Publications

2023
Working Paper

Complexity and Time

By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea

We provide experimental evidence that core intertemporal choice anomalies -- including extreme short-run impatience, structural estimates of present bias, hyperbolicity and transitivity violations -- are driven by complexity rather than time or risk preferences. First,... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Motivation and Incentives

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

there was the coronavirus, which pulled us apart. Made us-- we made decisions that permanently. Look, I mean, our campus isn't what it used to be. I came here in the fall of 2019 and I had lunch with colleagues. And I saw a lot of... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

April 2016 (Revised June 2017)
Teaching Note

Dollar General Bids for Family Dollar

By: Jonas Heese, Paula A. Price and Suraj Srinivasan

In spring 2015, Dollar General CEO Rick Dreiling was looking ahead to retiring at year's end but worried about ensuring continued growth for the company he had built since 2008 into a market leader in the U.S. discount retail world. Dollar General operated over 11,500... View Details

Keywords: Dollar General; Family Dollar; Dollar Tree; Antitrust; Board Of Directors; Activist Investors; Federal Trade Commission; Acquisition; Valuation; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry

November 2015 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Dollar General Bids for Family Dollar

By: Jonas Heese, Paula A. Price, Suraj Srinivasan and David Lane

In spring 2015, Dollar General's CEO Rick Dreiling was looking ahead to retiring at year's end but worried about ensuring continued growth for the company he had built since 2008 into a market leader in the U.S. discount retail world. Dollar General operated over... View Details

Keywords: Dollar General; Family Dollar; Dollar Tree; Antitrust; Board Of Directors; Activist Investors; Federal Trade Commission; Acquisition; Valuation; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; United States

On August 24, 2006, the "Enterprise 2.0" entry in the Web-based encyclopedia... View Details

August 2019
Background Note

Note on Shared Ownership

By: Ethan Bernstein and Nick Rekenthaler

While several tactics can drive company performance by instilling a sense of shared ownership among employees, perhaps the most direct is to actually share ownership with employees. Many public and private companies across industries have done just that, and studies... View Details

Keywords: Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Human Resources; Employees; Human Capital; Ownership; Cooperative Ownership; Employee Ownership; Customer Ownership; Governance

Article

Collection, Exploration and Analysis of Crowdfunding Social Networks

By: Miao Cheng, Anand Sriramulu, Sudarshan Muralidhar, Boon Thau Loo, Laura Huang and Po-Ling Loh

Crowdfunding is a recent financing phenomenon that is gaining wide popularity as a means for startups to raise seed funding for their companies. This paper presents our initial results at understanding this phenomenon using an exploratory data driven approach. We have... View Details

February 2014 (Revised April 2015)
Case

Go Beyond Investing

By: Lynda Applegate, Vincent Dessain, Emilie Billaud and Daniela Beyersdorfer

In 2013, Brigitte Baumann, founder of the Pan-European angel investing provider Go Beyond Investing, reflected on the evolution of her venture and the way forward. Her company, which offered deal flow and training to novice and experienced angel investors and ran... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Investment; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Leadership; Financial Services Industry; Europe; Switzerland

November 1992 (Revised June 1993)
Case

International Paper (A)

Concerns the decision of International Paper, the world's largest pulp and paper corporation, about when to adopt the provisions of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 106 (SFAS 106), "Employers' Accounting for Postretirement Benefits Other than Pensions." SFAS... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Compensation and Benefits; Pulp and Paper Industry

2011
Working Paper

The First Deal: The Division of Founder Equity in New Ventures

By: Thomas F. Hellmann and Noam Wasserman

This paper examines the division of founder shares in entrepreneurial ventures, focusing on the decision of whether or not to divide the shares equally among all founders. To motivate the empirical analysis we develop a simple theory of costly bargaining, where... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Fairness; Equity; Managerial Roles; Negotiation Deal; Ownership Stake; Value

Read Now

21 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 21, 2010

aggregate the "information" and "communication" components together. We show theoretically and empirically that this is problematic. Information and communication technologies have very different effects on the View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2023
Article

Discerning Saints: Moralization of Intrinsic Motivation and Selective Prosociality at Work

By: Mijeong Kwon, Julia Lee Cunningham and Jon M. Jachimowicz

Intrinsic motivation has received widespread attention as a predictor of positive work outcomes, including employees’ prosocial behavior. In the current research, we offer a more nuanced view by proposing that intrinsic motivation does not uniformly increase prosocial... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Moral Sensibility; Employees

January 2009 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Live Nation Faces the Music

By: Stephen P. Bradley, Frank Cespedes and Kerry Herman

In 2008, concert producer and promoter Live Nation faces a decision about its strategy in light of the tumultuous changes in the music industry and the increasing power of the major artists. As the music business once again recreates itself in response to new... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Music Entertainment; Five Forces Framework; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Music Industry; Service Industry

May 2016 (Revised August 2022)
Case

RegionFly: Cutting Costs in the Airline Industry

By: Susanna Gallani and Eva Labro

RegionFly is a small, private airline specializing in ultra-premium services. Founded shortly after the "Golden Age of airline travel," RegionFly's financial performance had been strong for several decades. More recently, however, the results have taken a downward... View Details

Keywords: Recession; Downsizing; Profitability; Cost Management; Profit; Luxury; Competitive Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Divisions; Logistics; Decision Making; Strategic Planning; Air Transportation Industry