Publications

2019
Casebook

Private Equity: A Casebook

By: Paul A. Gompers, Victoria Ivashina and Richard S. Ruback

This book is a collection of cases and notes that have been used in Private Equity Finance, an advanced corporate finance course offered in the second year of the Harvard Business School’s MBA curriculum, over several years. Our goal is to provide detailed insight into... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Value Creation; Cases

May 1989 (Revised August 2006)
Case

RJR Nabisco

By: Richard S. Ruback

Gives students the opportunity to explore issues facing the board of directors in a leveraged buyout. RJR Nabisco is valued under different operating strategies and the source of gains in leveraged buyouts is stressed. View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Profit; Operations; Problems and Challenges; Strategy; Valuation

October 1991 (Revised December 1993)
Case

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream, Inc.: Keeping the Mission(s) Alive

Ben & Jerry's is an anti-establishment, values-driven company that has become a successful venture. The dominant founder, Ben Cohen, is not an effective manager, but he brings creative marketing and product skills that have been important to the company's success. He... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Entrepreneurship; Compensation and Benefits; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

27 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Have We Lost Sight of Integrity?

deceitfulness and fraudulence led to his public lambasting. Santos is just the latest in a long line of leaders for whom integrity has little to no meaning, including Frank’s Charlie Javice, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Tesla’s Elon Musk,... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

March 1990 (Revised November 1999)
Case

MCI Communications: Planning for the 1990s

By: Robert L. Simons and Hilary Weston

Concentrates on the evolution of MCI's strategy-setting process following a period of dramatic growth. Opportunistic strategies during MCI's early years have given top managers a dislike of formal strategic planning and a strongly-held belief in top down strategy... View Details

Keywords: Globalization; Growth and Development; Planning; Strategic Planning; Growth Management; Business or Company Management; Competition; Alignment; Communications Industry

2006
Book

Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism

By: Arthur C. Brooks

We all know we should give to charity, but who really does? Approximately three-quarters of Americans give their time and money to various charities, churches, and causes; the other quarter of the population does not. Why has America split into two nations: givers and... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Demographics; United States

October 2020
Article

What Goes Down When Advice Goes Up: Younger Advisers Underestimate Their Impact

By: Ting Zhang and Michael S. North

Common wisdom suggests that older is wiser. Consequently, people rarely give advice to older individuals—even when they are relatively more expert—leading to missed learning opportunities. Across six studies (N=3,445), we explore the psychology of advisers when they... View Details

Keywords: Advice; Expertise; Knowledge Sharing; Experience and Expertise; Age; Perception

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July–August 2014
Article

Obamacare Rules Pose Challenges for S Corp Owners

By: Josh Baron, Steve Salley and Judith L. Walsh

The article offers information financial impacts of tax by the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA) applied in January 2013 on family business shareholders and owners of S Corp. It discusses suggestions in tax planning to equalize tax burden including establishing family... View Details

Keywords: Ownership Type; Family Ownership; Compensation and Benefits; Taxation; Government Legislation

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July 2012
Article

The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love

By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely

In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Product; Valuation; Labor

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August 1994
Case

Kyocera Corporation: The Amoeba Management System

Describes Kyocera's unusual approach to profit centers. The firm's basic units of operation are profit centers called "amoebas," which are sales or manufacturing units with full responsibility for their planning, decision making, and administration. Amoebas are... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Organizational Structure; Profit; Management Systems; Manufacturing Industry

Research Summary

Overview

Given the difficulty of directly debiasing cognitive and social biases, Ariella's research focuses on how environments can be structured to reduce biased behaviors and outcomes. Ariella is currently pursuing two main strands of research: the first is a focus on... View Details

September 2017 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Asset Allocation at the Cook County Pension Fund

By: Emil Siriwardane, Juliane Begenau and Yuval Gonczarowski

Nickol Hackett, chief investment officer of the Cook County Pension Fund, is responsible for investing the fund’s $9 billion worth of assets on behalf of the employees of Cook County, Illinois. Like many other defined-benefit pensions at the time, the Cook County... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Financial Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions

16 Oct 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Making the Gambler’s Fallacy Disappear: The Role of Experience

Keywords: by Gregory M. Barron & Stephen Leider

18 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

After the 'Crypto Crash,' What's Next for Digital Currencies?

Recent high-profile financial meltdowns at Bitcoin, Celsius, and Terraform Labs, which together wiped out hundreds of billions in market value, helped trigger a flight from the cryptocurrency market, driving its View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Financial Services; Technology

24 Apr 2014
HBS Seminar

Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School

February 2011
Article

Bounded Ethicality in Negotiations

By: Max Bazerman

Routine and persistent acts of dishonesty prevail in everyday life, yet most people resist shining a critical moral light on their own behavior, thereby maintaining and oftentimes inflating images of themselves as moral individuals. We overview the psychology that... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Strategy; Goals and Objectives; Reputation; Negotiation; Moral Sensibility

September 2010
Case

New Heritage Doll Company

By: Timothy A. Luehrman and Heide Abelli

A manufacturer and retailer of specialty doll products must decide which of two projects to fund. The decision requires the student to compute cash flows for the 2 projects, discount values to the present and compare and contrast different project performance measures. View Details

Keywords: Forecasting; Resource Management; Resource Allocation; Forecasting and Prediction; Capital Budgeting; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry