Signals - Publications - Faculty & Research

December 2012 (Revised July 2013)
Case

The “Chongqing Model” and the Future of China

Since opening to the global economy in 1979, but especially since entering the WTO in 2001, China's economy grew at rates around 10% annually by attracting FDI and promoting exports. After the financial crisis that began in 2008 and depressed demand in the United... View Details

Keywords: China; Public Sector; Private Sector; Developing Countries and Economies; Macroeconomics; Public Administration Industry; China

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March 2008 (Revised February 2009)
Case

Transparent Value LLC

By: Sharon P. Katz, Krishna G. Palepu and Aldo Sesia, Jr.

Leading index company Dow Jones recently signed a license and joint marketing agreement with Transparent Value LLC, the creator of a new fundamentals-based valuation methodology. The agreement allowed Dow Jones to offer a family of indexes based on the Transparent... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Stocks; Price; Performance Expectations; Mathematical Methods; Valuation

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Article

Buyer-Initiated vs. Seller-Initiated Information Revelation

Sales presentations are the core of the selling process where salespeople provide information to prospects. One challenge is that the amount of information available to be potentially communicated may exceed salespeople's ability to communicate or customers' ability to... View Details

Keywords: Information; Quality; Marketing Communications; Game Theory; Sales

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June 2023
Article

Can Purpose Foster Stakeholder Trust in Corporations

By: Ranjay Gulati and Franz Wohlgezogen

As part of institutional changes toward more responsible capitalism, firms increasingly articulate a purpose beyond simply profit as a central tenet of their governance. Management scholarship has noted the potential advantages of such purpose-focus for stakeholder... View Details

Keywords: Stakeholder Management; Moral Identity; Mission and Purpose; Trust; Corporate Governance; Business and Stakeholder Relations

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11 Apr 2023
Op-Ed

The First 90 Hours: What New CEOs Should—and Shouldn't—Do to Set the Right Tone

additional changes three months in. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Signal your values. You might see mountains of food go to waste at your welcome receptions and decide that all food budgets should be slashed in half.... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

Research Summary

Building Bridges: The Social Structure of Interdependent Innovation

Multidivisional firms often fail to take advantage of innovations that involve combining resources from distinct divisions. This failure of cross-line-of-business innovation is a consequence of design choices employed to execute the firm’s strategy: in organizing... View Details

March 2016
Article

An Analysis of Firms' Self-reported Anticorruption Efforts

By: Paul M. Healy and George Serafeim

We use Transparency International's ratings of self-reported anticorruption efforts for 480 corporations to analyze factors underlying the ratings. Our tests examine whether these forms of disclosure reflect firms' real efforts to combat corruption or are cheap talk.... View Details

Keywords: Corruption; Corporate Performance; Growth; Disclosure; Disclosure Strategy; Sustainability; Crime and Corruption; Corporate Disclosure; Performance; Sales

April 2014
Article

Who Donates Their Bodies to Science? The Combined Role of Gender and Migration Status Among California Whole-body Donors

By: Asad L. Asad, Michel Anteby and Filiz Garip

The number of human cadavers available for medical research and training, as well as organ transplantation, is limited. Researchers disagree about how to increase the number of whole-body bequeathals, citing a shortage of donations from the one group perceived as most... View Details

Keywords: Altruism; Donations; Body; Whole-body; Clinical Anatomy; Medical Specialties; California

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2019
Article

Go-Shops Revisited

By: Guhan Subramanian and Annie Zhao

A go-shop process turns the traditional M&A deal process on its head: rather than a pre-signing market canvass followed by a post-signing “no shop” period, a go-shop deal involves a limited pre-signing market check, followed by a post-signing “go shop” process to find... View Details

Keywords: Go-shop Process; Mergers and Acquisitions; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Deal; Performance Effectiveness; Technological Innovation

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2019
Article

When Gender Diversity Makes Firms More Productive

By: Stephen Turban, Dan Wu and Letian Zhang

Does diversity make a company more productive? Many say yes—some researchers argue that gender diversity leads to more innovative thinking and signals to investors that a company is competently run. Others say no—conflicting research indicates that gender diversity can... View Details

Keywords: Gender; Diversity; Performance; Performance Productivity

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Typically, past spending in a category is a positive indicator of future purchasing. In this we show that there exist categories (which we name "canary categories") in which the reverse is true -
When customers purchase... View Details

26 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

High-Stakes Decision Making: The Lessons of Mount Everest

obstacles and dangers. The ability to "cut your losses" remains a difficult challenge as well as a hallmark of courageous leadership.— Michael A. Roberto Leaders can shape the perceptions and beliefs of others in many ways. In some cases, the leaders' words... View Details

Keywords: by Michael A. Roberto

13 Jun 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Handshaking Promotes Cooperative Dealmaking

Keywords: by Juliana Schroeder, Jane Risen, Francesca Gino & Michael I. Norton

08 Dec 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Decoding Inside Information

Keywords: by Lauren Cohen, Christopher Malloy & Lukasz Pomorski; Financial Services

19 May 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective

Keywords: by Peter A. Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth & John J. Siegfried

December 2018
Case

First Utility Ltd.

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

At the end of 2017 First Utility Ltd. was the largest of the middle-tier domestic energy suppliers in the United Kingdom, serving 808,000 of the country’s 27 million households with electricity and gas. In Q1 2017 First Utility captured 3% market share. The company had... View Details

Keywords: Rapid Growth Stage; Power/Energy; Energy Efficiency Standards; Energy; Competition; Diversification; Acquisition; Expansion; Growth Management; Energy Industry; United Kingdom

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Web

Students on the Job Market - Doctoral

market entry and learning. An empirical analysis of 1,445 enterprise software companies supports these ideas, showing that firms trying to sell less developed products persist longer in the face of negative market signals and, ultimately,... View Details

Web

Named Fellowship Funds - Alumni

Claude Geismar (MBA 1948). Claude (1922-2015) was a native of Wintzenheim, Alsace, France, and a decorated World War II veteran. Following the war, he moved to the United States to begin his studies at HBS, and upon graduation, he held senior positions with View Details

02 Nov 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Resolving Information Asymmetries in Markets: The Role of Certified Management Programs

Keywords: by Michael W. Toffel

2011
Article

Regulatory Uncertainty and Corporate Responses to Environmental Protection in China

By: Christopher Marquis, Jianjun Zhang and Yanhua Zhou

We develop a framework to analyze the closing gap between regulation and enforcement of environmental protection in China and present a number of resulting implications for doing business there. We identify three major dimensions that characterize change in regulatory... View Details