Publications

SSRN

2023
Book

Precarious Ties: Business and the State in Authoritarian Asia

By: Meg Rithmire

Developing Asia has been the site of some of the last century's fastest growing economies as well as some of the world's most durable authoritarian regimes. Many accounts of rapid growth alongside monopolies on political power have focused on crony relationships... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Systems; Crime and Corruption; China; Indonesia; Malaysia

16 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

The Times Captures History of American Business

From the dawn of the U.S. transcontinental railroad in 1869 to the widespread embrace of consumer products like cell phones and iPods in our time, the story of American business is in constant motion, never at rest—or at ease. A new... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Journalism & News

12 Jun 2009
Research Event

Business Summit: Lawrence Summers on Market Capitalism’s Historic Opportunity

Editor's Note: This is a summary of an HBS Business Summit presentation. View a full summary and video of the event on the HBS Centennial Web site linked below. Date of Event: October 14, 2008 Speaker: Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the... View Details

24 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Developing Your Next CEO for the Family Business

A good book on CEO succession is The CEO Within by my Harvard Business School colleague Joe Bower. Bower studied how companies perform after hiring a new CEO, noting whether the successor had been recruited from inside or outside the... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Auto

July 2015 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Horst Dassler, Adidas, and the Commercialization of Sport

By: Geoffrey Jones, Michael Norris and Sophi Kim

The case focuses on the career of Horst Dassler, the son of the founder of the German-based sports shoe manufacturer Adidas. The origins of the firm were in the interwar years, and it rose to public prominence after it provided spikes for Jesse Owens, the famous... View Details

Educators

November 1999 (Revised November 2000)
Case

International Business Machines Corporation (C)

By: David F. Hawkins

A financial analyst is examining IBM's 1998 tax note to understand better how the company's 1998 tax note was determined. Teaching purpose: Illustrates deferred tax accounting. View Details

Keywords: History; Earnings Management; Taxation; Decision Making; Business Model; Business Earnings; Information Infrastructure; Mathematical Methods; Private Sector; Accounting Audits; Accounting Industry; Computer Industry

Educators

16 Jun 2009
Research Event

Business Summit: The Future of Market Capitalism

Editor's Note: This is a summary of an HBS Business Summit presentation. View a full summary and video of the event on the HBS Centennial Web site linked below. Date of Event: October 14, 2008 Moderator: Michael Porter, HBS faculty... View Details

Keywords: Re: Michael E. Porter

2022
Chapter

Lessons Learned from Support to Business during COVID-19

By: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Benjamin Iverson and Adi Sunderam

The authors survey the new federal subsidies and loans provided to businesses in the first year of the pandemic—including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, and aid targeted at specific industries such as airlines... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Small Business; Government Legislation; Policy

01 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How Politics Drives Business Decisions in a Polarized Nation

at Harvard Business School. “Political polarization can create distortions within the economy,” says Kempf, one of the coauthors of the new review. “Partisanship seems to be a really important determinant of many decisions made by... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

2016
Chapter

User-Generated Content and Social Media

By: Michael Luca

This paper documents what economists have learned about user-generated content (UGC) and social media. A growing body of evidence suggests that UGC on platforms ranging from Yelp to Facebook has a large causal impact on economic and social outcomes ranging from... View Details

Keywords: User-generated Content; Crowdsourcing; Design Economics; Internet and the Web; Marketing; Economics; Media; Social Media

Article

The Business Case for Investing in Physician Well-Being

By: Tait D. Shanafelt, Joel Goh and Christine A. Sinsky

Importance: Widespread burnout among physicians has been recognized for more than two decades. Extensive evidence indicates that physician burnout has important personal and professional consequences.
Observations: A lack of awareness regarding... View Details

Keywords: Physicians; Well-being; ROI; Health; Welfare or Wellbeing; Ethics; Investment Return; Health Industry

24 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

The Trick of Balancing Business and Government

help enforce it." The result is high efficiency in the legislative capacity, particularly in economic areas, he said. Mauritius has what he called "a partnership" between business and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Article

Market Failure and the Environmental Policies of Firms: Economic Rationales for 'Beyond Compliance' Behavior

By: F. L. Reinhardt

Keywords: Failure; Policy; Business Ventures; Behavior; Economics

November 2018 (Revised April 2019)
Technical Note

Saudi Arabia: A Brief Background

By: Kristin Fabbe, Natalie Kindred and Safwan Al-Amin

This note provides a brief overview of the history of Saudi Arabia as well as the economic and political context in 2018. The note is an essential supplement to the case “Almarai Company: Milk and Modernization in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” HBS No. 719-020, but is... View Details

Educators

17 Jul 2009
Research Event

Business Summit: Ethics in Globalization

Editor's Note: This is a summary of an HBS Business Summit presentation. View a full summary and video of the event on the HBS Centennial Web site linked below. Date of Event: October 13, 2008 Moderator: Rafael M. DiTella, HBS faculty... View Details

Keywords: Re: Rafael M. Di Tella

2020
Book

American Business History: A Very Short Introduction

By: Walter Friedman

By the early twentieth century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization." President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's... View Details

Keywords: American Economy; Democratic Capitalism; Business History; Economy; Entrepreneurship; United States

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

economic circumstances on the enterprise's freedom of action."4 This insight became the rationale for business strategy—that, by consciously using formal planning, a company could exert some positive... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

2017
Working Paper

Emerging Markets and the Future of Business History

By: Gareth Austin, Carlos Dávila and Geoffrey Jones

This working paper suggests that the business history of emerging markets should be seen as an alternative business history rather than merely adding new settings to explore established core debates. The discipline of business history evolved around the corporate... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Emerging Markets; Developing Countries and Economies

SSRN

February 2011
Module Note

Business Cycles and the New Challenges of Globalization

By: Diego A. Comin

Business Cycles and the New Challenges of Globalization is one of the core modules in Business Government and the International Economy (BGIE), a course for the required curriculum of the Harvard Business School. BGIE teaches the economic, political and historical... View Details

Keywords: Fluctuation; Business Cycles; Trade; Business Education; Curriculum and Courses; Capital; Cash Flow; Globalization; Problems and Challenges; China