Publications

May 2018
Article

Incentives for Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Reputations

By: Christine L. Exley

Do monetary incentives encourage volunteering? Or, do they introduce concerns about appearing greedy and crowd out the motivation to volunteer? Since the importance of such image concerns is normally unobserved, the answer is theoretically unclear, and corresponding... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Image Motivation; Volunteer; Prosocial Behavior; Altruism; Gender; Reputations; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Perception; Reputation

Blog

Take Control of Your Personal Brand

What is your gut reaction when you hear the term "personal branding"? Some years ago, my MBA students started asking if I could help them with personal branding. My initial response was to decline. I have... View Details

March 2014 (Revised November 2020)
Case

The Novartis Malaria Initiative

By: Michael Chu, Vincent Marie Dessain and Emilie Billaud

The Novartis Malaria Initiative was designed, as a result of a precedent–setting agreement with the World Health Organization in 2001, to provide a breakthrough treatment for malaria—"at no profit"—for public health systems. What had begun as an exemplary act of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Product Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Enterprise; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland; Africa; Nigeria

September 2023 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Kaspi.kz: Building Trust through Innovation

By: Sandra J. Sucher, Fares Khrais and Marilyn Morgan Westner

This case is written to help students explore how companies can maintain and develop trust while innovating, how to identify and respond effectively to warning signs that they may not be as trusted as they believe, and how being trusted can aid in expanding and growing... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Trust; Technology Adoption; Innovation and Invention; Banking Industry

June 2008
Article

The Multiunit Enterprise

By: David A. Garvin and Lynne C. Levesque

A multiunit enterprise is a geographically dispersed organization built from standard units (stores, restaurants, or branches) that are aggregated into larger geographic groupings (districts, regions, and divisions). Although this organizational structure has become... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Structure; Global Range; Research; Business Ventures; Problems and Challenges; Business or Company Management; Business Headquarters; Organizational Design; Talent and Talent Management; Goals and Objectives

01 Feb 2019
HBS Seminar

Xavier Jaravel, London School of Economics

Web

The “Hawthorne Effect” – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

Dickson published Counseling in an Organization , which revisited lessons gained from the experiments. Roethlisberger described “the Hawthorne effect” as the phenomenon in which subjects in behavioral studies change their performance in View Details

November 2015 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Air Products' Pursuit of Airgas (A)

By: Charles C.Y. Wang, Paul M. Healy, Penelope Rossano and Kyle Thomas

This case centers around the Air Products' hostile takeover attempt of Airgas in 2010. Air Products argued that its offer of a 38% premium is generous given Airgas' poor performance, which Air Products attributed to underperforming and entrenched managers at Airgas. On... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business and Shareholder Relations; Industrial Products Industry; Energy Industry; Chemical Industry

January 2014 (Revised February 2014)
Teaching Note

Rana Plaza: Workplace Safety In Bangladesh (A) and (B)

By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez

On April 24, 2013 the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Over 1,100 people were killed in the worst industrial accident since the Union Carbide plant gas leak in Bhopal, India. Most of the victims worked for garment factories,... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Multinational Firms and Management; Labor Unions; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Working Conditions; Corporate Accountability; Crisis Management; Manufacturing Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Bangladesh

23 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Management’s Role in Reforming Health Care

Aligning the Nature and Management of Health Care (Harvard Business Press, 2009), explains how to create more knowledgeable, flexible, and responsive delivery organizations. “Some of the most important... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

February 2011
Article

Dividend Taxes and International Portfolio Choice

By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

This paper investigates how dividend taxes influence portfolio choices, using the response to the distinctive treatment of a subset of foreign dividends in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. An open-economy after-tax capital asset... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Portfolio Choice; Taxes; Tax Treaties; Foreign Portfolio Investment; Taxation; Lawfulness; Economy; Price; Equity; Stocks; Investment Portfolio; Opportunities; Behavior; United States

SSRN

Web

Tuition & Financial Support - Doctoral

background. To ensure accessibility we offer a suite of need-based fellowships. Lift Fellowship : For those who come from lower-income backgrounds or shoulder significant financial responsibilities for their... View Details

26 Sep 2024
HBS Seminar

Garrett Van Ryzin, Columbia & Amazon

September 2021
Article

Trials and Terminations: Learning from Competitors' R&D Failures

By: Joshua L. Krieger

I analyze project continuation decisions where firms may resolve uncertainty through news about competitors' research and development (R&D) failures, as well as through their own results. I examine the trade-offs and interactions between product-market competition and... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Projects; Failure; Decision Making; Learning

2008
Working Paper

The Decentering of the Global Firm

By: Mihir A. Desai

This paper describes recent changes in the relationship between firms and nation states. Firms are typically linked to the nation in which they began and are considered to have fixed national identities. While firms have reallocated various activities around the world... View Details

Keywords: Business Headquarters; Geographic Location; Globalized Firms and Management; Policy; Business and Government Relations

Forthcoming
Article

Engaging Customers with AI in Online Chats: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Das Narayandas

We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) affected the productivity of customer service agents and customer sentiment in online interactions. Collaborating with a meal delivery company, we conducted a randomized field experiment that exploited exogenous variation in... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Efficiency

2009
Working Paper

Does Competition Favor Delegation?

By: Christian Alejandro Ruzzier

This paper studies the consequences of product-market competition on firms' decisions to delegate more or fewer decision-making responsibilities to managers. By simultaneously addressing the choice of both competitive actions and organizational design, the paper makes... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Competition; Decision Making