Publications

October 1997 (Revised March 1998)
Case

Appalachian Mountain Club: Transforming Governance

By: Walter J. Salmon and Jaan Elias

Starting in 1988, the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) began a controversial transformation in management and governance. For its first 112 years, the AMC's structure had resembled that of a country club--volunteer leaders directed the club's operations and its small,... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Transformation; Corporate Governance; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Leading Change; Organizational Culture; Labor and Management Relations; Nonprofit Organizations; Education Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

05 Oct 2023
Blog Post

A Pathway to Public Service: Brandon Moore (MBA/MPP 2025)

Governor Ned Lamont’s team as a strategic policy fellow. Focusing on workforce development, with specific attention to expanding employment resource access for low-income job seekers, I learned a ton! But it was the human aspect of the... View Details

November 15, 2021
Article

What Do Black Executives Really Want?

By: Frank Cooper III and Ranjay Gulati

Recruiting and retaining Black talent is a priority for many organizations. Most are committed to and investing in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). And yet, according to interviews and focus groups with Black executives working in a variety of blue-chip... View Details

Keywords: Black Executives; Selection and Staffing; Retention; Race; Organizational Culture; Change Management

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March 2021 (Revised February 2025)
Teaching Note

Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma

By: Antonio Moreno and Anibha Singh

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-086. In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online... View Details

Web

Globalization - Faculty & Research

competition, and earnings management affect mean reversion in accounting return on assets. Using a sample of 48,465 unique firms from 49 countries, we find that accounting returns mean revert faster in countries where there is more... View Details

31 May 2011
First Look

First Look: May 31

investment pioneer Tsing Capital was planning for the China Environment Fund IV and considering how to maintain its commitment to social and environmental practices. Tsing Capital embraced its philosophy of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2006
Case

Vipp A/S

By: Robert D. Austin and Daniela Beyersdorfer

Rapidly growing Vipp sells highly differentiated (and expensive) "designer" versions of a product that most buyers think about in purely functional terms: Trash bins. Examines how the company successfully produces and positions a trash bin so that it is regarded as an... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Creativity; Product Design; Luxury; Brands and Branding

February 1990
Case

Wood Structures, Inc.

Ostensibly a case about employee turnover in a small construction component company, Wood Structures, Inc. is actually a snapshot of the whole company. In particular it addresses issues of leadership, morale, and teamwork (or the lack thereof) in a company dependent on... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Retention; Business Strategy

March 2008 (Revised June 2008)
Case

The Broad Institute: Applying the Power of Genomics to Medicine

By: Vicki L. Sato and Rachel Gordon

In June 2003, Harvard University and MIT announced an unprecedented partnership to create a biomedical institute, The Broad Institute. The culture of the Broad centered on science, and those involved considered it to be at the edge of the scientific frontier. In just... View Details

Keywords: Education; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Partners and Partnerships; Research and Development; Genetics

02 Aug 2017
What Do You Think?

Summing Up: Why Can’t Organizations Engage Their Employees?

employee choice, they must in essence volunteer. Most managers or organizations do not see their employees as part of a volunteer workforce.” The idea that engagement is a personal, one-on-one, matter came through clearly in the comments.... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

February 2005 (Revised May 2005)
Case

Intelliseek

Intelliseek harvests, filters, and mines the content of messages posted by consumers online and on discussion boards and blogs. For any specified consumer product brand, Intelliseek measures the volume of work-of-mouth and its valence (proportion of positive and... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Information Technology; Consumer Behavior; Knowledge Management; Marketing Reference Programs; Web Services Industry

06 Dec 2016
First Look

December 6, 2016

same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Teacher Profiles - Case Method Project

MN Win Anderson Sauk Rapids Rice High School Sauk Rapids, MN WA Ed Anegon Jenkins Jr/Sr High School Chewelah, WA NM Joshua Arbogast Capital High School Santa Fe, NM MS Amber Armstrong Northwest Rankin High School Flowood, MS Subjects: US... View Details

04 Apr 2011
HBS Case

Reinventing the National Geographic Society

behaviors, and values of a legacy organization, changing a business model from paper to digital, capitalizing on huge brand awareness and international presence, and promoting cross-functional and cross-divisional collaboration.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

January 2018
Article

The Effect of Cost Sharing on an Employee Weight Loss Program: A Randomized Trial

By: Leslie K. John, Andrea Troxel, William Yancy, Joelle Y. Friedman, Jingsan Zhu, Lin Yang, Robert Galvin, Karen Miller-Kovach, Scott Halpern, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp

Purpose: We tested the effects of employer subsidies on employee enrollment, attendance, and weight loss in a nationally-available weight management program.
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details

Keywords: Affordable Care Act (ACA); Subsidies; Weight Loss; Obesity; Incentives; Behavioral Economics; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; United States

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November 2013
Article

Which U.S. Market Interactions Affect CEO Pay? Evidence from UK Companies

By: Joseph Gerakos, Joseph Piotroski and Suraj Srinivasan

This paper examines how different types of interactions with U.S. markets by non-U.S. firms are associated with higher level of CEO pay, greater emphasis on incentive-based compensation, and smaller pay gap with U.S. firms. Using a sample of CEOs of UK firms and using... View Details

Keywords: CEO Compensation; International Pay; Incentives; Cross-listing; United Kingdom; Motivation and Incentives; Executive Compensation; Globalization; Corporate Governance; United Kingdom; United States

SSRN

June 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Buurtzorg

By: Ethan Bernstein, Tatiana Sandino, Joost Minnaar and Annelena Lobb

As co-founders of home nursing company Buurtzorg, Jos de Blok and Gonnie Kronenberg prized both self-management and organizational learning. Buurtzorg’s 10,000 nurses across 950 neighborhood nursing teams in the Netherlands were empowered to manage themselves, both in... View Details

Web

Research - Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

intermediaries. They show that at least two types of segmentation drive arbitrage dynamics: funding and balance sheets. Their results suggest specialization on both the asset and liability sides of intermediary balance sheets is important for understanding their role... View Details

October 1988 (Revised July 2000)
Case

Matt Compton's Job Search

By: Shoshana Zuboff and Dave DeLong

Matt Compton wrestles with the problems of a post-MBA job search and finds himself captivated by the aggressive recruiting tactics of the large management consulting firms. The case raises issues of how a passive job search that relies on options presented by... View Details

Keywords: Recruitment; Job Search; Problems and Challenges