Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,395)
- Faculty Publications (879)
- 2019
- Working Paper
Self-Interest: The Economist's Straitjacket
By: Robert Simons
This paper examines contemporary economic theories that focus on the design and management of business organizations. In the first part of the paper, a taxonomy is presented that describes the different types of economists interested in this subject—market economists,... View Details
Keywords: Self-interest; Economist; Moral Philosophers; Regulation; Capture; Organization Design; Economy Theory; Organization Theory; Management Theory; Commitment; Controls; Governance; Customers; Conflict of Interests; Business or Company Management; Competition; Organizational Design; Business Education; Agency Theory; Economics; Theory; Boundaries
- October 2015 (Revised October 2016)
- Case
Paez
By: Jill Avery, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Laura Urdapilleta
Paez, an Argentine start-up fashion brand, sold traditional alpargatas, a sleepy shoe category that suddenly woke up when U.S. company TOMS borrowed the traditional alpargata design, covered it with fashionable colors and prints, and tied it to a social cause. Paez's... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Do People Shape Cities, or Do Cities Shape People? The Co-evolution of Physical, Social, and Economic Change in Five Major U.S. Cities
By: Nikhil Naik, Scott Duke Kominers, Ramesh Raskar, Edward L. Glaeser and Cesar Hidalgo
Urban change involves transformations in the physical appearance and the social composition of neighborhoods. Yet, the relationship between the physical and social components of urban change is not well understood due to the lack of comprehensive measures of... View Details
- Article
Dualities in Negotiation: Introduction
Richard Walton and Robert McKersie's closeness to practice, disciplinary rigor, and successful search for powerful generalizations help explain the lasting impact of their 1965 book, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations. Central to their argument are three... View Details
- Article
The Lives and Deaths of Jobs: Technical Interdependence and Survival in a Job Structure
By: Sharique Hasan, John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning
Prior work has considered the properties of individual jobs that make them more or less likely to survive in organizations. Yet little research examines how a job’s position within a larger job structure affects its life chances and thus the evolution of the... View Details
- October 2015
- Article
The Multinational Firm and Geopolitics: Europe, Russian Energy, and Power
By: Rawi Abdelal
Multinational firms unavoidably exert influence over politics through power that is generated by both structure and process. While both political economy and management scholars address international firms, neither field has an adequate understanding of the reciprocal... View Details
- Article
The Social Contract Model of Corporate Purpose and Responsibility
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Of the many developments in business ethics that Thomas Donaldson has helped pioneer, one is the application of social contract theory to address questions about the responsibilities of business actors. In Corporations and Morality, Donaldson develops one of the... View Details
- Article
Why A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations Remains a Triumph at Fifty but the Labels 'Distributive' and 'Integrative' Should Be Retired
Richard Walton and Robert McKersie's closeness to practice, disciplinary rigor, and successful search for powerful generalizations help explain the lasting impact of the Behavioral Theory of Labor Relations. Ironically, the names they chose for the fundamental... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
A Normative Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategy, Know-How, and Competition
By: Gary P. Pisano
The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Deep Smarts as the Underpinnings of Dynamic Capabilities
By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Michelle Barton
Both ordinary and dynamic capabilities depend upon the deep smarts, i.e., business-critical, experience-based knowledge, held in the heads of an organization’s top talent. This chapter examines the links between individual and organizational capabilities and presents... View Details
- September–October 2015
- Article
Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces
By: Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein and David Lazer
Using data from a novel laboratory experiment on complex problem solving in which we varied the structure of 16-person networks, we investigate how an organization's network structure shapes performance of problem-solving tasks. Problem solving, we argue, involves both... View Details
Keywords: Networks; Experiments; Clustering; Problem Solving; Exploration And Exploitation; Knowledge; Search; Collaboration; Collaboration Structures; Transparency; Communication; Communication Technology; Information; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Performance Effectiveness; Theory; Information Industry; Information Technology Industry; Public Administration Industry; Technology Industry; Service Industry
- August 2015 (Revised January 2017)
- Background Note
Evolving Trends in Global Trade
By: Dante Roscini and Annelena Lobb
The note, while not intended to be historically comprehensive, explores the regulation of international trade from the period after World War II to developments in 2010, focusing on shifts in trade theory and policy as well as economic benefits and disadvantages... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility
By: Gary Becker, Scott Duke Kominers, Kevin Murphy and Jorg L. Spenkuch
We develop a model of intergenerational resource transmission that emphasizes the link between cross-sectional inequality and intergenerational mobility. By drawing on first principles of human capital theory, we derive several novel results. In particular, we show... View Details
- June 2015 (Revised October 2016)
- Case
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
By: Jill Avery and Jim Rosenberg
Digital was on Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Programs Bridget Coughlin's mind these days. DMNS had been dabbling in digital for the past few years, but had never fully committed to it. The time had come to establish a strategic vision, and to decide... View Details
- 2015
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Competitive Strategies Marketing Reading
By: Jill Avery and Sunil Gupta
Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover the fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks that business students must study.
This Reading illuminates the dynamics of companies in competition and offers a process for planning and executing marketing... View Details
This Reading illuminates the dynamics of companies in competition and offers a process for planning and executing marketing... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy
- 2015
- Book
Strong Brands, Strong Relationships
By: Susan Fournier, Michael Breazeale and Jill Avery
From the editorial team of the ground-breaking Consumer-Brand Relationships: Theory and Practice comes this new volume. Strong Brands, Strong Relationships is a collection of innovative research and management insights that build upon the foundations of... View Details
- 10 May 2015
- Conference Presentation
Building a Competitive Jerusalem
By: Michael E. Porter and Christian H.M. Ketels
Jerusalem 2020 is a five-year growth plan for Jerusalem's economic development based on Professor Michael E. Porter's theory of competitive advantage. The plan was presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the goal of significant investment by the... View Details
- May–June 2015
- Article
Big Data: Big Deal or Big Hype?
By: Sunil Gupta
Google Flu Trends article of November 2008 heralded a new age for big data where it is possible to leverage the vast amount of data to speak for itself, without theory or expert knowledge of the subject matter. However, in a short span the pendulum swung from big data... View Details
- Article
Do Strict Capital Requirements Raise the Cost of Capital? Bank Regulation, Capital Structure and the Low Risk Anomaly
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
Traditional capital structure theory predicts that reducing banks' leverage reduces the risk and cost of equity but does not change the weighted average cost of capital, and thus the rates for borrowers. We confirm that the equity of better-capitalized banks has lower... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Innovating without Information Constraints: Organization, Communities, and Innovation when Information Costs Approach Zero
By: Elizabeth J. Altman, Frank Nagle and Michael Tushman
Innovation has traditionally taken place within an organization's boundaries and/or with selected partners. This Chandlerian approach to innovation has been rooted in transaction costs, organizational boundaries, and information processing challenges associated with... View Details