Publications

SSRN

01 Nov 2017
What Do You Think?

What Are the Real Lessons of the Wells Fargo Case?

control, questionable organizational (particularly human resource management) practices, and human behavior traits in general. As “Former Employee” put it, “much of the language in the Visions and Values about caring for team members and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Banking

09 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Unilever—A Case Study

that the two companies should at all times pay dividends of equivalent value in sterling and guilders. There were two head offices—in London and Rotterdam—and two chairmen. Until 1996 the "chief executive" role was performed by... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation; Food & Beverage; Manufacturing; Retail

20 Apr 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Why Every Company Needs a CSR Strategy and How to Build It

Keywords: by Kash Rangan, Lisa A. Chase & Sohel Karim

16 Mar 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Higher-Ambition CEOs Need Higher-Ambition Boards

Keywords: by Edward J. Ludwig, Anna Elise Walton & Michael Beer

TeachingInterests

Senior Executive Leadership Program—Middle East

By: Andy Wu

Change is everywhere in the Middle East today, as many countries seek to diversify their economies and encourage new industries. The region's complex business environment includes distinct political and economic conditions in each country—and... View Details

TeachingInterests

Senior Executive Leadership Program - China (SELPC)

By: Stefan H. Thomke

Today's global business environment offers many exciting prospects for talented executives and ambitious organizations. To take full advantage of emerging opportunities in Greater China and beyond, businesses... View Details

Research Summary

The Talent at the Table: Business Expertise and Share Ownership in Fortune 500 Boardrooms

This paper examines the relationship between corporate value and "vestige" directors, defined as directors who own sizeable shareholdings but lack salient business experience relative to their peers on Fortune 500 boards. These people come to serve on... View Details

December 2024
Article

Proxy Advisory Firms and Corporate Shareholder Engagement

By: Aiyesha Dey, Austin Starkweather and Joshua White

We study how Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) affect firms’ engagement with shareholders. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using say-on-pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers ISS to review engagement activities. Firms receiving ISS... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Governing and Advisory Boards; Policy; Voting

March 2024
Case

Negotiating the Gift of Life (A)

By: Alex Chan

Describes a negotiation where lives are truly at stake, where key lessons on persuasion and the role that identity might play in a negotiation are on display through an effort by a frontline negotiator from OneLegacy, the US's largest organ procurement organization. As... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Negotiation; Communication; Diversity; Nonprofit Organizations; Emotions; Health Industry

Educators

October 2023
Article

Improving Regulatory Effectiveness Through Better Targeting: Evidence from OSHA

By: Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

We study how a regulator can best target inspections. Our case study is a U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program that randomly allocated some inspections. On average, each inspection averted 2.4 serious injuries (9%) over the next five years.... View Details

Keywords: Safety Regulations; Regulations; Regulatory Enforcement; Machine Learning Models; Safety; Operations; Service Operations; Production; Forecasting and Prediction; Decisions; United States

March 2021
Supplement

Sky Deutschland - Bidding for Sports Rights (B)

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Sascha L. Schmidt and Sebastian Koppers

Carsten Schmidt, CEO of Sky Deutschland, needs to prepare for the auction of German soccer rights. Much was at stake. Not only was soccer the most widely watched sport in Germany, the company had long advertised that only Sky showed “every game, every goal.” In... View Details

Keywords: Sports; Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Intellectual Property; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Sports Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Germany

May 2020
Article

Measuring Collaboration in Modern Organizations

By: Stephen Michael Impink, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

Internal communication has been a central theme in organizational economics, as employee collaboration provides insight into the structure of firms. Use of electronic communications data can be transformational for organizational economics, as these data provide a... View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Employees; Interactive Communication; Measurement and Metrics; Organizations; Performance

2020
Working Paper

Internal Models, Make Believe Prices, and Bond Market Cornering

By: Ishita Sen and Varun Sharma

Exploiting position-level heterogeneity in regulatory incentives to misreport and novel data on regulators, we document that U.S. life insurers inflate the values of corporate bonds using internal models. We estimate an additional $9-$18 billion decline in regulatory... View Details

Keywords: Life Insurers; Capital Regulation; Internal Models; Corporate Bonds; Regulatory Supervision; Concentrated Ownership; Bonds; Capital; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Insurance; Investment Portfolio

SSRN

2020
Working Paper

Improving Regulatory Effectiveness Through Better Targeting: Evidence from OSHA

By: Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

We study how a regulator can best target inspections. Our case study is a US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program that randomly allocated some inspections. On average, each inspection averted 2.4 serious injuries (9%) over the next five years.... View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Working Conditions; Safety; Quality; Production; Analysis; Resource Allocation; Manufacturing Industry; United States

SSRN

2015
Working Paper

Banks' Risk Exposures

By: Juliane Begenau, Monika Piazzesi and Martin Schneider

This paper studies U.S. banks' exposure to interest rate and credit risk. We exploit the factor structure in interest rates to represent many bank positions in terms of simple factor portfolios. This approach delivers time varying measures of exposure that are... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Interest Rates; Credit; Banks and Banking; United States

May 2014
Article

How to Outsmart Activist Investors

By: Bill George and Jay W. Lorsch

We offer opinions on how management and corporate boards of directors can best manage investor relations with activist stockholders such as hedge funds who are demanding major changes within a corporation to improve stockholder return. Beverage industry firm PepsiCo is... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism

October 2012 (Revised February 2014)
Teaching Note

Logoplaste: Global Growing Challenges (TN)

By: Juan Alcacer

The case follows Logoplaste in its transformation from a small player in the plastic container industry in Portugal to a mid-sized global firm with operations in 11 countries. The case summarizes Logoplaste's history, with an emphasis on the milestones of its global... View Details

Keywords: R＆D; Innovation; Competitive Advantage; Operations Strategy; Global Strategy; Competition; Operations; Strategy; Manufacturing Industry

January 2010 (Revised March 2013)
Case

foursquare

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and David Chen

Co-founders of foursquare are deciding how to respond to competitive threats and scale up the organization. Foursquare was a location-based online service that allowed users to "check in" to a location using an application on a smartphone. Foursquare kept track of a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Competitive Advantage; Web Services Industry; United States

Educators

March 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Danatbank

By: David A. Moss, Cole Bolton and Andrew Novo

In the summer of 1931, Germany was struggling with a deepening economic crisis. Production had fallen, unemployment was high, and bank deposits and gold were being withdrawn from the country at a rapid pace, threatening the value of the German mark. The country's third... View Details

Keywords: History; Risk Management; Business History; Capital Markets; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Germany

Educators