Publications

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December 2004 (Revised October 2005)
Case

Innovation Corrupted: The Rise and Fall of Enron (A)

By: Malcolm S. Salter

Presents a brief historical overview of Enron's rise, its strategic successes and failures, the evolution of its business model, and the organizational processes relied upon by Enron's management to drive and monitor the business. A rewritten version of an earlier... View Details

Keywords: Adaptation; Success; Business Model; Business History; Growth Management; Governance Controls; Innovation and Management; Failure; Business Processes; Energy Industry; United States

May 2011
Article

Consequences and Institutional Determinants of Unregulated Corporate Financial Statements: Evidence from Embedded Value Reporting

By: George Serafeim

I analyze Embedded Value (EV) reporting by firms with life insurance operations to assess the impact of unregulated financial reporting on transparency and to examine the institutional characteristics that promote unregulated reporting. Under EV accounting the present... View Details

Keywords: Financial Statements; Mergers and Acquisitions; Financial Reporting; Cash Flow; Contracts; Equity; Profit; Value; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business Earnings

Find at Harvard

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27 May 2020
Research & Ideas

What South Korea Teaches the World About Fighting COVID

Control and Prevention—using big data, such as cellular data, credit card usage information, and surveillance camera footage—traced the infected person’s steps to locate everyone that he or she had come into direct contact with. All of... View Details

Keywords: by Doug J. Chung; Health

28 Jun 2016
First Look

June 28, 2016

average length of hospital stay and mortality rate in teaching hospitals relative to a control group of non-teaching hospitals. Despite the anticipated nature of the cohort turnover and the supervisory structures that exist in teaching... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: ‘Talk, Inc.’

or as trained brand ambassadors. By empowering employees to communicate in that way, leaders relinquish much of the control that they formerly exerted over organizational messaging. But they gain a great deal in return. Through... View Details

Keywords: Re: Boris Groysberg

26 Mar 2012
Research & Ideas

What Neuroscience Tells Us About Consumer Desire

our conclusions." For consumers, the idea of giving advertisers additional insight into the subconscious mind might prompt privacy concerns. But Karmarkar says that the research is more about understanding brain waves, not View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Consumer Products

06 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

Where Do Workers Go When the Robots Arrive?

on such shifts is available. They also controlled for conditions during the Great Recession, to see if the pattern held even in recession. It did. Three fewer people move into a region for each robot added versus an area where local... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Manufacturing

06 Jun 2012
What Do You Think?

Is Something Wrong with the Way We Work?

do with how to get control of our work lives and our personal networking technologies hit my desk within a matter of days. Two were of particular interest. The first, iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession With Technology and Overcoming... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Consulting

05 Aug 2010
What Do You Think?

What Is Customer Opinion Good For?

Jacoline Loewen pointed out that "Asking the customer's opinion is great for quality control check(s), but for creative strategy get beyond the client." Gerald Nanninga commented that "consumers are very good at explaining frustrations... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Technology

02 Jul 2010
What Do You Think?

Is Profit as a “Direct Goal” Overrated?

long-term effect because they are so complex, a manager's information so incomplete, the competitive environment so complicated, analytic techniques so inadequate, and the number of things over which a manager has control so limited, that... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

13 May 2002
Book

Bringing the Master Passions to Work

accounts is also the telltale sign of the desire to impress by expressing—to control other minds through erudition, wit, and eloquence. We can seize others "by their minds" with our justificatory strategies. We get them to see... View Details

Keywords: by Mihnea C. Moldoveanu & Nitin Nohria

15 Dec 2015
First Look

December 15, 2015

clinicians, and facilities. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50194 December 2015 Harvard Business Review Control the Negotiation Before It Begins By: Malhotra, Deepak Abstract—Countless books and articles... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

25 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 25

Brigham and Women's Physician's Organization (BWPO) and its corporate parent disagree over who has jurisdiction over significant legacy funds. Are they controlled by the BWPO or do they belong to BWPO's corporate parent? The BWPO and its... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2021
Case

Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance

By: David G. Fubini, Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

The two vignettes within “Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance” (HBS No. 122-024) present various issues relating to governance in professional service firms (“PSFs”). In the first, the Managing Director of a U.S. consulting firm contemplates whether to... View Details

December 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Goldman Sachs: A Bank for All Seasons (A)

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Tiffany Lynne Obenchain

Facing the worldwide financial crisis, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein considered his options including whether his company could avoid a forced marriage and what steps Goldman Sachs should take to try to restore confidence in financial services companies. View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Crisis; Commercial Banking; Investment Banking; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Crisis Management; Business Strategy; Banking Industry

September 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Gun Safety in America: Three Leaders Propose Innovative Solutions

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joseph Paul

Gun violence was a significant problem in America. Three Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellows Christy Wood, Russell Sternlicht, and Gareth Glaser each decided to do something about gun safety. They each used their professional and leadership experience to... View Details

February 2012
Article

Management Practices across Firms and Countries

By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Competency and Skills; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizations; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Sectors; Performance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Private Equity; Multinational Firms and Management; United States; Germany; Japan; China; India