Publications

Find at Harvard

April 1975 (Revised December 1975)
Case

Sorensen Chevrolet File, The

Concerns the settlement of an automobile insurance claim. A woman, blinded in an accident, alleges that approximate cause of the accident was failure by Sorensen Chevrolet to connect the left headlight of her car. The student is asked for a strategy for settling the... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Negotiation; Insurance; Lawsuits and Litigation; Legal Liability; Insurance Industry; Auto Industry

31 Jul 2019
News

Honoring the Code

law is going to be, I'm going to carry it out. “But in 2008, I'm now chairman, much different from 1993 when I wasn't involved. It just struck me that I'm leading an institution whose main value is integrity. View Details

03 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Homeland Security: A Ready-made Market

government are mysterious, he added—the making of laws and sausages are two activities better left behind closed doors. The CIA can talk to the INS, but there are policy issues that affect the speed of... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Service

June 2007 (Revised July 2007)
Case

USG Corporation (A)

Deals with CEO Bill Foote's decision of how to deal with USG's exposure to asbestos liability. USG was the largest building materials company in the United States, with 14,000 employees and gross revenues of $3.8 billion. Although USG used asbestos in a small subset of... View Details

Keywords: Legal Liability; Construction Industry

April 1998 (Revised February 2004)
Background Note

Legal Forms of Organization, The

Describes the various legal forms of organization including proprietorships, partnerships, limited partnerships, corporations, and limited liability companies. Explains the tax and liability attributes of each form, as well as other issues, which may influence the... View Details

Keywords: Business Organization; Taxation; Legal Liability; Ownership; Partners and Partnerships

10 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

Why a Federal Rule on CEO Pay Disclosure May Get You In Trouble With Customers

remember thinking, oh, that must just be my dad; he must be the only person who cares about that." The Dodd-frank Requirement Fast-forward to 2010, when the US Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

October 1987 (Revised October 1998)
Case

CVD, Inc. vs. A.S. Markham Corp. (A)

Describes the legal odyssey of two engineers who left their old employer to start a company that was directly competitive. The issues include employment contracts, technology licenses, antitrust, trade secrets, and confidential information. Provides a good opportunity... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Human Resources; Contracts; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Intellectual Property; Ethics; Legal Liability; Business Startups; Monopoly

September 2006
Tutorial

Internal Control Process - Online Tutorial

By: David F. Hawkins

Introduces the Internal Control Process by detailing its five components: 1) the internal control environment, 2) risk assessment, 3) internal control activities, 4) information and communications, and 5) monitoring. Includes multiple review exercises throughout the... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Communication; Assets; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Policy; Information; Code Law; Risk Management; System; Online Technology

September 1992 (Revised August 2004)
Case

Martin Marietta: Managing Corporate Ethics (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine

Senior managers at Martin Marietta are considering two questions: how to assess the company's seven-year-old ethics program; and how to deal with employees' fear of retribution--real or imagined--for alerting the corporate ethics office to potential problems. The case... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Resignation and Termination; Employees; Law; Business or Company Management; Programs

January 2019
Case

Accenture's Code of Business Ethics

By: Eugene Soltes

Leaders of Accenture’s compliance and ethics program are seeking to design a new code of business ethics for its global workforce of over 400,000 employees. The case explores the decision-making process that went into the design process and ultimately how they created... View Details

Keywords: Code Of Conduct; Compliance; Ethics; Law; Leadership; Governance Compliance

06 Nov 2015
Blog Post

Casey Gerald: Becoming a Leader at HBS

and resources that I-- and people like me in my neighborhood-- never had access to. The question really became permanent in my mind: What am I going to do with my opportunities to provide opportunities to... View Details

01 Apr 2000
News

Q & A: A Conversation with IRS Chief Charles Rossotti

technically be within the law but has no practical business purpose. It's just sleight of hand to reduce taxes without a legitimate reason. Typically, it's the bigger companies and multinationals that engage... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons

February 2004 (Revised March 2004)
Background Note

Profitability Drivers in Professional Service Firms

By: Ashish Nanda

This case presents a simple model of the drivers of profitability in a professional service partnership and conducts an empirical exploration of the determinants of profitability among AmLaw 100 firms over the period 1994 to 1999. View Details

Keywords: Profitability; Model; Profit; Partners and Partnerships; Law; Service Industry

10 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 10, 2009

passes. Based on this analysis, one major step that is necessary now to help ensure financial stability in the future is to identify and regulate "systemically significant" institutions on an... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

26 Oct 2009
Lessons from the Classroom

The New Deal: Negotiauctions

buying a home or car. The first Harvard faculty member to hold tenured appointments at both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, Subramanian is the faculty chair for the new HBS Executive... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

15 Dec 2015
First Look

December 15, 2015

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=48909 The Integrity of Private Third-party Compliance Monitoring By: Short, Jodi L., and Michael W. Toffel Abstract—Government agencies are increasingly turning to private, third-party... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

01 Dec 2004
News

Japanese Connection

presents a whole new set of challenges. “What they do is dictated by visa requirements and language skills,” he explains. “They stay away from things that require a depth of facility with the language, such as View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley; Arts, Sports, Language, Driving, and Other Schools; Arts, Sports, Language, Driving, and Other Schools

2016
Working Paper

The Effect of Shareholder Litigation Risk on the Information Environment: The Case of Cross-Listed Firms

By: Anywhere Sikochi

I document the causal link between shareholder litigation risk and cross-listed firms’ information environment by exploiting a quasi-natural experiment in the form of a reduction in litigation risk resulting from the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Morrison v. National... View Details

Keywords: Cross-listing; Information Environment; Shareholder Litigation Risk; D＆O Insurance; Risk and Uncertainty; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business and Shareholder Relations