Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,759)
- Faculty Publications (285)
- September 2009 (Revised May 2011)
- Supplement
Acumen Fund: Measurement in Impact Investing (B)
By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan
As Acumen Fund, a global venture philanthropy firm, moves forward with an investment portfolio exceeding $22 million, it runs into two critical measurement problems. First, how should it track the performance of each investment when its interest is not just the bottom... View Details
- September 2009 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
Genzyme Center (A)
By: Michael W. Toffel and Aldo Sesia
Genzyme Corporation is in the midst of planning its new corporate headquarters, which incorporates many innovative green building features. After learning that the building as planned would likely earn a LEED Silver rating, an intermediate score in the LEED green... View Details
Keywords: Green Building; LEED Rating System; Economic And Environmental Performance; Program Evaluation And Assessment; Tradeoffs Between Process- And Performance Standards; Buildings and Facilities; Business Headquarters; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Standards; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Improvement; Environmental Sustainability; Pollutants; Green Technology Industry
- September 2009 (Revised December 2009)
- Supplement
Genzyme Center (B)
By: Michael W. Toffel and Aldo Sesia
Genzyme Corporation is in the midst of planning its new corporate headquarters, which incorporates many innovative green building features. After learning that the building as planned would likely earn a LEED Silver rating, an intermediate score in the LEED green... View Details
- September 2009 (Revised December 2009)
- Supplement
Genzyme Center (C)
By: Michael W. Toffel and Aldo Sesia
Genzyme Corporation is in the midst of planning its new corporate headquarters, which incorporates many innovative green building features. After learning that the building as planned would likely earn a LEED Silver rating, an intermediate score in the LEED green... 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
- 2009
- Chapter
Evaluating the Impact of SA8000 Certification
By: Michael J. Hiscox, Claire Schwartz and Michael W. Toffel
SA 8000, along with other types of certification standards and corporate codes of conduct, represents a new form of private governance of working conditions, initiated and implemented by companies, labor unions, and non-governmental activist groups. Whether these codes... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
Virginia Mason Medical Center (VM) hired Owens & Minor (O&M) as its alpha vendor for medical/surgical supplies in 2004. By 2005, O&M was performing Just-in-Time and Low Unit of Measure services for VM, but they believed the pricing model in the industry was outdated.... View Details
- Article
How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?
By: Aaron K. Chatterji, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
Ratings of corporations' environmental activities and capabilities influence billions of dollars of "socially responsible" investments as well as some consumers, activists, and potential employees. In one of the first studies to assess these ratings, we examine how... View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
Corporate Honesty and Business Education: A Behavioral Model
By: Rakesh Khurana and Herbert Gintis
Since the mid-1970s neoclassical economic theory has dominated business school thinking and teaching in dealing with the nature of human motivation. However valuable in understanding competitive product and financial markets, neoclassical economic theory employs an... View Details
- September 2008
- Article
Firm Heterogeneity and Credit Risk Diversification
By: Samuel G. Hanson, M. Hashem Pesaran and Til Schuermann
This paper examines the impact of neglected heterogeneity on credit risk. We show that neglecting heterogeneity in firm returns and/or default thresholds leads to under estimation of expected losses (EL), and its effect on portfolio risk is ambiguous. Once EL is... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
New Framework for Measuring and Managing Macrofinancial Risk and Financial Stability
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
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Future of Social Enterprise
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Herman B. Leonard and Susan McDonald
The Future of Social Enterprise considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. We trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis
By: Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak and Carliss Y. Baldwin
A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
Market Reactions to Export Subsidies
By: M. A. Desai and James R. Hines Jr.
This paper analyzes the economic impact of export subsidies by investigating stock price reactions to a critical event in 1997. On November 18, 1997, the European Union announced its intention to file a complaint before the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that... View Details
- January – February 2008
- Article
Managing the Impact of Employee Turnover on Performance: The Role of Process Conformance
By: Zeynep Ton and Robert S. Huckman
We examine the impact of employee turnover on operating performance in settings that require high levels of knowledge exploitation. Using 48 months of turnover data from U.S. stores of a major retail chain, we find that, on average, employee turnover is associated with... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Impact of Component Modularity on Design Evolution: Evidence from the Software Industry
By: Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak and Carliss Y. Baldwin
Much academic work asserts a relationship between the design of a complex system and the manner in which this system evolves over time. In particular, designs which are modular in nature are argued to be more "evolvable," in that these designs facilitate making... View Details
- November 2007
- Article
Innovation and Incentives: Evidence from Corporate R&D
By: Josh Lerner and Julie Wulf
Beginning in the late 1980s, American corporations began increasingly linking the compensation of central research personnel to the economic objectives of the corporation. This paper examines the impact of the shifting compensation of the heads of corporate research... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
New Framework for Measuring and Managing Macrofinancial Risk and Financial Stability
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
- October 2007 (Revised December 2008)
- Case
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group: The Human Capital Strategy
By: Boris Groysberg and Eliot Sherman
Describes the development and implementation of one of the world's most advanced human resource management support systems. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group is a global banking leader that began implementing a strategy for measuring the impact of human capital on... View Details