Publications

08 Feb 2023
Op-Ed

Building an Inclusive Workplace? Prepare to Shield It from Economic Fears

Fighting bias will be key Teams formed across department and location boundaries tend to be more diverse. What will it take for these teams to outperform during rockier times? View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and Nicole Gilmore

18 Apr 2022
HBS Case

Dick’s Sporting Goods Followed Its Conscience on Guns—and It Paid Off

Days after the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, a shaken Ed Stack, then the CEO and largest shareholder of Dick’s Sporting Goods, decided it was time for his 850-store chain to pull... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

May 1997
Teaching Note

Module Overview: Coordinating and Managing Supply Chains: Matching Supply and Demand TN

By: Ananth Raman

Prepares students to configure operating and distribution systems to provide product (or service) supply to match customer demand. Begins by introducing students to the supply-demand mismatch problem, documenting its significance in many companies, and suggesting ways... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Working Capital; Distribution; Cost of Capital; Management Practices and Processes; Supply Chain Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Supply and Industry

2021
Working Paper

The Value of Data and Its Impact on Competition

By: Marco Iansiti

Common regulatory perspective on the relationship between data, value, and competition in online platforms has increasingly centered on the volume of data accumulated by incumbent firms. This view posits the existence of "data network effects," where more data leads to... View Details

Keywords: Online Platforms; Data Network Effects; Analytics and Data Science; Value; Competition; Digital Platforms

SSRN

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Functional Centralization and the Division of Labor in Management

By: Julie Wulf, Maria Guadalupe and Hongyi Li

This paper shows that the trend towards flatter hierarchies in large US firms since the mid-80's has been accompanied by increased centralization of activities at the top of the organization. In particular, the number of functional managers (e.g., Chief Financial... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Management Teams; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy; Diversification; Information Technology; United States

September 2010 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Leadership in Corporate Reporting Policy at Tata Steel

By: Karthik Ramanna and Rachna Tahilyani

The case describes the challenges faced by Tata Steel, India's largest private sector steel company, as it transitions from Indian GAAP to IFRS. It first describes those challenges in the context of the institutional voids that make IFRS adoption difficult in India.... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; International Accounting; Multinational Firms and Management; Policy; Leadership; Emerging Markets; Standards; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Steel Industry; India

Article

Operational Efficiency and Effective Management in the Catheterization Laboratory

By: Grant W. Reed, Michael L. Tushman and Samir R. Kapadia

Operational efficiency is a core business principle in which organizations strive to deliver high-quality goods or services in a cost-effective manner. This concept has become increasingly relevant to cardiac catheterization laboratories, as insurers move away from... View Details

Keywords: Cath Lab; Catheterization Laboratory; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Efficiency; Management; Performance Productivity; Cost Management; Health Industry

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Research Summary

Coordination, Control, and the Management of Organizations

Michael C. Jensen's research is aimed at obtaining a clearer understanding of how the 'organizational rules of the game' affect a manager's ability to accomplish his or her goals and how the rules can be structured to resolve problems and increase productivity. ... View Details

October 18, 2021
Article

To Regulate Network-Based Platforms, Look at Their Data

By: Chiara Farronato and Daniel Björkegren

Historically, antitrust authorities have taken a laissez-faire approach under the assumption that it is better to err on the side of not intervening when there is uncertainty. This has allowed companies like Google and Facebook to go on a shopping spree to acquire... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust Issues And Policies; Risk and Uncertainty; Digital Platforms; Competitive Advantage; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Innovation and Invention; Information Technology Industry

Find at Harvard

11 Jan 2007
Working Paper Summaries

A Perceptions Framework for Categorizing Inventory Policies in Single-stage Inventory Systems

Keywords: by Noel Watson

February 2003 (Revised August 2005)
Case

UCB (A): Managing Information for Globalization and Innovation

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Brian DeLacey

This case presents a complex total MIS strategy case for a $3 billion European pharmaceutical/chemicals company based in Brussels. It covers corporate strategy alignment of IT portfolio, IT operations issues, and global coordination of IT. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Operations; System; Corporate Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Globalization; Pharmaceutical Industry; Information Technology Industry; Brussels

2022
Article

Science-based Entrepreneurship in India: A Policy Glass (as yet) Quarter-Full

By: Tarun Khanna

India is celebrated for a resurgence of de novo entrepreneurship in recent decades. Entrants have engaged in creative risk-taking to provide market-based solutions for private or social needs despite not being scions of wealthy industrial or business families. In this... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Science; Policy; Investment

December 2008
Article

The Teaching of Strategy: From General Manager to Analyst and Back Again?

By: Joseph L. Bower

Courses in strategy are an outgrowth of the business policy course first taught at Harvard Business School in 1912. This article examines how the teaching of a course concerned with the development and implementation of the goals and policies of a firm changed during... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Curriculum and Courses; Teaching; Policy; Business History; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy

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October 2011 (Revised October 2013)
Case

A New Financial Policy at Swedish Match

By: Bo Becker and Michael Norris

Swedish Match is a profitable smokeless tobacco company with low debt compared to other firms in its industry. The firm's CFO now wants to revise the firm's conservative financial policy. View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Corporate Finance; Sweden

February 2020
Supplement

Managing Blackout at Aluminum Bahrain B.S.C. (Alba) (B)

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Gamze Yücaoğlu and Youssef Abdel Aal

The case opens in 2017 as Tim Murray, CEO of Aluminum Bahrain (Alba), the largest single-site aluminum smelter in the world outside China and a major contributor to the Bahraini economy, was contemplating the recovery options as the company was facing the most severe... View Details

Keywords: Aluminum Industry; General Management; Cultural Change; Change Management; Crisis Management; Decision Making; Organizational Culture; Safety; Leadership; Emerging Markets; Bahrain; Middle East

Research Summary

Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt (with Fabio Kanczuk)

By: Laura Alfaro

Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. Some of the implications of this analysis, however, may not be generalized once one considers the joint decision to hold debt and reserves by a... View Details

May 9, 2024
Article

Business Education Is Broken: Here Are Strategies to Fix It

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Business schools have lost their way. Students are schooled in a system that, having raised the standard of living for millions of people over centuries, is now facing systemic failures in both the environmental and social domains—failures that market forces cause and,... View Details

Keywords: Education Reform; Business And Society; Climate Change; Equality and Inequality; Environmental Sustainability; Business Education

November 2010
Case

Morgan Asset Management

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Sarah Abbott

It is 2010 and Guillermo Araoz, the equity research director at Morgan Asset Management (MAM), is considering his research budget for the year. Due to recent declines in the equity markets and MAM's sale of its mutual funds business, MAM has seen a decline in its... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Asset Management; Financial Strategy; Investment; Resource Allocation; Research and Development; Financial Services Industry