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- August 2015
- Article
A Comparative-Advantage Approach to Government Debt Maturity
By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson and Jeremy C. Stein
We study optimal government debt maturity in a model where investors derive monetary services from holding riskless short-term securities. In a setting where the government is the only issuer of such riskless paper, it trades off the monetary premium associated with... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Corporate and Integrated Reporting: A Functional Perspective
By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim
In this chapter, we present the two primary functions of corporate reporting (information and transformation) and why currently isolated financial and sustainability reporting are not likely to effectively perform these functions. We describe the concept of integrated... View Details
- 2015
- Article
Free at Last, Now What: The Soviet and Chinese Attempts to Offer a Roadmap for the Post-Colonial World
By: Jeremy Friedman
This article seeks to understand the motivations behind the People's Republic of China's attempt to present an alternative development model for the post-colonial world and challenge Soviet leadership in the international communist movement in mid-1960s. When the wave... View Details
- July–August 2015
- Article
The Secret of Singapore: Why Cuba Should Look to Lee Kuan Yew's Thriving City-State for Economic Inspiration
By: Debora L. Spar
Between 1965 and 1991, Singapore grew at an astonishing compound annual growth rate of nearly 14%. Critics of the island's performance accused its celebrated leader, Lee Kuan Yew, of thinly veiled tendencies toward communism and authoritarianism; they argued that the... View Details
- 2015
- Article
Regulator Leniency and Mispricing in Beneficent Nonprofits
By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Frank Moers
We posit that nonprofits that provide a greater supply of unprofitable services (beneficent nonprofits) face lenient regulatory enforcement for mispricing in price-regulated markets. Consequently, beneficent nonprofits exploit such regulatory leniency and exhibit... View Details
- May–June 2015
- Article
Back to the Future: Implications for the Field of HRM of the Multi-stakeholder Perspective Proposed 30 Years Ago
By: Michael Beer, Paul Boselie and Chris Brewster
Thirty years on from the seminal work Managing Human Assets (MHA) by Beer et al., we examine how the subject has developed. We offer a normative review, based on that model, and we critique the assumption that the business of HRM is solely to improve returns to owners... View Details
- May–June 2015
- Other Article
HRM at a Crossroads: Comments on 'Evolution of Strategic HRM Through Two Founding Books: A 30th Anniversary Perspective on Development of the Field'
By: Michael Beer
I agree with Bruce Kaufman's evaluation of the HRM field and the danger to its relevance if change does not take place in the field's almost exclusive use of normal science, lack of focus on organizational change and development and indifference to the development of... View Details
- Article
Why Do Firms Have 'Purpose'? The Firm's Role as a Carrier of Identity and Reputation
By: Rebecca Henderson and Eric Van den Steen
Why do so many firms publicly espouse a "purpose" beyond simple profit maximization? And why do so many managers and employees appear to care deeply about this purpose and to believe that it is critically important? In this paper we argue that the conventional answers... View Details
- Article
Should Business Have Human Rights Obligations?
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Businesses and their managers are increasingly called upon to take on human rights obligations. Focusing on the case of multinational enterprises (MNEs), the paper argues we have reason to reject assigning human rights obligations to business enterprises and their... View Details
- Spring 2015
- Article
Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Evaluating the Impact of the Argentina Ruling
By: Laura Alfaro
Recent rulings in the ongoing litigation over the pari passu clause in Argentinian sovereign debt instruments have generated considerable controversy. Some official-sector participants and academic articles have suggested that the rulings will disrupt or impede... View Details
- 2015
- Other Unpublished Work
Do Managers Have a Role to Play in Sustaining the Institutions of Capitalism?
By: Rebecca Henderson and Karthik Ramanna
In a capitalist system based on free markets, do managers have responsibilities to the system itself? If they do, should these responsibilities shape their behavior when they engage in the political processes that structure the institutions of capitalism? The... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Cashing Out: The Rise of M&A in Bankruptcy
By: Stuart Gilson, Edith Hotchkiss and Matthew Osborn
The use of M&A in bankruptcy has increased dramatically in recent years, leading to concerns that the Chapter 11 process has shifted toward excessive liquidation of viable firms. In this paper, we argue that the rise of M&A has blurred traditional distinctions between... View Details
Keywords: M＆A; Chapter 11; Distress; Bankruptcy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Insolvency and Bankruptcy
- December 2014 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
Bhutan: Governing for Happiness
By: Sophus A. Reinert, Thomas Humphrey and Benjamin Safran
Unique among the world’s countries, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan had abandoned the traditional policy goal of increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in favor of pursuing Gross National Happiness (GNH). Famously, Bhutan ranked highly on lists of the happiest... View Details
- Article
Positioning Brands Against Large Competitors to Increase Sales
By: Neeru Paharia, Jill Avery and Anat Keinan
We explore the effect of having a large dominant competitor and show the conditions under which focusing on a competitive threat, rather than hiding it, can actually help a brand. We demonstrate through lab and field studies that highlighting a large competitor's size... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
The Rise and Fall of Demand for Securitizations
By: Sergey Chernenko, Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and private-label mortgage-backed securities (MBS) backed by nonprime loans played a central role in the recent financial crisis. Little is known, however, about the underlying forces that drove investor demand for these... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Entrepreneurship and Business Groups: An Evolutionary Perspective on the Growth of the Koç Group in Turkey
By: Asli M. Coplan and Geoffrey Jones
This working paper examines the origins and development of the Koç Group, which grew to be the largest business group in Turkey. This enterprise was an important actor in the emergence of modern business enterprise in the new state of the Republic of Turkey from the... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Bottlenecks, Modules and Dynamic Architectural Capabilities
How do firms create and capture value in large technical systems? In this paper, I argue that the points of both value creation and value capture are the system's bottlenecks. Bottlenecks arise first as important technical problems to be solved. Once the problem is... View Details
- Article
Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors
By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
- Article
Toward Resource Independence—Why State-Owned Entities Become Multinationals: An Empirical Study of India's Public R&D Laboratories
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna
In this paper, we build on the standard resource dependence theory and its departure suggested by Vernon to offer a novel explanation for why state-owned entities (SOEs) might seek a global footprint and global cash flows: to achieve resource independence from... View Details
- 2014
- Report
An Economy Doing Half Its Job: Findings of Harvard Business School's 2013–14 Survey on U.S. Competitiveness
By: Michael E. Porter and Jan Rivkin
In 2013–14, Harvard Business School (HBS) conducted its third alumni survey on U.S. competitiveness. Our report on the findings focuses on a troubling divergence in the American economy: large and midsize firms have rallied strongly from the Great Recession, and highly... View Details