Publications

November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Scott Tucker (A): Race to the Top

By: Aiyesha Dey and Amram Migdal

The case tells the story of the rise and fall of Scott Tucker, an entrepreneur, businessman, passionate race car driver, competitor, and owner of a professional racing team. From 1997 to 2012, Tucker built a nationwide network of payday lending businesses, becoming a... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Fairness; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Financial Services Industry; United States

30 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 30, 2008

and service quality. Using longitudinal data from stores of a large retailer, I find that increasing the amount of labor at a store is associated with an increase in profitability through its impact on conformance quality but not its... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Trevor Fetter

Trevor Fetter is a Senior Lecturer and the Henry B. Arthur Fellow on the faculty of Harvard Business School. He teaches two MBA required courses: Leadership and Corporate Accountability, and Financial Reporting and Control. At HBS he has also taught a Short... View Details

January 2014 (Revised May 2014)
Case

Tech Mahindra and the Acquisition of Satyam Computers (A)

By: Srikant M. Datar, Anjali Raina and Namrata Arora

Set in 2008, the case details Tech Mahindra, an information technology (IT) company within the Mahindra Group, an Indian multi-industry company with a diverse stable of businesses including automotives, farm equipment, and financial services, and its decision to... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Corporate Governance; Computer Industry; India

March 2016
Teaching Note

MasterCard: Driving Financial Inclusion

By: Sunil Gupta

Since joining MasterCard (MC) in 2010, CEO Ajay Banga had made advancing financial inclusion (FI)—bringing formal financial services to marginalized populations—an important goal for the company. In 2014, MC had entered a number of partnerships with governments and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Inclusion; Banking; Equality and Inequality; Credit Cards; Developing Countries and Economies; Banking Industry; South Africa; Nigeria

2022
Case

Can Salesforce Compete in the Carbon Accounting Market?

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

This case describes Salesforce's development of Sustainability Cloud, a suite of software tools built to help companies measure, track, and report carbon emissions and other sustainability metrics. The goal of this case is to provide students with a background and... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Accounting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Applications and Software

21 May 2019
Working Paper Summaries

rTSR: When Do Relative Performance Metrics Capture Relative Performance?

Keywords: by Paul Ma, Jee-Eun Shin, and Charles C. Y. Wang; Financial Services

Article

Mandate Outcomes Reporting

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Michael E. Porter

Currently, few health care providers measure and report their patient outcomes, which leads to several problems. Attempts to introduce price transparency without outcomes transparency could trigger a “race to the bottom.” Should Medicare coverage be expanded to... View Details

Keywords: Outcomes Reporting; Outcomes Measurement; Medicare; Medicaid; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Measurement and Metrics

Read Now

November 2023
Case

Will Fintechs and Central Banks Play in Emtech's Sandbox?

By: Daniel Isenberg and William R. Kerr

In February 2023, Emtech’s founder Carmelle Cadet is facing a dilemma. Rapidly running out of cash, Cadet has a term sheet from a leading VC but has a choice of how to structure the investment. The decision will have significant implications for Cadet’s own stake, as... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Cash Flow; Currency; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Digital Platforms

Samuel G. Hanson is the William L. White Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Economics department. He teaches Finance 1... View Details

Keywords: federal government; federal government; federal government; federal government; federal government; federal government

30 Jan 2018
First Look

January 30, 2018

making them immutable and, many believed, unhackable. What came next, Vavilov’s team envisioned, were smart purchase and sale contracts via the blockchain; and from there, a full suite of property-related services and, eventually,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Michael W. Toffel

Professor Toffel is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management. His research examines how companies are addressing climate change (especially decarbonization) and other environmental and working condition issues in their operations and supply... View Details

23 Aug 2016
First Look

August 23, 2016

methods. Myth Number 1: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programs reduce returns on capital and long-run shareholder value. Reality: Companies committed to ESG are finding competitive advantages in product, labor, and capital... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2011 (Revised November 2011)
Supplement

Longtop Financial Technologies (C)

By: David F. Hawkins, Annelena Lobb and Aldo Sesia

Chinese government raises barriers to U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board auditing Deloitte's Chinese auditing firms. View Details

Keywords: Accounting Audits; Business Ventures; Public Ownership; Government and Politics; Financial Services Industry; China

June 2012 (Revised March 2014)
Case

I Paid a Bribe (Dot) Com

By: Karthik Ramanna and Rachna Tahilyani

Anti-corruption web platform "ipaidabribe.com" leverages the transparency and anonymity of the Internet to encourage private citizens in India who have been the victims of corruption to self-report details of bribes paid, including the bribe amount, the name of the... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Service Industry; India

October 1992 (Revised December 1992)
Supplement

Salomon and the Treasury Securities Auction: 1992 Update

By: Dwight B. Crane

Briefly summarizes the events that transpired after the investment bank Salomon Brothers revealed that it had repeatedly violated the rules governing the auction of new U.S. Government securities. Includes a description of the violations, the management shake-up that... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Instruments; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

01 Feb 2017
What Do You Think?

Is the Next Jobs Crisis Just Ahead?

Summing Up: Should We Be Addressing the Next Jobs Crisis Now? An unusual proportion of respondents to this month’s column agreed either explicitly or implicitly on one thing: a looming service sector jobs crisis would dwarf anything we’ve... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Service

2010
Working Paper

Reversing the Null: Regulation, Deregulation, and the Power of Ideas

By: David Moss

It has been said that deregulation was an important source of the recent financial crisis. It may be more accurate, however, to say that a deregulatory mindset was an important source of the crisis—a mindset that, to a very significant extent, grew out of profound... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Financial Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government and Politics; Failure; Business and Government Relations; Financial Services Industry; United States