Publications

October 2013
Case

Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports eBusiness Division

By: David A. Garvin and Michael A. Roberto

Describes a senior management team's strategic decision-making process. The division president faces three options for redesigning the process to address several key concerns. The president has extensive quantitative and qualitative data about the process to guide him... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Management Teams; Performance Improvement; Planning; Mathematical Methods; Strategy

2018
Chapter

The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Paul Verdin

Despite discussion in the management literature about agile organizations or learning organizations, many large organizations are top-down, slow to change, and fraught with obstacles to learning. We describe “strategy-as-learning” to contrast with the traditional... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Learning; Safety; Organizational Culture; Performance Consistency

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2015
Article

International Trade, Multinational Activity, and Corporate Finance

By: C. Fritz Foley and Kalina Manova

An emerging new literature brings unique ideas from corporate finance to the study of international trade and investment. Insights about differences in the development of financial institutions across countries, the role of financial constraints, and the use of... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Investment; Trade; Corporate Finance

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May 1990 (Revised October 1993)
Case

Nova Chemical Corporation

A diversified chemical company must decide whether to sell its basic chemicals division and expand the specialty chemicals division. View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Business Divisions; Decision Making; Chemical Industry

June 2013
Article

Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns

By: Robin Greenwood and Samuel G. Hanson

We show that the credit quality of corporate debt issuers deteriorates during credit booms, and that this deterioration forecasts low excess returns to corporate bondholders. The key insight is that changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Bonds; Forecasting and Prediction; Credit

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14 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

New Agenda for Corporate Accountability Reporting

community activists? When and how does such reporting affect how managers make decisions in ways that increase or decrease shareholder value? What are the main welfare effects of corporate accountability... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting; Energy; Utilities

2010
Working Paper

Corporate Governance and Internal Capital Markets

We exploit an exogenous shock to corporate ownership structures created by a recent tax reform in Germany to explore the link between corporate governance and internal capital markets. We find that firms with more concentrated ownership are less diversified and have... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Capital Markets; Corporate Governance; Taxation; Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Diversification; Germany

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April 2005 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Change at Whirlpool Corporation (A)

By: Jan W. Rivkin, Dorothy A. Leonard and Gary Hamel

In 1998, the CEO of Whirlpool Corp. decides to change the company's strategy significantly to escape an increasingly unattractive "stalemate" in the appliance industry. The change he proposes involves a fundamental shift in the company's focus--from manufacturing to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Competitive Advantage; Strategic Planning; Production; Brands and Branding; Management Teams; Consumer Products Industry; United States

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Shareholders Key to Corporate Reform

correct the underlying weaknesses. When it comes to corporate governance, for too long we have relied on the first approach. It's time to take a deeper look, see where the stressors in the system lie, and commit to structural reforms. In... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia A. Montgomery & Rhonda Kaufman

01 Feb 1997
News

Leading the Way In Negotiation and Decision Making

chair of the Negotiation and Decision Making unit. Indeed, the field has grown so important that in 1994 HBS became the first major business school to require a full negotiation course for MBAs. In that popular new course, which draws on... View Details

Keywords: Judith A. Ross

August 2009
Case

SK Telecom: Pursuing Happiness through Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Christopher Marquis, Kwang Y. Ryu, Philip H. Mirvis and Bobbi Thomason

Since 2006, SK Telecom has worked to develop strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that are aligned with its business operations and corporate mission. The case tracks the original assessment process the company went through and successive... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; Telecommunications Industry; South Korea

January 2008 (Revised February 2008)
Case

Restructuring at Nova Chemical Corporation

Management of a diversified chemicals company faces two financial decisions: whether to finance a major investment in new production facilities for its rapidly expanding Environmental Products Division, and whether to sell a more slowly growing non-specialty chemicals... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Decision Choices and Conditions; Chemicals; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Finance; Chemical Industry

October 1997 (Revised May 1998)
Case

Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division

By: David A. Garvin and Michael Roberto

Describes a senior management team's strategic decision-making process. The division president faces three options for redesigning the process to address several key concerns. The president has extensive quantitative and qualitative data about the process to guide him... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Management Teams; Performance Improvement; Planning; Mathematical Methods; Strategy

March 2013 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Corporate Solutions at Jones Lang LaSalle (2001) (A)

By: Ranjay Gulati and Luciana Silvestri

This case describes the strategic and organizational challenges that Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) faced at the turn of the millennium. Until then, JLL sold piecemeal commercial real estate services to its corporate clients, who maintained relationships with a variety of... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Strategy; Integration; Real Estate Industry; North America; South America; Central America

2012
Case

Qingdao TGOOD Electric Corporation

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Zheng Xiaoming, Chen Hao and Hong Zhang

Founded in 2004, TGOOD is now the largest specialized developer and producer of cubicle-type transformation and distribution equipment in China, with the main products of outdoor cubicle-type power equipment supplemented by indoor switchgear cabinets, offered mainly to... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Human Resource Management; Strategy; China; China

December 2003 (Revised April 2005)
Course Overview Note

Corporate Strategy: Course Note for Instructors

By: Bharat N. Anand

Introduces students to the concerns that impact a firm's choice of strategy, scope, and organization and assists in three central tasks that comprise the typical decision problem: diagnosing the sources of corporate advantage, evaluating the limits to such advantage,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy

September 2024
Case

TechEnergy Ventures: Innovating Through Corporate Venture Capital

By: Rebecca Karp and Lena Duchene

This case examines TechEnergy Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of the Techint Group, and its role in scaling innovation within the energy sector. Founded in 2021, TechEnergy Ventures operates with a mandate to invest in disruptive technologies to... View Details