Publications

2017
Working Paper

Lessons Unlearned? Corporate Debt in Emerging Markets

By: Laura Alfaro, Gonzalo Asis, Anusha Chari and Ugo Panizza

This paper documents a set of new stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility for emerging market firms following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Debt; Financial Fragility; Firm-level Data; Large Firms; Emerging Markets; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance; Financial Condition

May 2017
Article

Stable and Strategy-Proof Matching with Flexible Allotments

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Westkamp

We introduce a framework of matching with flexible allotments that can be used to model firms with cross-division hiring restrictions. Our framework also allows us to nest some prior models of matching with distributional constraints. Building upon our recent work on... View Details

Keywords: Balance and Stability; Mathematical Methods

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April 2017
Case

Global Leadership in a Dynamic and Evolving Region: Molinas @ The Coca-Cola Company (A)

By: Tsedal Neeley and Esel Çekin

Galya Frayman Molinas, President of Coca-Cola's Turkish business and a 20-year company veteran, is unexpectedly asked to take the helm of a newly expanded territory with operations across eight additional countries in Central Asia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,... View Details

Keywords: Functions; Structure; Centralization; Decentralization; Diversity; Country Of Origin Effects; Global Contextual Intelligence; Leading Change; Crisis Management; Organizational Structure; Experience and Expertise; Situation or Environment; Central Asia; Turkey

April 2017
Case

Planetary Resources Inc., Property Rights, and the Regulation of the Space Economy

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Angela Acocella

Planetary Resources, Inc. (PRI) had a bold, some said crazy, vision: to mine asteroids. One might have assumed that developing the right technology would be the greatest challenge facing PRI. But even if the fledgling company could develop and deploy the sophisticated... View Details

Keywords: Property; Rights; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Aerospace Industry; Mining Industry

April 2017
Supplement

Imprimis (D)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karen Elterman and Marc Appel

This case is a supplement to Imprimis (A, B, & C). It describes Imprimis’s 2015 decision to develop a $1 per pill compounded alternative to Daraprim, the branded drug that had recently undergone an extreme price hike, raising its price to $750 per pill. Imprimis also... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Growth and Development Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

2016
Article

The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet as a Financial-Stability Tool

By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel Gregory Hanson and Jeremy C. Stein

We argue that the Federal Reserve should use its balance sheet to help reduce a key threat to financial stability: the tendency for private-sector financial intermediaries to engage in excessive amounts of maturity transformation—i.e., to finance risky assets using... View Details

Keywords: Central Banking; Policy; Risk Management; Public Administration Industry; United States

January 2017 (Revised February 2018)
Case

Godiva Japan: Think Local, Scale Global

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Esel Cekin and Akiko Kanno

This case tracks Jerome Chouchan’s strategies and execution for a successful turnaround of Godiva Japan’s operations, which were experiencing a decline in sales when he became the managing director of the company in 2010. Through various initiatives and innovations,... View Details

January 2017
Article

Contract Design and Stability in Many-to-Many Matching

By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

We develop a model of many-to-many matching with contracts that subsumes as special cases many-to-many matching markets and buyer/seller markets with heterogeneous and indivisible goods. In our setting, substitutable preferences are sufficient to guarantee the... View Details

Keywords: Many-to-Many Matching; Stability; Substitutes; Contract Design; Contracts; Marketplace Matching; Balance and Stability

December 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Module Note

Strategy Execution Module 15: Using the Levers of Control to Implement Strategy

By: Robert Simons

This module reading pulls together key concepts and techniques from the Strategy Execution series into an integrated model—the levers of control. The four levers are: (1) belief systems, (2) boundary systems, (3) diagnostic control systems, and (4) interactive control... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Levers Of Control; Balancing Innovation And Control; Managing Growing Businesses; Turn Around Management; Human Behavior; Organizational Life Cycle; Strategy; Management Systems; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Behavior

December 2016
Article

Selective Regulator Decoupling and Organizations' Strategic Responses

By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Frank Moers

Organizations often respond to institutional pressures by symbolically adopting policies and procedures but decoupling them from actual practice. Literature has examined why organizations decouple from regulatory pressures. In this study, we argue that decoupling... View Details

Keywords: Regulator Leniency; Beneficence; Mispricing; Upcoding; Nonprofit Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Revenue; Health Industry

SSRN

November 2016 (Revised December 2016)
Module Note

Strategy Execution Module 14: Managing Strategic Risk

By: Robert Simons

This module reading provides an overview of the business conduct boundaries, strategic boundaries, and internal control systems used to manage risk. Boundary systems—linked to clear, enforceable sanctions—are essential whenever demanding performance goals are set and... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Boundary Systems; Innovation; Internal Controls; Fraud; Human Behavior; Staff Experts; Strategy; Risk Management; Behavior; Governance Controls; Management Practices and Processes; Boundaries; Employees; Business Strategy; Innovation and Invention

November 2016 (Revised March 2018)
Module Note

Strategy Execution Module 9: Building a Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert Simons

This module reading explains how to construct a strategy map and build a balanced scorecard. Using an internal value chain model, the module illustrates how a balanced scorecard can support and enable customer management, innovation, operations, and post-sale service... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Performance Measurement; Strategy Map; Business Goals; Customer Measures; Strategy; Balanced Scorecard; Business Model

November 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Darby's Investment in Sirma: Professionalizing an Entrepreneurial Firm

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Eren Kuzucu

In March 2010, Burak Dalgın (HBS MBA 2004) led private equity firm Darby's investment in Sırma, a local Turkish water and beverage company. Sırma was owned and managed by members of two Turkish business families. The existing management, while being highly... View Details

Keywords: Control Systems; Variance Analysis; Emerging Markets; Debt; Family Ownership; Turkey; Valuation; Business or Company Management; Private Equity; Financial Reporting; Investment; Budgets and Budgeting; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey

November–December 2016
Article

The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Industry

By: Yongwook Paik and Feng Zhu

Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details

Keywords: Patent Wars; Patent Litigation; Intellectual Property (IP) Enforcement; Institutions; Patent Thicket; Smartphone; Patents; Corporate Strategy; Mobile Technology

2016
Working Paper

Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-Family Narrative as a Social Defense Against the 24/7 Work Culture

By: Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid

It is widely accepted that the conflict women experience between family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is partial at best: men, too, experience... View Details

Keywords: 24/7 Work Culture; Hegemonic Narrative; Social Defense; Work-family Conflict; Systems Psychodynamic Theory; Work-Life Balance; Personal Development and Career; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Organizational Culture

October 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

JCPenney: Back in Business

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Christine Snively

In 2016, JCPenney was in the midst of a multi-year turnaround after coming dangerously close to bankruptcy. Under CEO Marvin Ellison, the company had identified three strategic objectives—a focus on omnichannel, private label goods, and increasing revenue per... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Customer Management; Omnichannel; Turnarounds; Private Label; Promotions; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Competition; Retail Industry; United States

October 2016
Case

Elon Musk: Balancing Purpose and Risk

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Sarah Mehta

The case is used to illustrate the place of ‘Purpose’ versus financial risk and returns in a founder’s objectives. It also addresses personal risk profile of different founders, and when paired with the Risk Tolerance Exercise, it enables evaluating one’s own appetite... View Details

Keywords: Electric Vehicle; Solar Power; Vision; Trade-offs; Leadership; Mission and Purpose; Risk and Uncertainty; Entrepreneurship; Failure; United States; North America