Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,489)
- Faculty Publications (326)
- April 2011 (Revised July 2014)
- Case
Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.: Driving Change Through Internal Communication
By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind
Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), confronted in 2003 with an urgent need to change how it operated externally, adopted a highly innovative approach to communicating internally. This case, set in 2010, presents an overview of the new, more interactive model of employee... View Details
- April 2011
- Article
Ethical Breakdowns: Good People often Let Bad Things Happen. Why?
By: Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel
Companies are spending a great deal of time and money to install codes of ethics, ethics training, compliance programs, and in-house watchdogs. If these efforts worked, the money would be well spent. But unethical behavior appears to be on the rise. The authors observe... View Details
- April 2011
- Article
The Emotional Impact and Behavioral Consequences of Post-M&A Integration: An Ethnographic Case Study in the Software Industry
By: David Ager
This ethnographic case study has focused in depth on one type of acquisition, that of two small, young firms (each with less than 2,000 employees and less than ten years in operation) acquired by one company in the software development industry based in the United... View Details
- March 2011 (Revised March 2012)
- Case
Fraunhofer: Innovation in Germany
By: Diego A. Comin, J. Gunnar Trumbull and Kerry Yang
Fraunhofer is one of the largest applied research organizations in the world. With 17,000 employees and a 1.6 billion euros budget, Fraunhofer has 60 institutes in Germany that cover most fields of science. The case examines the consequences that Fraunhofer has for the... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Risky Trust: How Multi-entity Teams Develop Trust in a High Risk Endeavor
By: Faaiza Rashid and Amy C. Edmondson
This paper explicates the challenge of risky trust, which we define as trust that exists between parties vulnerable to high economic, legal, or reputational risks at individual or organizational levels. Drawing from analyses of data collected in a grounded case study... 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
- 2010
- Working Paper
Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster
By: Nelson P. Repenning and Rebecca Henderson
Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details
- September – October 2010
- Article
The Effect of Product Variety and Inventory Levels on Retail Sales: A Longitudinal Study
By: Zeynep Ton and Ananth Raman
We examine the effects of product variety and inventory levels on store sales. Using four years of data from stores of a large retailer, we show that increases in product variety and inventory levels are both associated with higher sales. We also show that increasing... View Details
- August 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Supplement
Urban Water Partners (A) (CW)
By: Karthik Ramanna and George Serafeim
The case explores a new venture to bring clean water to Tanzanians who otherwise cannot access or afford it. Management has enough money to get their company through August 2010, but needs more capital. An HBS alum is interested in investing in the company;... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised March 2010)
- Case
Transforming ASUSTeK: Breaking from the Past
By: Willy C. Shih, Ho Howard Yu and Hung-Chang Chiu
What happens when an original design manufacturer (ODM) firm tries to transform itself into a branded goods seller? The case traces the evolution of ASUSTeK from a motherboard supplier, to an ODM of desktop and notebook PCs, through its split into three companies that... View Details
- Article
The Cost Structure, Customer Profitability, and Retention Implications of Self-Service Distribution Channels: Evidence from Customer Behavior in an Online Banking Channel
By: Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei
This paper uses the context of online banking to investigate the consequences of employing self-service distribution channels to alter customer interactions with the firm. Using a sample of retail banking customers observed over a 30-month period at a large U.S. bank,... View Details
- winter 2009
- Journal Article
Interactivity's Unanticipated Consequences for Markets and Marketing
By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
The digital interactive transformation in marketing is not unfolding, as some thought it would, on the model of direct marketing. That model anticipated that marketing, empowered by digital media using rich profiling data, would intrude ever more deeply and more... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Operational Failures and Problem Solving: An Empirical Study of Incident Reporting
By: Julia Rose Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer and Michael W. Toffel
Operational failures occur in all industries with consequences that range from minor inconveniences to major catastrophes. Many organizations have implemented incident reporting systems to highlight actual and potential operational failures in order to encourage... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Policy Bundling to Overcome Loss Aversion: A Method for Improving Legislative Outcomes
By: Katherine L Milkman, Mary Carol Mazza, Lisa L. Shu, Chia-Jung Tsay and Max H. Bazerman
Policies that would create net benefits for society but would also involve costs frequently lack the necessary support to be enacted because losses loom larger than gains psychologically. To reduce this harmful consequence of loss aversion, we propose a new type of... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act
By: Dhammika Dharmapala, C. Fritz Foley and Kristin J. Forbes
This paper analyzes the impact on firm behavior of the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, which provided a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals. The analysis controls for endogeneity and omitted variable bias by using... View Details
- 22 Apr 2009
- Other Presentation
Redefining Global Health Care: Narrowing the Gap Between Aspiration and Action
By: Michael E. Porter and Jim Yong Kim
Gaps in health financing, human resources, and access to care have fatal consequences for millions in developing countries. View Details
- March 2009
- Article
The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing
By: F. Ferri and Tatiana Sandino
We examine the economic consequences of more than 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004, the first case in which the SEC allowed a shareholder vote on an accounting matter. Our results... View Details
- 2009
- Article
Silenced by Fear: The Nature, Sources, and Consequences of Fear at Work
By: Jennifer Kish Gephart, James R. Detert, Linda K. Trevino and Amy C. Edmondson
In every organization, individual members have the potential to speak up about important issues, but a growing body of research suggests that they often remain silent instead, out of fear of negative personal and professional consequences. In this chapter, we draw on... View Details
Keywords: Organizations; Working Conditions; Research; Emotions; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Theory; Behavior
- January 2009
- Journal Article
The Fiscal Impact of High-skilled Emigration: Flows of Indians to the U.S.
By: Mihir Desai, D. Kapur, J. McHale and K Rogers
Easing immigration restrictions for the highly skilled in developed countries portends a future of increased human capital outflows from developing countries. The myriad consequences of these developments for developing countries include the direct loss of the fiscal... View Details
- December 2008
- Article
The Credit Crisis of 2008: Causes, Consequences and Implications for India
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
This article gives a brief overview of the causes and consequences of the current global credit crisis. The article then discusses the benefits and potential drawbacks of real estate loan securitization in India, and what India can do to realize those benefits while... View Details