Family Firms - Publications - Faculty & Research

05 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 5, 2008

Cohen and Breno Schmidt Abstract We explore a new channel for attracting inflows using a unique dataset of corporate 401(k) retirement plans and their mutual fund family trustees. Families secure substantial... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

17 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

The Lessons of Business History: A Handbook

should be better seen as the product of a specific historical era and a particular place, essentially the United States. The chapter on family firms shows that they could be as successful or more so than the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

20 Dec 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

How to Design a Better Customer Experience

(The accompanying teaching note is available to instructors to help them run the exercise.) Thomke, who has worked with global firms on upping their customer experience game, has taught the class in the HBS executive education programs,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health; Entertainment & Recreation

Web

Research - Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

credit extended to private sector firms. See Sam’s other research here , Jeremy’s other research here , Adi’s other research here , and Eric’s other research here . More Info Large banks and small firm lending By: Victoria Ivashina &... View Details

14 Aug 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 14, 2018

Eight studies demonstrate that when firms empower consumers to vote, consumers infer a series of implicit promises—even in the absence of explicit promises. We identify three implicit promises to which consumers react negatively when... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

09 Dec 2019
Research & Ideas

Identify Great Customers from Their First Purchase

Using information collected during a customer’s first purchase, a new marketing tool that leverages machine learning technology can provide firms with valuable predictions about the customer’s future behavior, says Eva Ascarza, a... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail; Service

23 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Learning Curve: The Brother-and-Sister Team Behind a New Edtech Nonprofit

technology so that we can reach out in a low-cost, scalable way,” Mahajan explains. Rocket targets the least educated and most impoverished families in India. Many parents earn between one and two dollars a day doing construction or... View Details

01 Oct 1999
News

Banking on Success

Kennedy Stephen M. Waters James A. Stern William J. Kneisel Donald H. Layton Kevin W. Kennedy A managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he has spent his entire career, Kevin Kennedy has served the firm in a number of positions,... View Details

Keywords: Deborah E. Blagg

04 Sep 2019
News

From Retail to Real Estate

traded national chain and generations-long family enterprise—until it was acquired by Walmart for $1.6 billion in 2009. As reported in the Bloomberg story, “Harvard Grad Solves His Family’s $1.6 Billion Liquidity Problem,” Ibañez was... View Details

11 Mar 2001
Research & Ideas

Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

opening up the shareholding of the parent trading company, but by floating separate 'free-standing' firms on the British capital markets, which the merchant houses continued to control through management contracts and other means in the... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones

Web

HBS Alumni Conference: Accelerating Climate Solutions - Alumni

President & CEO, Ceres Curtis D. Ravenel , Senior Advisor, Co-Chair and Vice-Chair, Glasgow Alliance for Net Zero Eric Usher , Head, UNEP Finance Initiative Typically, we think of firms as being in perpetual competition with each other.... View Details

30 Apr 2020
Book

Fighting Climate Change Requires a New Capitalism

Rebecca Henderson spent her young adult years living two lives. At work, she preached the risks of resisting change to MBA students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drawing on lessons she learned while watching factories close as a management consultant.... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Energy

15 Jun 2021
News

Keeping Hourly Workers Focused on the Stock, Not the Clock

Illustration by Lincoln Agnew Pete Stavros (MBA 2002) got his first lessons in labor relations as a kid at the dinner table, when his father, who operated a road grader at construction sites, told the family about his day. The elder... View Details

Keywords: April White; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

Web

Case Studies - Social Impact Collaboratory

the VELUX Foundations of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details

29 Oct 2020
Blog Post

Delving Deeper into Development with the MBA/MPA-ID Program – a Q+A with Zainab Raji (MBA/MPA-ID 2022)

history on my grandpa’s walking tours of Lagos Island, celebrating Eid holidays with family, and working on craft projects with my twin sister. My family bonded over storytelling. Older family members... View Details

01 Sep 2022
What Do You Think?

Is It Time to Consider Lifting Tariffs on Chinese Imports?

stimulate debate about important issues in a community whose media were controlled at the time by one family with one point of view. It got me on a list prepared by an alumnus (and ignored by the person to whom he sent it, the President... View Details

Keywords: Re: James L. Heskett

17 Jan 2023
Book

Good Companies Commit Crimes, But Great Leaders Can Prevent Them

procedures, foreign corrupt practices, and virtual currency. The book speaks to “how organizations are actually held criminally accountable,” says co-author Eugene F. Soltes, the McLean Family Professor of Business Administration at... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

19 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 19, 2019

forthcoming Journal of Political Economy CEO Behavior and Firm Performance By: Bandiera, Oriana, Stephen Hansen, Andrea Prat, and Raffaella Sadun Abstract— We measure the behavior of 1,114 CEOs in six countries parsing granular CEO diary... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

A Chronicle of the China Trade. The Papers of Augustine Heard & Co., 1840-1877

in the mid-nineteenth century. The company was active from 1840 to 1877 under the direction of Augustine Heard and his nephews John, Augustine II, Albert, and George Heard. The family shared Albert’s sentiments, leaving behind an... View Details

17 Feb 2022
Book

When Employees Feel a Sense of Purpose, Companies Succeed

and child” so that they can enjoy “a healthy, happy family.” In building its culture, the firm focuses squarely on recognizing and affirming employees’ individuality. One of Ovia’s core values is “Be yourself, be candid, be kind.”... View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati

Publications