Publications

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17 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees

says Hall, paraphrasing Albert Einstein. It’s hard to do, but Hall advises building into any incentive plan values like teamwork or culture or customer relations that are difficult to measure. This can be accomplished by making subjective... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

28 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Making the Decision to Franchise (or not)

Organizational Design And Performance The impact of organizational design choices on performance will be considered in other papers; Campbell notes that early evidence indicates that unit sales are lower for... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

July 2005 (Revised September 2016)
Case

24 Hour Fitness (A): The Rise, 1983–2004

By: John R. Wells, Elizabeth A. Raabe and Gabriel Ellsworth

In October 2004, Mark S. Mastrov, CEO of 24 Hour Fitness, reflected on how far his company had come in just over 20 years. From humble beginnings in 1983 in San Leandro, California, 24 Hour Fitness had grown to become the largest privately-owned health-club chain in... View Details

Keywords: 24 Hour Fitness; Mark Mastrov; Health Clubs; Fitness; Gyms; Chain; Weight Loss; Exercise; Personal Training; Retention; Sales Force Compensation; Incentive Systems; Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Private Equity; Revenue; Geographic Scope; Multinational Firms and Management; Nutrition; Business History; Employees; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Human Capital; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Service Operations; Private Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Sales; Salesforce Management; Sports; Strategy; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Segmentation; Information Technology; Internet; Technology Platform; Web; Web Sites; Capital Structure; Performance; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; United States; California; San Francisco

2021
Working Paper

Governance Transparency and Firm Value: Evidence from Korean Chaebols

By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin and Charles C.Y. Wang

We examine Korean business groups' transition from circular-shareholding structures to (relatively simple) pyramidal-shareholding structures between 2011 and 2018. When firms were removed from ownership loops, chaebol families' control or incentive conflicts in them... View Details

Keywords: Business Groups; Cross Shareholding; Circular Shareholding; Pyramidal Ownership; Governance Transparency; Ownership Transparency; Earnings Response Coefficient; Business Conglomerates; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Business Earnings

SSRN

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11 Oct 2007
Working Paper Summaries

How Firms Respond to Being Rated

Keywords: by Aaron K. Chatterji & Michael W. Toffel

02 Nov 2017
HBS Seminar

Florian Ederer, Yale University

Research Summary

Executive Compensation

Professor Meulbroek is investigating the gap between what equity-linked compensation costs the firm and what it is worth to managers. This gap arises because such compensation prevents managers from fully diversifying their holdings, so managers must bear firm-specific... View Details

Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk-assessment and lending decisions. We first show that, while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more... View Details

July 2016
Case

'Golden Leash' Pay for Directors at The Dow Chemical Company

By: Ian Gow, Suraj Srinivasan and Neeraj Goyal

In November 2014, The Dow Chemical Company was faced with the prospect of a proxy battle with prominent hedge fund and activist investor Third Point Management. The activist had criticized Dow’s recent performance and advocated that the company split itself to maximize... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Investment Activism; Chemical Industry

Brian J. Hall is the Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He served as the Unit Head for the Negotiation, Organizations and Markets (NOM) Unit for 14 years. Previously, he was an assistant professor of economics in the... View Details

Keywords: accounting industry; consulting; consumer products; executive search; financial services; high technology; investment banking industry; management consulting; private equity (LBO funds); restaurant; sports; venture capital industry

February 2011 (Revised April 2012)
Case

Braddock Industries, Inc.

By: William E. Fruhan

This case examines the drivers of economic value creation for shareholders, and how these drivers are reflected in various incentive compensation programs for management. The case also looks at how the economic performance of business units can be evaluated using... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Investment; Executive Compensation; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Evaluation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Motivation and Incentives; Value Creation

January 2020
Case

SK Group: Social Progress Credits

By: George Serafeim, Ethan Rouen and David Freiberg

SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000, SK was tightly knit into the fabric of Korean society. SK viewed their future success as contingent upon the strength... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

By: Susanna Gallani

In her current research, Professor Gallani draws on economic and sociological theories to analyze the design of incentive and performance management systems. She explores the effectiveness of monetary and non-monetary incentives, feedback systems, and types of... View Details

April 2021
Article

Evaluating Firm-Level Expected-Return Proxies: Implications for Estimating Treatment Effects

By: Charles M.C. Lee, Eric C. So and Charles C.Y. Wang

We introduce a parsimonious framework for choosing among alternative expected-return proxies (ERPs) when estimating treatment effects. By comparing ERPs’ measurement-error variances in the cross section and in time series, we provide new evidence on the relative... View Details

Keywords: Implied Cost Of Capital; Expected Returns; Cost of Capital; Investment Return; Performance Evaluation

October 2017 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Medicetra Medtech Company, Inc.

By: Doug J. Chung

Medicetra MedTech Company is a dental equipment distributor, and senior management is deciding whether to implement a new incentive compensation program for the sales force. For many years, Medicetra had paid salespeople only a fixed salary. Although the current plan... View Details

Keywords: Sales Compensation; Sales Force Retention; Employee Fairness; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Retention; Fairness; Performance Improvement

Article

CDS Trading and Nonrelationship Lending Dynamics

By: Jung Koo Kang, Christopher Williams and Regina Wittenberg-Moerman

We investigate how credit default swaps (CDSs) affect lenders’ incentives to initiate new lending relationships. We predict that CDSs reduce adverse selection that nonrelationship lead arrangers face when competing for loans. Consistently, we find that a loan is... View Details

Keywords: Credit Default Swaps; CDS Market; Non-relationship Lending; Debt Contracts; Adverse Selection; Lending Monitoring; Cross-selling

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