Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,095)
- Faculty Publications (83)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Consumers Punish Firms That Cut Employee Pay in Response to COVID-19
By: Bhavya Mohan, Serena Hagerty and Michael Norton
Two experiments, including one incentive compatible study, examine the impact of cutting pay for executives versus employees in response to COVID-19 on consumer behavior. Study 1 explores the effect of announcing cuts or no cuts to CEO and employee pay, and shows that... View Details
- May 2020
- Teaching Note
Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos
By: Ethan Rouen
Teaching Note for HBS No. 120-063. View Details
- May 2020
- Teaching Note
Danone: Changing the Food System
By: David E. Bell, Federica Gabrieli, Daniela Beyersdorfer, Amy Klopfenstein and Aldo Sesia
Teaching Note for HBS No. 520-053.
This is a teaching note for the case “Danone: Changing the Food System?” The case examines the efforts of one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies to resolve the social, environmental, and economic issues within... View Details
This is a teaching note for the case “Danone: Changing the Food System?” The case examines the efforts of one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies to resolve the social, environmental, and economic issues within... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Playing the Field: Competing Bids for Anadarko Petroleum Corp
On April 8, 2019, Occidental’s CEO Vicki Hollub made a private offer to buy Anadarko Petroleum Corporation for $72 in cash and stock. Anadarko's CEO Al Walker said he would consider the offer, yet three days later, on April 11, he signed a merger agreement with Chevron... View Details
- April 2020
- Case
The Board's Role in Refocusing Bahrain Development Bank
By: Paul M. Healy and Alpana Thapar
In March 2016, Bahrain Development Bank’s (BDB) existing board term came to an end and Khalid Al Rumaihi was appointed the new chairman. Determining a need for change, he immediately overhauled the board and replaced BDB’s long-standing CEO. The new board quickly... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
Hotstar
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey
Hotstar was an online video streaming platform owned by Star India Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. Since its launch in 2015, the platform had grown to offer over 100,000 hours of TV content, movies in nine Indian languages... View Details
- January 2020
- Article
Compensation Consultants and the Level, Composition, and Complexity of CEO Pay
By: Kevin J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino
We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this... View Details
- January 2020
- Article
Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance
By: Ethan Rouen
I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos
By: Ethan Rouen and Akari Furukawa
TJX Companies reported a CEO pay ratio of 1,596-to-1 in 2019, leaving board chair Carol Meyrowitz with a host of questions about whether, and how, she could take action to address concerns raised by having one of the highest pay ratios in the S&P 500. As a retail... View Details
- November 7, 2019
- Article
WeWork’s Saga Is a Cautionary Tale about Golden Parachutes and CEO Pay
While the WeWork saga has dealt another blow to already-low public confidence in business, it should also strengthen cries for fundamental changes to a system that offers supersized compensation for undersized performance. View Details
- March 2019
- Supplement
KITEA (B): Getting Ready to Face IKEA
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2015, when IKEA is about to open its first store in Morocco. It then chronicles the efforts of KITEA CEO Amine Benkirane and his son Othman between 2013 and 2015 to prepare KITEA for IKEA’s entry. After incurring losses for the first time in... View Details
Keywords: Retail; KITEA; IKEA; Furniture; Furniture Industry; Entry Strategy; Responding To Entry; Localization; Competitive Interaction; Private Sector; For-Profit Firms; Business Strategy; Strategic Planning; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Adaptation; Corporate Strategy; Business Model; Market Entry and Exit; Retail Industry; Morocco; Africa; North Africa
- April 2018
- Article
Consumers Avoid Buying from Firms with Higher CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios
By: Bhavya Mohan, Tobias Schlager, Rohit Deshpandé and Michael I. Norton
We document a novel driver of consumer behavior: pay ratio disclosure. Swiss corporation performance data gathered during a legally mandated pay ratio referendum reveals that salient high pay ratios are associated with decreased firm sales (Pilot Study). An... View Details
Keywords: Pay Ratio; Wage Fairness; Purchase Intention; Customers; Wages; Fairness; Consumer Behavior
- 2020
- Working Paper
The Impact of CEOs in the Public Sector: Evidence from the English NHS
By: Katharina Janke, Carol Propper and Raffaella Sadun
Abstract
Governments worldwide have sought to reform the delivery of public services by mimicking private sector governance models that grant CEOs greater autonomy and give them responsibility for meeting key government targets. We examine the effectiveness of this... View Details
- November 2017
- Editorial
Facebook, BlackRock, and the Case for Purpose-Driven Companies
By: George Serafeim
Purpose-driven companies have been shown to outperform their peers over the long term. But purpose-driven companies are also hard to come by. Why is that? Because purpose is costly. At the very least, it requires a credible commitment to that purpose. And credible... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Compensation Consultants and the Level, Composition, and Complexity of CEO Pay
By: Kevin J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino
We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and its Relation to Firm Performance
By: Ethan Rouen
I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm accounting performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee... View Details
- June 2017
- Article
The Social Trajectory of a Finance Professor and the Common Sense of Capital
By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana
This paper traces the career of Michael Jensen, a Chicago finance PhD turned Harvard Business School professor to reveal the intellectual and social conditions that enabled the emergence and institutionalization of what we call the “neoliberal common sense of capital,”... View Details
- October 2015 (Revised February 2016)
- Teaching Note
Comcast Corporation
In March 2015, Richard Plepler, the CEO of Home Box Office (HBO) announced the company's new 'over the top,' or OTT service, HBO Now, that consumers could stream online for a monthly fee of $14.99 without paying for a cable subscription. Soon, CBS followed and... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Through the Grapevine: Network Effects on the Design of Executive Compensation Contracts
By: Susanna Gallani
Effective design of executive compensation contracts involves choosing and weighting performance measures, as well as defining the mix between fixed and incentive-based pay components, with a view to fostering talent retention and goal congruence. The variability in... View Details
- June 2015
- Supplement
Generating Higher Value at IBM (A): EPS Forecasting Model
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield
This case analyzes IBM's financial performance and its capital allocation decisions over a 10-year period from 2004-2013, during which IBM returned more than $140B to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. During this time, CEO Sam... View Details