Publications

03 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

NFL Black Monday: How Much Do Coaches Really Matter?

important question: Can able managers create value for their organizations by applying the resources at their disposal, and are they thus a source of competitive advantage? In general, NFL head coaches are responsible for player... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik; Sports

June 2007 (Revised July 2007)
Case

USG Corporation (A)

Deals with CEO Bill Foote's decision of how to deal with USG's exposure to asbestos liability. USG was the largest building materials company in the United States, with 14,000 employees and gross revenues of $3.8 billion. Although USG used asbestos in a small subset of... View Details

Keywords: Legal Liability; Construction Industry

02 Jan 2001
Research & Ideas

Can Japan Compete? [Part One]

considered exemplary policies and practices by government. By looking more closely, however, Porter, Takeuchi, and Sakakibara also began to discover what they call "another Japan." While the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace & Hilah Geer

10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

Reinventing the Industrial Giant

for auto parts online. Finally, the company is moving its internal processes, such as billing and inventory, online. GM estimates that each of these four undertakings will save an extraordinary amount of money and enable the company to... View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, Davis Dyer & Frederick Dalzell; Manufacturing

16 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 16, 2018

January–February 2018 Harvard Business Review More Than a Paycheck: How to Create Good Blue-Collar Jobs in the Knowledge Economy By: Campbell, Dennis, John Case, and Bill Fotsch Abstract—Fifty years ago a good blue-collar job was with a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 21, 2015

overestimate how much distant others appreciate socially responsible gifts because they focus more than recipients on the symbolic meaning of the gift. Critically, givers have the most to gain from distant others, in terms of strengthened relationship quality, View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2019
Chapter

Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona

N.S.B. Gras, the father of business history in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; History; Business History

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18 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 18, 2009

useful and saleable by-product. The term "by-product synergy" (BPS) has been coined to describe this practice. By converting waste into by-product, the firm not only reduces its waste disposal cost and potentially increases... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2013
Case

Canyon-Agassi Investing in Charter Schools

By: Nicolas P. Retsinas, Nicole Shomair, Vernon Beckford and Lisa Strope

After an unusual round of doubles in May 2011, real estate investor Bobby Turner, Managing Partner, Canyon-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund (CACSFF) and Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Canyon Capital Realty Advisors, found himself at a loss for words. Turner was... View Details

Keywords: Charter Schools; Real Estate; Fund Raising; Social Entrepreneurship; Education; Real Estate Industry; United States

24 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Busting Six Myths About Customer Loyalty Programs

markets is a sector notorious for its lack of differentiation between players. Once location has played out its magic, retailers tend to get squeezed in a business characterized by the infernal duo of low margin and high fixed cost. In... View Details

Keywords: by Marcel Corstjens & Rajiv Lal; Retail; Consumer Products

16 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

What Football Firings Teach Managers About Staying Relevant

Six National Football League head coaches were fired on December 31, or “Black Monday,” as it’s known in the sport. The infamous tradition begins immediately after the conclusion of each NFL regular season and represents efforts by... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht, and Abhijit Naik; Sports

Article

Sustainability, Business, and Health

By: George Serafeim, Amanda M. Rischbieth and Howard K. Koh

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has demonstrated that response demands involvement from every sector of society. As a major example, some businesses have stepped up in ways previously unimaginable. Garment companies have repurposed production to face... View Details

Keywords: COVID; COVID-19; Sustainability; Health And Wellness; Corporate Social Responsibility; Health Pandemics; Health; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Health Care and Treatment

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29 May 2006
Research & Ideas

Why CEOs Are Not Plug-and-Play

manager's skills. When the telecommunications industry was deregulated and challenged by new entrants, for instance, few former Bell Systems managers were able to successfully transition to the fast-moving, entrepreneurial,... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Andrew N. McLean & Nitin Nohria; Employment

18 Feb 2014
First Look

First Look: February 18

and by incorporating user innovation. We then examine how this ease of external engagement impacts the organization and its strategic activities. Specifically, we consider how this shift in information processing costs affects... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Forthcoming
Article

The Imperfect Intermediation of Money-Like Assets

By: Jeremy C. Stein and Jonathan Wallen

We study supply-and-demand effects in the U.S. Treasury bill market by comparing the returns on T-bills to the administered policy rate on the Federal Reserve’s reverse repurchase (RRP) facility. In spite of the arguably more money-like properties of an investment in... View Details

Keywords: Debt Securities; Demand and Consumers; Price

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June 2015
Case

1996 Welfare Reform in the United States

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Katrina Flanagan and Alastair Su

On August 22, 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)—a dramatic reform of the American system of economic assistance for the poor that, as its title suggested, attempted to... View Details

Keywords: Welfare State; Public Goods; Moral Hazard; Median Voter Theorem; Poverty; Welfare; Public Administration Industry; United States

June 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Renegotiating NAFTA

By: Laura Alfaro, Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason and Sarah Jeong

January 1, 2019 marked the 25th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Twenty-five years after the landmark trade pact was signed by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, considerable debate surrounded it. Trade and trade agreements were a... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Negotiation; Agreements and Arrangements; Cost vs Benefits; Auto Industry; United States; Mexico; Canada

2017
Working Paper

Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism

By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona

N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; History; Business History