Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,190)
- Faculty Publications (375)
- Summer 2013
- Article
A Tale of Two Stories: Sustainability and the Quarterly Earnings Call
By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim
One of the challenges companies claim to face in making sustainability a core part of their strategy and operations is that the market does not care about sustainability, either in general or because the time frames in which it matters are too long. The response of... View Details
- 2013
- Book
Wall Street Research: Past, Present, and Future
By: Boris Groysberg and Paul M. Healy
Wall Street equity analysts provide research products and services on publicly-traded companies to institutional and retail investors to help them make more profitable investment decisions. During the last ten years Wall Street research has been battered by a series of... View Details
- June 2013
- Case
Ken Traub at American Bank Note Holographics
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Michael Norris
Ken Traub is hired as CFO for American Bank Note Holographics, the market-leading security holograph company in January 1999, but discovers on his first day that the company has misstated its financials and resigns. After consulting with the company for the next... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Managers and Market Capitalism
By: Rebecca Henderson and Karthik Ramanna
In a capitalist system based on free markets, do managers have responsibilities to the system itself? If they do, should these responsibilities shape their behavior when they are engaging in the political process in an attempt to structure the institutions of... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Non-Audit Services and Financial Reporting Quality: Evidence from 1978–1980
By: Kevin Koh, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We provide evidence for the long-standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978 to 1980. Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Do Display Ads Influence Search?: Attribution and Dynamics in Online Advertising
By: Sunil Gupta
As firms increasingly rely on online media to acquire consumers, marketing managers feel comfortable justifying higher online marketing spend by referring to online metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and cost per acquisition (CPA). However, these standard online... View Details
- February 2013 (Revised December 2015)
- Case
Groom Energy Solutions: Selling Efficiency
By: Michael W. Toffel, Kira R. Fabrizio and Stephanie van Sice
Groom Energy Solutions helps organizations reduce their energy use and costs through the implementation of energy efficiency measures, which create long-term financial and environmental benefits. With early success serving customers in the cold storage and industrial... View Details
Keywords: Groom Energy Solutions; Jon Guerster; Salem, MA; Energy Management; Energy Efficiency Paradox; Sustainability Management; Manufacturing; Cold Storage; Commercial Real Estate; Enterprise Smart Grid; Carbon Accounting; LED Lighting; Sustainability Research; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Entrepreneurship; Energy Entrepreneurship; Energy Services; Electricity; Startup; Expansion; Growth; Sustainability; Business Startups; Forecasting and Prediction; Energy Conservation; Revenue; Geographic Location; Human Resources; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Operations; Service Delivery; Strategic Planning; Science; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Society; Social Issues; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Utilities Industry; United States; Boston
- January 2013 (Revised March 2017)
- Case
CloudFlare, Inc.: Running Hot?
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden
In July 2012, the cofounders of CloudFlare, a Silicon Valley startup that protects websites and accelerates their traffic, are considering the implications of five employees' resignations over the prior three months. Was this natural attrition for a high-tech venture... View Details
Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Resignation and Termination; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; California
- January 2013 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
First Solar: CFRA's Accounting Quality Concerns
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Ian McKown Cornell
The case relates to accounting quality analysis conducted by the leading research firm Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA) on companies in the solar industry with a focus on First Solar Inc. In 2009, CFRA was concerned that First Solar, like much of the... View Details
Keywords: Accounting; Accounting Quality; Financial Accounting; Financial Statement Analysis; Accounting Fraud; Accounting Red Flags; Accounting Scandal; Risk and Uncertainty; Quality; Earnings Management; Valuation; Crime and Corruption; Financial Statements; Energy Sources; Accounting Industry; Accounting Industry; Accounting Industry
- June 2012
- Article
Decoding Inside Information
By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher Malloy and Lukasz Pomorski
Using a simple empirical strategy, we decode the information in insider trading. Exploiting the fact that insiders trade for a variety of reasons, we show that there is predictable, identifiable "routine" insider trading that is not informative for the future of firms.... View Details
- Spring 2013
- Article
Does Mandatory IFRS Adoption Improve the Information Environment?
By: Joanne Horton, George Serafeim and Ioanna Serafeim
We examine the effect of mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on firms' information environment. We find that after mandatory IFRS adoption, consensus forecast errors decrease for firms that mandatorily adopt IFRS relative to forecast... View Details
- December 2012
- Case
Trouble Brewing for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Michael Norris
In October 2011, noted hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital delivered a presentation at an investors' conference analyzing the business and accounting quality weaknesses of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Until then Green Mountain had exhibited rapid... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Fraud; Accounting Quality; Accounting Red Flags; Accounting Restatements; Accounting Scandal; Accounting Information; Financial Accounting; Financial Analysts; Financial Analysis; Financial Intermediaries; Hedge Funds; Financial Ratios; Financial Statement Analysis; Valuation Methodologies; Earnings Quality; Accounting; Quality; Earnings Management; Valuation; Crime and Corruption; Mergers and Acquisitions; Financial Reporting; Investment Funds; Financial Statements; Food and Beverage Industry
- November 2012
- Article
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management
- 2013
- Working Paper
Securities Litigation Risk for Foreign Companies Listed in the U.S.
By: Beiting Cheng, Suraj Srinivasan and Gwen Yu
We study securities litigation risk faced by foreign firms listed on U.S. exchanges. We take into account not only the propensity for foreign firms to commit violations of U.S. securities laws but also the costs that investors face when suing foreign firms. We find... View Details
- Spring 2012
- Article
The Need for Sector-Specific Materiality and Sustainability Reporting Standards
By: Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus, Jean Rogers and George Serafeim
Even though the supply of sustainability information has increased considerably in the last decade, companies are still failing to disclose material information in a comparable format. We believe this has two downsides. On the one hand, companies are not adequately... View Details
- March 2012 (Revised December 2014)
- Case
Schön Klinik: Measuring Cost and Value
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski and Jessica A. Hohman
The case illustrates how a leading German hospital group has invested deeply in the measurement of patient-level outcomes and costs, the foundations of a health care value framework. The company launches a pilot project to use time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC)... View Details
- 2012
- Chapter
The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort
By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Team Scaffolds: How Meso-Level Structures Support Role-based Coordination in Temporary Groups
By: Melissa A. Valentine and Amy C. Edmondson
This paper shows how meso-level structures support effective coordination in temporary groups. Prior research on coordination in temporary groups describes how roles encode individual responsibilities so that coordination between relative strangers is possible. We... View Details
Keywords: Fluid Personnel; Team Scaffolds; Team Effectiveness; Role-based Coordination; Multi-method; Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizational Structure; Outcome or Result; Performance Effectiveness; Groups and Teams; Networks; Behavior; Balance and Stability; Health Industry
- November 29, 2011
- Article
The Role of The Board in Creating a Sustainable Strategy
By: Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
While conceptually elegant, the belief that a corporation's role is to maximize value for shareholders is under increasing challenge as society's expectations for companies change. An equally elegant new concept that takes account of these dual pressures has yet to... View Details
Keywords: Value Creation; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Expectations; Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Practices and Processes; Decisions; Risk and Uncertainty; Cost vs Benefits; Information
- 2012
- Book
The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force That Transforms Performance
By: James Heskett
The contribution of culture to organizational performance is both substantial and quantifiable. This book presents the results of field research that demonstrates how an effective culture can account for up to half of the differential in performance between... View Details