Publications

January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Pioneer Natural Resources: Enhancing the Capital Return Strategy with Variable Dividends

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Elisabeth Kempf and E. Scott Mayfield

In February 2021, Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources (an independent oil and gas company based in Texas), was considering the possibility of enhancing the firm’s capital return strategy by introducing a variable dividend tied to cash flows in... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Finance; Cash Flow; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Value Creation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Profit; Policy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; United States; North America; Texas

January 2024
Case

BWX Technologies

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Yuan Zou and Aldo Sesia

Rex Geveden and Robb LeMasters, CEO and CFO of BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT), were concerned that investors and analysts did not fully appreciate the company's transformation from a nuclear reactor provider to the US Navy and Canadian utilities to a multi-product line... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Communication Intention and Meaning; Business and Shareholder Relations; Valuation; Diversification; United States; Canada

23 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 23, 2019

offer opportunities for future research. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=56001 Rehabilitating Corporate Purpose By: Salter, Malcolm S. Abstract—In this paper, I address how the ascendance of the theory of View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Organizing the Family-Run Business

Family companies that progress to the Cousin Consortium stage, where two or more cousins control the company, can have bloated, highly political boards. But over time many family businesses learn the value of a well-composed and well-run... View Details

09 Feb 2009
Research & Ideas

Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times

purpose than simply profit and increasing stock price, though they were all laser-focused on profitability and saw it as essential to achieving their larger purpose for the firm. They had a multi-stakeholder view of the firm as opposed as a View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

21 Mar 2019
HBS Case

The Ferrari Way

company was run in a more casual way, with a great deal of informality,” he says. Being accountable to shareholders caused Ferrari to have to get serious about setting performance targets and professionalizing its organizational chart.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Auto

16 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas and Research, May 16

promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do. The theory regards View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

08 Nov 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Managers' Cultural Background and Disclosure Attributes

Keywords: by Francois Brochet, Gregory S. Miller, Patricia Naranjo, and Gwen Yu

June 2021
Technical Note

SPAC Space

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2020, over half of all initial public offerings (IPOs) in the United States were special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), blank-check companies that typically had two years to find a business to take public, usually through a reverse merger. Together, 248... View Details

Keywords: Special Purpose Acquisition Companies; SPACs; Mergers and Acquisitions; Going Public; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Strategy

January 2008 (Revised July 2008)
Case

Opportunity Partners

By: Robin Greenwood and James Quinn

Philip Goldstein, the principal in a growing hedge fund and prominent activist investor, has taken a position in a Mexico-based closed-end fund. Following a hard-fought proxy contest in which he advocated for management to eliminate the fund's substantial discount,... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism; Investment Funds; Business and Shareholder Relations; Value; Financial Services Industry; Mexico

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

2001, the once-profitable company lost 8.3 billion euros (equal to $15.1 billion today)—the second-biggest loss of any French company ever. A year later, the company’s debts totaled 71 billion euros, three times the value of the firm.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

28 Jun 2022
Book

The Moral Enterprise: How Two Companies Profit with Purpose

How can government and business work together in this fractious political moment, when finding solutions to pressing problems like inequality and climate change are more urgent than ever? Rebecca Henderson, Harvard University’s John and Natty McArthur University... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

31 Aug 2021
Book

Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

authors say. The book explains how power can be shared more evenly among citizens, employees, top executives, and shareholders for the betterment of individuals, organizations, and institutions around the world. "The motive for the book... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

04 Feb 2008
Research & Ideas

Putting Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector

The social sector is big business. In the United States alone some 1.5 million nonprofits and other social ventures have combined revenues of $700 billion and control assets valued at $2 trillion—a seemingly substantial arsenal to tackle... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
Case

'GEnron'? Markopolos versus General Electric (A)

By: Jonas Heese and David Lane

In August 2019, Harry Markopolos—the forensic accountant known for uncovering Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme—alleged that General Electric had committed accounting fraud totaling $38 billion, coining the term “GEnron” for perceived similarities with the 2001 accounting... View Details

Keywords: Financial Statements; Communication; Energy; Financial Condition; Insurance; Performance; Planning; Business and Shareholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Value; Insurance Industry; Financial Services Industry; Energy Industry