Publications

March 2014 (Revised October 2014)
Teaching Note

ISS A/S: The Buyout

By: Lucy White and Carsten Bienz

Provides the opportunity to value a leveraged buyout; and to examine the nature and extent of a company's responsibilities to its bondholders. Here, the context is a "going private" transaction in Europe, where the financing plan called for the addition to the... View Details

Keywords: LBO; Private Equity; Contracts; Global Business; International Business; Finance; Ethics; Law; Service Industry; Europe

February 2014 (Revised October 2014)
Case

ISS A/S: The Buyout

By: Clayton Rose, Carsten Bienz and Lucy White

Provides the opportunity to value a leveraged buy-out; and to examine the nature and extent of a company's responsibilities to its bondholders. Here, the context is a "going private" transaction in Europe, where the financing plan called for the addition to the... View Details

Keywords: LBO; Private Equity; Contracts; Global Business; International Business; Finance; Ethics; Law; Service Industry; Europe

May 2013
Article

Here's a Tip: Prosocial Gratuities Are Linked to Corruption

By: Magnus Thor Torfason, Francis J. Flynn and Daniella Kupor

We investigated the link between tipping, an altruistic act, and bribery, an immoral act. We found a positive relationship between these two seemingly unrelated behaviors, using archival cross-national data for 32 countries, and controlling for per capita GDP, income... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Crime and Corruption; Behavior

June 2019
Article

Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines

By: Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan and Benjamin Roth

A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Household; Personal Finance; Decision Making; Behavior; India; Philippines

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Article

The Economics of Structured Finance

By: Joshua D. Coval, Jakub W. Jurek and Erik Stafford

This paper investigates the spectacular rise and fall of structured finance. The essence of structured finance activities is the pooling of economic assets like loans, bonds, and mortgages, and the subsequent issuance of a prioritized capital structure of claims, known... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Asset Management; Debt Securities; Investment; Risk Management; Behavior

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08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

15 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

High Ambition Leadership

What is welcome and all too rare? Leaders who care about building great institutions, not just profits. What sets these leaders apart in their practice and outlook? Harvard Business School's Michael Beer in his new book, Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Collaborating across cultures

We propose that managers adept at thinking about their cultural assumptions (cultural metacognition) are more likely than others to develop affect-based trust in their relationships with people from different cultures, enabling creative collaboration. Study 1, a... View Details

08 May 2020
In Practice

Nonprofits Hurt by COVID-19 Must Hoard Cash to Hold On

The coronavirus crisis is hobbling social enterprises around the world, leaving many fighting for survival at a time of profound need. Since the pandemic hit, donations have fallen for more than two-thirds of nonprofit organizations, and... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

28 May 2008
First Look

First Look: May 28, 2008

improvements will be exhibited by those shamed firms that face lower-cost opportunities to improve—-and thus are particularly able to respond. We take advantage of a natural experiment, when a major social View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

February 2006 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Auctioning Morningstar

By: Malcolm P. Baker and James Quinn

Morningstar, a publisher of data and ratings for mutual fund investors, is considering an auction-based approach to the company's upcoming IPO, with management weighing the risks and benefits of the auction approach vs. a traditional underwritten offering. View Details

Keywords: Financial Strategy; Initial Public Offering; Stock Shares; Cost vs Benefits; Strategy; Auctions; Business or Company Management; Conflict of Interests; Publishing Industry

October 2001 (Revised February 2002)
Case

Acme Investment Trust: January 2001

By: Josh Lerner

The managers of a large corporate pension fund must decide whether to invest in a private equity fund that is offering a guaranteed rate of return of 20% on part of its portfolio. The background behind and implications of the guarantee are explored. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Private Equity; Motivation and Incentives; Asset Management; Investment Funds; Financial Strategy; Financial Services Industry

March 2023 (Revised May 2025)
Case

On

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karolin Frankenberger and Sascha Mader

Founded in 2010, in just one decade, the Swiss company On had established itself as a main player in global sports footwear and apparel. Based on an unconventional strategy which one of the founders labeled as “obsessively distinct,” On grew its sales with a compound... View Details

November 2008 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Youth Villages

By: Allen S. Grossman, Cathy Ross and William Foster

Tennessee-based nonprofit Youth Villages had an impressive record of serving emotionally and behaviorally troubled youth and their families, with higher success rates and lower costs than most child services providers. Yet expanding to offer its services on a broader... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Business and Government Relations; Nonprofit Organizations; Expansion; Tennessee

March 1983
Article

Brilliant but Cruel: Perceptions of Negative Evaluators

By: T. M. Amabile

Using edited excerpts from actual negative and positive book reviews, this research examined the hypothesis that negative evaluators of intellectual products will be perceived as more intelligent than positive evaluators. The results strongly supported the hypothesis.... View Details

Keywords: Social Psychology; Situation or Environment; Performance Evaluation; Perception; Status and Position; Attitudes; Prejudice and Bias; Power and Influence

April 2025
Article

Gender and Preferences for Performance Feedback

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and David Klinowski

Across multiple studies, we investigate whether there are gender differences in preferences for receiving performance feedback. We vary many features of the feedback context: whether the performance task is a cognitive test or a mock interview, whether the feedback is... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Gender; Cognition and Thinking; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior