Publications

November 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Drilling South: Petrobras Evaluates Pecom

By: Mihir A. Desai and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho

The Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, is evaluating the acquisition of an Argentine oil company, the Perez Companc Group (Pecom). The acquisition would increase Petrobras' oil reserves and expand its interests outside Brazil, a significant step for the largest company... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Non-Renewable Energy; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Corporate Governance; Risk Management; Emerging Markets; State Ownership; Performance Evaluation; Risk and Uncertainty; Valuation; Energy Industry; Argentina; Brazil

June 2022
Case

Mossadeq’s Gambit: The US, UK, and Iranian Oil Nationalization

By: Jeremy Friedman and Jingyu Liu

Many of the West’s political problems in the Middle East and in Iran in particular can be traced to the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh by military forces supported by the American CIA and the British MI6 in August 1953. Mossadegh, at the head of a... View Details

Keywords: Neo-imperialism; History; Conflict Management; War; Globalized Economies and Regions; Natural Resources; National Security; Government and Politics; Globalized Markets and Industries; Middle East; Iran

March 2016 (Revised August 2018)
Case

JPMorgan Chase after the Financial Crisis: What Is the Optimal Scope of the Largest Bank in the U.S.?

By: David Collis and Ashley Hartman

When Jamie Dimon took over as CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPMorgan Chase) in 2005, he reaffirmed the commitment to pursue a "universal bank" strategy—providing a full range of products and services to both retail and wholesale clients. Yet the merits of the universal... View Details

Keywords: Scope; Regulatory Reforms; Universal Banking; Synergy; Optimization; Simplification; Finance; Strategy; Business Strategy; Financial Crisis; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

December 2010
Article

The Case for Professional Boards

By: Robert C. Pozen

When the world's largest financial institutions had to be rescued from insolvency in 2008, many experts laid the blame at the feet of corporate boards. But insufficient board oversight is a problem that had supposedly been solved in 2002. As the United States... View Details

Keywords: Financial Institutions; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governing and Advisory Boards; Failure; Accounting Audits; Quality; Behavior; Legal Liability; Experience and Expertise; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Performance Effectiveness; United States

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October 2015
Article

Managing the Performance Tradeoffs from Partner Integration: Implications of Contract Choice in R&D Projects

By: Alan MacCormack and Anant Mishra

Formal contracts represent an important governance instrument with which firms exercise control of and compensate partners in R&D projects. The specific type of contract used, however, can vary significantly across projects. In some, firms govern partnering... View Details

Keywords: ＂＂Partner Integration; Contract Choice; R＆D Project Management; Relational Contracts; Partnering Performance; Research and Development; Projects; Partners and Partnerships; Performance; Contracts

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30 Jun 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Empire Struck Back: The Mexican Oil Expropriation of 1938 Reconsidered

Keywords: by Noel Maurer; Energy; Utilities

December 2001 (Revised February 2008)
Case

Borealis

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Bjorn N. Jorgensen

When Borealis, a European producer of plastics, used a traditional, time-consuming budgeting process, the budget was quickly out of date in a competitive environment characterized by continually changing input and output prices and dynamic market conditions. This case... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Budgets and Budgeting; Forecasting and Prediction; Investment; Governance Controls; Balanced Scorecard; Management Systems; Manufacturing Industry; Europe

March 2003
Background Note

Management and Creativity in Television Broadcasting

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Douglas A Raymond

Management and creativity are sometimes assumed to be unrelated or even conflicting concepts. In the best cases, management controls enable artistic success by gathering resources and providing discipline. However, if pushed too far, the same discipline can stifle... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Leadership Development; Management; Managerial Roles; Creativity

October 2021 (Revised October 2022)
Case

The Opioid Settlement and Controversy Over CEO Pay at AmerisourceBergen

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

In 2020, AmerisourceBergen Corporation, a Fortune 50 company in the drug distribution industry, agreed to settle thousands of lawsuits filed nationwide against the company for its opioid distribution practices that critics alleged had contributed to the nationwide... View Details

2014
Working Paper

Savings in Transnational Households: A Field Experiment Among Migrants from El Salvador

By: Nava Ashraf, Diego Aycinena, Claudia Martinez A. and Dean Yang

While remittance flows to developing countries are very large, it is unknown whether migrants desire more control over how remittances are used. This research uses a randomized field experiment to investigate the importance of migrant control over the use of... View Details

Keywords: Migration; Remittances; Intrahousehold Allocation; Savings; Immigration; Diasporas; International Finance; El Salvador

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June 2010 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Continental Media Group: Business Highlights

By: Robert L. Simons and Kathryn Rosenberg

Continental Media Group has a series of business reviews struggling to achieve profitability. This case focuses on the use of management control systems to identify emerging opportunities and the formulation of new strategies. The interactive system used by top... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Governance Controls; Management Systems; Risk Management; Business Strategy; Publishing Industry

April 2011 (Revised May 2013)
Case

South Africa (A): Stuck in the Middle?

By: Richard H. K. Vietor and Diego Comin

Fifteen years after ending apartheid, formal unemployment in South Africa was still at 24%. While the country had grown at 4 to 5% annually during the 2000s, the financial crisis set it back by 1 million more unemployed. Moreover, it seemed as if the nation were stuck... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Inflation and Deflation; Policy; Employment; Wages; Competition; South Africa

10 Dec 2009
Working Paper Summaries

State Owned Entity Reform in Absence of Privatization: Reforming Indian National Laboratories and Role of Leadership

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury & Tarun Khanna

2014
Article

Bond Supply and Excess Bond Returns

By: Robin Greenwood and Dimitri Vayanos

We examine empirically how the maturity structure of government debt affects bond yields and excess returns. Our analysis is based on a theoretical model of preferred habitat in which clienteles with strong preferences for specific maturities trade with arbitrageurs.... View Details

Keywords: Bonds; Investment Return

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November 2023
Case

Tata Group in 2021: Pursuing Profits through Purpose

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Vidhya Muthuram

October 8, 2021: Tata Sons won a bid to acquire India’s national carrier Air India, marking the airline's return to its original owners after 68 long years. The winning bid of $2.4 billion gave Tata Sons full ownership of the airline and its coveted network of 6,200... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Emerging Markets; Mergers and Acquisitions; Ownership; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; India

2011
Article

Too Big to Live: Why We Must Stamp Out State Monopoly Capitalism

The problems of excessive economic concentration, so lucidly and incisively analysed here, are not limited to the financial services industry. For the problem is now widespread: while five firms control 80% of the banking industry, a similar or greater concentration is... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Monopoly

2008
Working Paper

Opening Platforms: How, When and Why?

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne

Platform-mediated networks encompass several distinct types of participants, including end users, complementors, platform providers who facilitate users' access to complements, and sponsors who develop platform technologies. Each of these roles can be opened-that... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Governance Controls; Market Participation; Digital Platforms

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15 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

Managing the Family Business: It Takes a Village

all the guidance. They don't allocate all the resources. But because they have considerable authority, influence, and control over resources, we rely on them to do their part in setting direction and guiding their group. Because the... View Details

December 1994 (Revised October 2009)
Case

AES Honeycomb (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Sarah C. Mavrinac

Senior managers of the AES Corp., an independent power producer, must decide whether to drop the company's emphasis on corporate values and revamp organizational controls as advised by investment analysts and outside counsel. The company is recovering from an incident... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Energy Generation; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Crisis Management; Organizational Structure; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Industry; United States