Publications

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February 2022
Case

Toraya

By: Lauren Cohen and Akiko Kanno

Mitsuharu Kurokawa was the 18th generation leader of a family firm that produced and sold premium Japanese sweets, Toraya Confectionery Co., Ltd. He had succeeded the business from his father, Mitsuhiro Kurokawa who had led the firm for thirty years. Mitsuharu was... View Details

Keywords: Branding; Luxury Brand; Succession; Family Business; Management Succession; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Marketing; Expansion; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Customer Satisfaction; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry; Japan

Forthcoming
Article

Public Perception and Autonomous Vehicle Liability

By: Julian De Freitas, Xilin Zhou, Margherita Atzei, Shoshana Boardman and Luigi Di Lillo

The deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the accompanying societal and economic benefits will greatly depend on how much liability AV firms will have to carry for accidents involving these vehicles, which in turn impacts their insurability and associated... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Legal Liability; Insurance; Perception

Read Now

October 2009
Supplement

Merger of Equals: The Integration of Mellon Financial and The Bank of New York (C)

By: Ryan D. Taliaferro, Clayton S. Rose and David Lane

[Continuation of "A" and "B" cases.] Less than a month after the close of the merger between The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial, managers at the two firms realized that plans for combining their asset servicing businesses – and realizing the $180 million of... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Horizontal Integration; Financial Institutions; Business Processes; Risk Management; Strategy; Market Transactions; Assets; System; Saving; Banking Industry; New York (state, US)

2010
Other Unpublished Work

Why Takeover Vulnerability Matters to Debtholders

By: Joan Farre-Mensa

Recent work documents that firms that are more vulnerable to takeover have higher borrowing costs. This paper investigates the reasons behind this stylized fact. My results show that firms with few antitakeover defenses face a higher cost of debt because lenders are... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Borrowing and Debt; Cost; Equity; Banks and Banking; Investment Portfolio; Risk Management; Agreements and Arrangements; Business and Shareholder Relations; Conflict and Resolution

SSRN

December 2007 (Revised June 2009)
Case

KPMG (A): A Near-Death Experience

By: Robert G. Eccles and Eliot Sherman

Describes the way in which "Big Four" auditor KPMG dealt with an indictment stemming from the firm's sale of tax shelters. In 2005 Tim Flynn has been KPMG Chairman for a matter of days when he learns that the government is preparing to indict the firm on charges of... View Details

Keywords: Accounting Audits; Crime and Corruption; Taxation; Lawsuits and Litigation; Crisis Management; Partners and Partnerships; Accounting Industry; Service Industry

03 Oct 2013
HBS Seminar

Yanbo Wang, Boston University

Research Summary

Executive Compensation

Professor Meulbroek is investigating the gap between what equity-linked compensation costs the firm and what it is worth to managers. This gap arises because such compensation prevents managers from fully diversifying their holdings, so managers must bear firm-specific... View Details

18 Jul 2013
News

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Looking Back As We Look Forward

Meg Rithmire

Meg Rithmire is the James E. Robison Professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a... View Details

Keywords: real estate

14 Apr 2008
News

The Gap in the U.S. Treasury Recommendations

June 2011 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Vehbi Koç and the Making of Turkey's Largest Business Group

By: Asli M. Colpan and Geoffrey Jones

The case describes the creation of Turkey's largest business group by Vehbi Koç. The foundation of this group in the interwar years, and its subsequent diversification into many industries, including automobiles, household goods, and services, is analysed. The case... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Entrepreneurship; Globalization; Organizational Structure; Diversification; Manufacturing Industry; Turkey

September 2023
Article

Customer Churn and Intangible Capital

By: Scott R. Baker, Brian Baugh and Marco Sammon

Intangible capital is a crucial and growing piece of firms’ capital structure, but many of its distinct components are difficult to measure. We develop and make available several new firm-level metrics regarding a key component of intangible capital – firms’ customer... View Details

Keywords: Customer Base; Transaction Data; Customer Churn; Intangible Capital; Capital Structure; Measurement and Metrics; Customers

SSRN

22 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted

figure. Without open source software and their ubiquitous code-creation networks, firms would pay an estimated 3.5 times more to build the software and platforms that run their businesses, or roughly $8.8 trillion, say Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Computer; Information Technology; Technology

24 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: Jan. 24

context, reflected in its introduction of product features, is influenced by prior industry affiliation. We hypothesize first, that prior industry experience shapes a set of shared beliefs resulting in similar and concurrent firm... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Feb 2022
News

In 10 Years, ‘Remote Work’ Will Simply Be ‘Work’

August 2014
Article

Incentives in a Stage-Gate Process

By: Raul O. Chao, Kenneth C. Lichtendahl and Yael Grushka-Cockayne

Many large organizations use a stage‐gate process to manage new product development projects. In a typical stage‐gate process project managers learn about potential ideas from research and exert effort in development while senior executives make intervening go/no‐go... View Details

Keywords: Stage-Gate Process; Production; Operations; Product Development; Innovation and Invention

Find at Harvard

July 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

What Happened at Citigroup? (A)

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

What went wrong at Citigroup? In 1998, the Travelers Group and Citicorp merged to create Citigroup Inc., considered the first true global "financial supermarket" and a business model to be envied, feared, and emulated. By year-end 2006 the firm had a market... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Globalized Firms and Management; Leadership; Risk Management; Failure; Financial Services Industry

2014
Article

Executive Compensation and Human Capital Investments Through Industry Selection

By: Boris Groysberg and Eric Lin

We use proprietary data capturing compensation levels of executives placed by a global search firm to investigate how executives evaluate rewards and risks of human capital investment choices. Our findings suggest that more isolated industries with lower opportunity to... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Human Capital; Personal Development and Career