Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,033)
- Faculty Publications (51)
- Article
Making 'Green Giants': Environment Sustainability in the German Chemical Industry, 1950s–1980s
By: Geoffrey Jones and Christina Lubinski
This article examines the evolution of corporate environmentalism in the West German chemical industry between the 1950s and the 1980s. It focuses on two companies, Bayer and Henkel, that have been identified as "green giants," and traces the evolution of their... View Details
- 2014
- Chapter
Firms and Global Capitalism
By: Geoffrey Jones
This chapter forms part of the two-volume Cambridge History of Capitalism, a definitive new reference work that traces the history of capitalism from its origins to the present day. The chapter focuses on the role of business enterprises as powerful actors in... View Details
- 2014
- Book
Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth
By: Regina M. Abrami, William C. Kirby and F. Warren McFarlan
At the time of the American Revolution, China was the strongest, richest, and most powerful civilization in the world. The Great Qing Empire ruled China and dominated East Asia by a combination of power and cultural prestige. China's economy was the world's largest.... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Inequality and Decision Making: Imagining a New Line of Inquiry
By: David Moss, Anant Thaker and Howard Rudnick
The substantial increase in inequality in the United States over the past three decades has provoked considerable debate, with some analysts characterizing rising inequality as among the greatest threats facing the nation and others dismissing it as little more than a... View Details
- June 2013 (Revised November 2016)
- Case
Goldfinger: Charles W. Engelhard Jr. and Apartheid-era South Africa
By: Geoffrey Jones and Elliot R. Benton
This case considers the strategies of Charles W. Engelhard, an American mining magnate who made large investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Engelhard was widely believed to have been the model for the James Bond villan Auric Goldfinger. During the 1950s and 1960s... View Details
- 2012
- Book
Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance
By: Gary P. Pisano and Willy Shih
For years—even decades—in response to intensifying global competition, American companies decided to outsource their manufacturing operations in order to reduce costs. But we are now seeing the alarming long-term effect of those choices: in many cases, once... View Details
- March 2012
- Article
The Incentive Bubble
By: Mihir Desai
The past three decades have seen American capitalism quietly transformed by a single, powerful idea—that financial markets are a suitable tool for measuring performance and structuring compensation. Stock instruments for managers, high-powered incentive contracts for... View Details
- March 2012
- Article
Why U.S. Competitiveness Matters to All of Us
By: Nitin Nohria
Americans may not realize this, but the world wants the United States to be competitive. For more than a century, global observers have considered the U.S. economy to be an exemplar and America a country to envy and imitate. Unfortunately, America's reign as the... View Details
- February 2012
- Article
Management Practices across Firms and Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details
Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Competency and Skills; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizations; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Sectors; Performance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Private Equity; Multinational Firms and Management; United States; Germany; Japan; China; India
- 2011
- Working Paper
Free to Punish? The American Dream and the Harsh Treatment of Criminals
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We describe the evolution of selective aspects of punishment in the U.S. over the period 1980-2004. We note that imprisonment increased around 1980, a period that coincides with the "Reagan revolution" in economic matters. We build an economic model where beliefs about... View Details
- February 2011
- Article
Dividend Taxes and International Portfolio Choice
By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala
This paper investigates how dividend taxes influence portfolio choices, using the response to the distinctive treatment of a subset of foreign dividends in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. An open-economy after-tax capital asset... View Details
- April 2010
- Article
Managed Globalization: Doctrine, Practice, and Promise
By: Rawi Abdelal and Sophie Meunier
Two alternate visions for shaping and explaining the governance of economic globalization have been in competition for the past 20 years: an ad hoc, laissez-faire vision promoted by the United States versus a managed vision relying on multilateral rules and... View Details
- 2010
- Book
Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism
By: Peter Wehner and Arthur C. Brooks
Popular opinion would have us believe that America's free market system is driven by greed and materialism, resulting in gross inequalities of wealth, destruction of the environment, and other social ills. Even proponents of capitalism often refer to the free market as... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised October 2010)
- Case
Colombia: Strong Fundamentals, Global Risk
By: Aldo Musacchio, Richard H. K. Vietor, Jonathan Schlefer and Carolina Camacho
By mid-2009 Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had ended decades of virtual civil war and strengthened the business climate, but he faced tough economic challenges. Though he had instituted prominent market reforms and brought inflation down sharply, Colombia seemed... View Details
- 20 May 2009
- Other Presentation
American Competitiveness in a Global Economy
This presentation draws on ideas from Professor Porter's articles and books, in particular, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (The Free Press, 1990), "Building the Microeconomic Foundations of Competitiveness," in The Global Competitiveness Report... View Details
- February 5, 2009
- Comment
In Praise of Marketing
By: John A. Quelch
Many dismiss marketing as manipulative, deceptive, and intrusive. Marketing, they argue, focuses too much of our attention on material consumption. More recently, Benjamin Barber, in his 2007 book Consumed, claims that marketing is "sucking up the air from every other... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Consumer Loyalty; Local Vs. Global Branding; Multi-national Brands; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Globalized Economies and Regions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning
- December 2007
- Article
China + India: The Power of Two
By: Tarun Khanna
China and India are burying the hatchet after four-plus decades of hostility. A few companies from both nations have been quick to gain competitive advantages by viewing the two as symbiotic. If Western corporations fail to do the same, they will lose their competitive... View Details
- September 2006 (Revised August 2007)
- Background Note
The History of Credit Agencies in the United States
By: F. Warren McFarlan and Tracy Manty
Provides a brief background on the history of credit agencies in the United States. Focuses on the mature process of data collection on an American consumer and how credit agencies share the information to determine proper credit risk and worthiness of a consumer. The... View Details
- March 2006 (Revised November 2006)
- Case
The Market and the Mountain Kingdom: Change in Lesotho's Textile Industry
By: Rawi E. Abdelal, Regina M. Abrami, Noel Maurer and Aldo Musacchio
In Maseru, the capital of the Kingdom of Lesotho, the stirrings of industrialization and modernization were promising, and more than 50,000 workers, mostly women, were employed in the textile sector; the figure reflected more than a threefold increase in just a few... View Details
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Trade; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Financial Crisis; Globalized Markets and Industries; Business and Government Relations; Decision Choices and Conditions; Foreign Direct Investment; Developing Countries and Economies; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Lesotho
- July 2005 (Revised August 2011)
- Case
Jesse Holman Jones and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony Mayo and Bridget Gurtler
Jesse Holman Jones is regarded as one of the most influential men in reviving the American economy from the Great Depression. With only an 8th grade education, he rose to the top of the banking, real estate, and lumber industries, as well as the upper echelons of... View Details