Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,242)
- Faculty Publications (505)
- April 2010 (Revised May 2010)
- Supplement
George Martin at The Boston Consulting Group (C)
By: Leslie A. Perlow and Kerry Herman
George Martin, managing partner at The Boston Consulting Group, is worried as some of his best performers have recently pulled him aside to discuss the challenges they face managing the demands of their work lives with their desire for more predictable time with their... View Details
- April 2010
- Course Overview Note
Managing Human Capital
By: Boris Groysberg
Managing Human Capital, a second-year elective course at Harvard Business School, seeks to create business leaders who understand human resources practices essential to firm performance and who think strategically about managing their own careers. This Managing Human... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Multinational Strategies and Developing Countries in Historical Perspective
By: Geoffrey Jones
This working paper offers a longitudinal and descriptive analysis of the strategies of multinationals from developed countries in developing countries. The central argument is that strategies were shaped by the trade-off between opportunity and risk. Three broad... View Details
- Article
Signaling Firm Performance Through Financial Statement Presentation: An Analysis Using Special Items
By: Edward J. Riedl and Suraj Srinivasan
This paper investigates whether managers' presentation of special items within the financial statements reflects economic performance or opportunism. Specifically, we assess special items presented as a separate line item on the income statement (income statement... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Shurgard Self-Storage: Expansion to Europe (Abridged)
Shurgard, a U.S.-based firm that rents storage facilities to consumers and small businesses, is considering financing options for rapid expansion of its European operations. Five years after entering Europe, Shurgard Europe has opened 17 facilities in Belgium, France,... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
Dollarama Inc.
By: Andre F. Perold
Dollarama is the leading operator of dollar stores in Canada. The firm performed extraordinarily well after a leveraged buyout in 2004 and recently executed a highly successful IPO. The company sources its goods primarily from Asia. It has strong brand recognition and... View Details
- January 2010
- Article
Buy Local? The Geography of Successful Venture Capital Expansion
By: Henry Chen, Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner and Josh Lerner
We document geographic concentration by both venture capital firms and venture capital-financed companies in three metropolitan areas: San Francisco, Boston, and New York. We find that venture capital firms locate in regions with high success rates of venture... View Details
- Article
Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We present a survey of recent contributions in empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries... View Details
Keywords: Economics; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Geographic Location; Motivation and Incentives; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Competition; Human Capital; Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Multinational Firms and Management; India; Brazil; United States
- 2009
- Working Paper
International Differences in the Size and Roles of Corporate Headquarters: An Empirical Examination
By: David J. Collis, David Young and Michael Goold
This paper examines differences in the size and roles of corporate headquarters around the world. Based on a survey of over 600 multibusiness corporations in seven countries (France, Germany, Holland, UK, Japan, US, and Chile) the paper describes the differences among... View Details
Keywords: Business Headquarters; Size; Organizational Structure; Culture; Japan; France; Germany; Netherlands; United Kingdom; United States; Chile
- December 2009
- Article
Hiding the Evidence of Valid Theories: How Coupled Search Processes Obscure Performance Differences Among Organizations
By: Nicolaj Siggelkow and Jan Rivkin
Theorists argue that an organization's high-level choices, such as its organizational design or the attributes of its top management team, should influence its performance, yet empirical researchers have struggled to detect such influence. The impact of high-level... View Details
- November 2009
- Supplement
Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (B)
By: Tsedal Neeley
This case updates students on the steps Greg James took to solve the problems that instigated the crisis documented in “Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A).” We find out how James solves the process problems involved in his team's breakdown... View Details
- September 2009 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
Acumen Fund: Measurement in Impact Investing (A)
By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan
Acumen Fund is a global venture capital firm with a dual purpose: it looks for a return on its investments, and it also seeks entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty. This case examines Acumen's new projects in Kenya. The organization's investment committee and its... View Details
- Article
Specialization and Success: Evidence from Venture Capital
By: Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner and Josh Lerner
This paper examines how organizational structure affects behavior and outcomes, studying the performance of different types of venture capital organizations. We find a strong positive relationship between the degree of specialization by individual venture capitalists... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Do Private Equity-owned Firms Have Better Management Practices?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity,... View Details
- July – August 2009
- Article
Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance
By: Sebastian Raisch, Julian Birkinshaw, Gilbert Probst and Michael Tushman
Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a new research paradigm in organization theory, yet several issues that are fundamental to this debate remain controversial. We explore four central tensions here: Should organizations achieve ambidexterity through... View Details
- May 2009 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
Going to the Oracle: Goldman Sachs, September 2008
By: Clayton S. Rose and David Lane
On September 23, 2008, in the midst of an historic crisis in the U.S. financial markets, Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs. Goldman CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, said: "We are pleased that given our longstanding relationship, Warren... View Details
- April 2009
- Case
Supply Chain Optimization at Hugo Boss (A)
By: Ananth Raman, Nicole DeHoratius and Zahra Kanji
We evaluate the impact of a supply chain pilot implemented at Hugo Boss. This pilot entailed altering the way in which Hugo Boss orders from its suppliers. We explore the challenge of assessing the impact of supply chain change, the link between operational performance... View Details
- April 2009
- Supplement
Supply Chain Optimization at Hugo Boss (B) - The M-Ratio
By: Ananth Raman, Nicole DeHoratius and Zahra Kanji
We evaluate the impact of a supply chain pilot implemented at Hugo Boss. This pilot entailed altering the way in which Hugo Boss orders from its suppliers. We explore the challenge of assessing the impact of supply chain change, the link between operational performance... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
Before the Fall: Lehman Brothers 2008
By: Clayton S. Rose and Anand Ahuja
This case examines Lehman Brothers in the months preceding its collapse. Following the announcement of a huge and unexpected second quarter loss, the CFO was removed from her post after only seven months in the job. This case explores the challenges faced by a firm... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Broadening Focus: Spillovers, Complementarities and Specialization in the Hospital Industry
By: Jonathan R. Clark and Robert S. Huckman
The long-standing argument that focused operations outperform others stands in contrast to claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. The performance benefits of focus are typically attributed to reduced complexity, lower uncertainty, and the development... View Details