; Collaborating With Unions; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Trademarks; Knowledge Sharing; Technology Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; District of Columbia
- March 2017 (Revised May 2017)
- Teaching Note
The Strategy Execution Series
By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard
This is the teaching note for the 15-module Strategy Execution series. New management tools and techniques are needed to implement strategy in the 21st century. Rapid innovation, entrepreneurial competitors, and increasingly demanding customers have radically altered... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Performance Measurement; Profit Planning; Organization Design; Profitable Growth; Management Attention; Organizational Conflict; Job Design; Business Strategy; Management Systems; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Organizational Design; Performance Evaluation; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques
- March 2017
- Article
Creativity in Unethical Behavior Attenuates Condemnation and Breeds Social Contagion: When Transgressions Seem to Create Little Harm
By: Scott S. Wiltermuth, Lynne C. Vincent and F. Gino
Across six studies, people judged creative forms of unethical behavior to be less unethical than less creative forms of unethical behavior, particularly when the unethical behaviors imposed relatively little direct harm on victims. As a result of perceiving behaviors... View Details