Publications

August 2013 (Revised December 2014)
Case

Taking Dell Private

By: David J. Collis, David B. Yoffie and Matthew Shaffer

In July 2012, Michael Dell, CEO and founder of Dell, Inc., met with a representative of Silver Lake Partners to explore taking his company private. The company, which he had founded in his dorm room as a college freshman and which had made him the youngest Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Going Private; The PC Market; Market For Corporate Control; Corporate Strategy; Leveraged Buyouts; Change Management; Private Equity; Market Entry and Exit; Private Ownership; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Internet and the Web; Computer Industry; Technology Industry; United States

25 Oct 2006
Op-Ed

Fixing Executive Options: The Veil of Ignorance

the right thing to do is for shareholders as a whole. This uncertainty is a burden on managers and one that will force them not to choose investments, mergers, and accounting decisions based on View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai & Joshua Margolis

December 2022
Article

Conflicting Interests and the Effect of Fiduciary Duty: Evidence from Variable Annuities

By: Mark Egan, Shan Ge and Johnny Tang

We examine the variable annuity market to study conflicts of interest and the effect of fiduciary duty in brokerage markets. Insurers typically pay brokers higher commissions for selling more expensive annuities. Our results indicate that sales are four times as... View Details

Keywords: Variable Annuity; Brokers; Fiduciary Duty; Finance; Investment; Insurance; Conflict of Interests; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry; United States

SSRN

February 2014
Case

Tommy Koh: Background and Major Accomplishments of the 'Great Negotiator, 2014'

By: James K. Sebenius and Laurence A. Green

Significant negotiation-related achievements from the career of Ambassador Tommy Koh of Singapore are highlighted in brief form along with elements of his background and career. In light of these accomplishments, Koh was selected as the recipient of the 2014 Great... View Details

Keywords: Multiparty Negotiations; Dispute Resolution; Conference Diplomacy; Free Trade Agreements Environment; Environment; Singapore; ASEAN; United Nations; Negotiation; International Relations; Personal Development and Career; Trade; Conflict and Resolution; Singapore

January 2018
Article

Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Competition Among Applicants

By: Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

Despite seeming to be an important requirement for hiring, the concept of a slot is absent from virtually all of economics. Macroeconomic studies of vacancies and search come closest, but the implications of slot-based hiring for individual worker outcomes has not been... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Selection and Staffing; Employment; Competency and Skills

Teaching Interest

United States in the World 39 - History of American Democracy

By: David A. Moss

For Harvard College undergraduates and MBA students

Today we often hear that American democracy is broken - but what does a healthy democracy look like? How has American democratic governance functioned in the past, and how has it changed... View Details

09 Feb 2018
Research & Ideas

Big Hits: The Best of the 2018 Super Bowl Ads

year. And unlike for most TV advertising, viewers actually watch Super Bowl commercials. Which advertiser did best? It depends on whether we judge based on aesthetic aspects of View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty; Telecommunications

October 2015
Article

Hormones and Ethics: Understanding the Biological Basis of Unethical Conduct

By: Jooa Julie Lee, Francesca Gino, Ellie Shuo Jin, Leslie K. Rice and Robert A. Josephs

Globally, fraud has been rising sharply over the last decade, with current estimates placing financial losses at greater than $3.7 trillion dollars annually. Unfortunately, fraud prevention has been stymied by lack of a clear and comprehensive understanding of its... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Ethics; Science

25 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Who Lives in the C-Suite? Organizational Structure and the Division of Labor in Top Management

Keywords: by Maria Guadalupe, Hongyi Li & Julie Wulf

December 2018 (Revised July 2023)
Case

Instituto Dara: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Illness at Scale

By: Julie Battilana, Marissa Kimsey, Priscilla Zogbi and Johanna Mair

Dr. Vera Cordeiro founded the NGO Instituto Dara in 1991 to help poor families break the cycle of poverty and illness in Brazil. She and her team of employees and volunteers developed a holistic methodology to address the multidimensional sources of poverty based on... View Details

Keywords: Social Innovation; NGO; Scaling; Health; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Non-Governmental Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Poverty; Health Industry; South America; Brazil

June 2009 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Mrs. Ebtissam Algosaibi: An Entrepreneur in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Mrs. Ebtissam Algosaibi has created the leading high end jewelry company in the Middle East, Erum Jewelry, based in her home town of Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia. She believes Erum has the potential to be a world player similar to Cartier and Chopard. How should she expand... View Details

Keywords: Gender Characteristics; Entrepreneurship; Global Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Opportunities; Expansion; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Al-Khubar; Middle East

March 1, 2022
Article

Widespread Use of National Academies Consensus Reports by the American Public

By: Diana Hicks, Matteo Zullo, Ameet Doshi and Omar Isaac Asensio

In seeking to understand how to protect the public information sphere from corruption, researchers understandably focus on dysfunction. However, parts of the public information ecosystem function very well, and understanding this as well will help in protecting and... View Details

Keywords: Reports; Surveys; AI and Machine Learning; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Use and Leverage

15 Mar 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Initiating Divergent Organizational Change: The Enabling Role of Actors’ Social Position

Keywords: by Julie Battilana

28 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Eyes Shut: The Consequences of Not Noticing

of the solution, rather than part of the problem. More than ten years later, not only has Walmart failed to lead on product safety but View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman; Retail

17 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

The Lessons of Business History: A Handbook

Zeitlin. But unless you were a business historian, this data went largely unnoticed, and the consequences were not just academic. "This loss of history has resulted in the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

07 May 2008
Research & Ideas

The Intellectual History of Harvard Business School

to write a book based on the colloquium. The colloquium was video- and audio-taped, and there is already an interest by some people who were unable to attend in seeing some... View Details

Keywords: by Richard S. Tedlow; Education

Article

The Impact of Project Portfolio Management on Information Technology Projects

By: Bert De Reyck, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Martin Lockett, Sergio Ricardo Calderini, Marcio Moura and Andrew Sloper

The ever-increasing penetration of projects as a way to organise work in many organisations necessitates effective management of multiple projects. This has resulted in a greater interest in the processes of project portfolio management (PPM), with more and more... View Details

Keywords: Project Portfolio Management; Information Technology; Projects; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Improvement

October 2013
Article

Shattering the Myth of Separate Worlds: Negotiating Non-Work Identities at Work

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Erin M. Reid

How much of our self is defined by our work? Fundamental changes in the social organization of work are destabilizing the relationship between work and the self. As a result, parts of the self traditionally considered outside the domain of work, i.e., "non-work"... View Details

Keywords: Identity; Diversity; Strategy; Jobs and Positions; Work-Life Balance