Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,822)
- Faculty Publications (439)
- August 2009
- Case
The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien, Chintay Shih and Jack Chang
When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and... View Details
- August 2009 (Revised December 2012)
- Background Note
Researching a Company
By: Willy Shih and Meghan Dolan
This note was written to help students at the Harvard Business School do a more thorough job of researching a company, utilizing the extensive resources of the Baker Library, as well as other widely available databases. Exhibits provide detailed information on key... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity
This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture—in the sense of shared beliefs and values—in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details
- May 2009 (Revised January 2011)
- Case
Enel: Power, Russia, and Global Markets
By: Rawi E. Abdelal, Richard H.K. Vietor and Sogomon Tarontsi
Although the global trend toward liberalization of electric utilities forced Enel, the largest power company in Italy, to give up some of its assets in its home base, it also opened up many opportunities abroad, including in Russia, one of the largest electricity... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Altruistic Utility Functions for Joint Decisions
By: David E. Bell and Ralph L. Keeney
All of us make decisions that are not entirely self-centered; we voluntarily anticipate what we think to be the preferences of others and incorporate them into our decision making. We do this, not because of legal requirements or social norms, but because we are... View Details
- November 2008
- Case
The Hong Kong & China Gas Company Ltd.: Negotiating Joint Ventures in China
By: James K. Sebenius, Michael Shih-ta Chen and Medha Samant
To deliver 5-6 major new Chinese joint ventures annually, Hong Kong China Gas executives began extracting cross-border negotiating lessons from their 80 existing Chinese JVs. Chairman Alfred Chan and CEO Peter Wong knew that HKGC's growth strategy required significant... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Reality versus Propaganda in the Formation of Beliefs about Privatization
By: Rafael Di Tella, Sebastian Galiani and Ernesto Schargrodsky
Argentina privatized most public utilities during the 1990s but re-nationalized the main water company in 2006. We study beliefs about the benefits of the privatization of water services amongst low and middle income groups immediately after the 2006 nationalization.... View Details
- October 2008 (Revised March 2010)
- Case
PlanetTran
By: Lauren H. Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy
PlanetTran is an environmentally-friendly car service that utilizes a fleet of hybrid cars in providing livery service to corporations and individuals. The founder, Seth Riney, is evaluating outside funding options in order to expand the company, and has met several... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Some Neglected Axioms in Fair Division
By: John W. Pratt
Conditions one might impose on fair allocation procedures are introduced. Nondiscrimination requires that agents share an item in proportion to their entitlements if they receive nothing else. The "price" procedures of Pratt (2007), including the Nash... View Details
- April 2008
- Exercise
Exercise: Customer-Operator Letter Writing
By: Frances X. Frei
The exercise involves having students write letters to an organization of their choice describing their operating experience at a detailed level. The companies' responses are paired with the students' letters and the entire collection is made available to the class.... View Details
- April 2008
- Module Note
Improvement with Customer-Operators
By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell
Taught as the third module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations: Understanding the Customer Operating Role (606-092). Explores how firms can systematically leverage their customer-operators in the organizational improvement process is... View Details
- March 2008
- Exercise
Exercise: Challenging Operational Assumptions
By: Frances X. Frei
This exercise provides students with an opportunity to thoroughly test an operating assumption. Students state an assumption as a testable hypothesis, collect and analyze relevant data, and communicate the results. At HBS, it is incorporated in a second-year elective... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
Market Reactions to Export Subsidies
By: M. A. Desai and James R. Hines Jr.
This paper analyzes the economic impact of export subsidies by investigating stock price reactions to a critical event in 1997. On November 18, 1997, the European Union announced its intention to file a complaint before the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
The Travails of Rubber: Goodyear or Badyear?
By: Tom Nicholas and Andrew Ferguson
Explores the reason why Charles Goodyear, inventor of rubber vulcanization, was unable to profit from his discovery despite securing international property rights over his invention through a patent in 1844. Considers the utility of patents as an incentive for... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Variance-Seeking for Positive (and Variance-Aversion for Negative) Experiences: Risk-Seeking in the Domain of Gains?
By: Jolie Mae Martin, Gregory M. Barron and Michael I. Norton
In contrast to research which has conflated losses with negative experiences and gains with positive experiences, we argue that because reference points are set by memories of extremely good and bad experiences, most outcomes are seen as losses in positive domains and... View Details
Keywords: Change; Experience and Expertise; Marketing; Research; Risk and Uncertainty; Loss; Perspective
- January 2009
- Article
Bank Debt and Corporate Governance
By: Victoria Ivashina, Vinay Nair, Anthony Saunders, Nadia Massoud and Roger Stover
In this paper, we investigate the disciplining role of banks and bank debt in the market for corporate control. We find that relationship bank lending intensity and bank client network have positive effects on the probability of a borrowing firm becoming a target. This... View Details
- December 2007
- Article
Fair (and Not So Fair) Division
By: John W. Pratt
Drawbacks of existing procedures are illustrated and a method of efficient fair division is proposed that avoids them. Given additive participants' utilities, each item is priced at the geometric mean (or some other function) of its two highest valuations. The... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised April 2008)
- Case
Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar: A Rural Business Initiative
By: David E. Bell, Nitin Sanghavi, Virginia Fuller and Mary L. Shelman
In rural India, farmers historically had limited access to quality input items for both their fields and homes. Indian conglomerate DSCL has undertaken a Rural Business Initiative to address this issue, establishing a chain of retail outlets throughout rural India... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Paths to Equality: Walking the Talk in Multi-party Negotiations
By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Katherine L. Milkman and Markus Nöth
Past research has shown that communication in negotiations heightens social awareness, facilitates coordination, increases the utility for the other's positive outcomes, and thereby leads to more equal payoffs. But the role of specific communication strategies in... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Advanced Energy: Programs for Energy Conservation
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Brooke Barton
Describes the dilemma facing Advanced Energy (AE), a $6 million nonprofit engaged in energy conservation in North Carolina. Most of the money for its programs comes from a Public Benefits Fund (PBF) enacted by the state legislature. With renewed effort by activists in... View Details