Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(615)
- Faculty Publications (117)
- September 2021
- Case
Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance
By: David G. Fubini, Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
The two vignettes within “Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance” (HBS No. 122-024) present various issues relating to governance in professional service firms (“PSFs”). In the first, the Managing Director of a U.S. consulting firm contemplates whether to... View Details
Keywords: Consulting Firms; Professional Services; Board Of Directors; Professional Service; Global Firm; Executive Leadership; Globalized Firms and Management; Private Equity; Governing and Advisory Boards; Global Strategy; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Leadership Development; Leading Change; Emerging Markets; Strategic Planning; Partners and Partnerships; Service Industry; United States; India
- 2021
- Working Paper
Proxy Advisory Firms and Corporate Shareholder Engagement
By: Aiyesha Dey, Joshua White and Austin Starkweather
We examine the influence of proxy advisors on firms’ shareholder engagement behavior. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using Say-On-Pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers a review of engagement activities by Institutional Shareholder Services... View Details
- June 2021
- Case
Building the Governance to Take Capital SAFI to the Next Level
By: V.G. Narayanan, Asis Martinez Jerez and Mariana Cal
Asset management firm Capital SAFI wanted to attract new strategic investors and expand to other countries. Having the right corporate governance in place was critical to achieve this goal. View Details
Keywords: Board Of Directors; Transparency; Sustainable Finance; South America; Latin America; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business Organization; Corporate Strategy; Transformation; Investment Funds; Financial Services Industry; Bolivia; South America; Latin America
- March 2021
- Article
The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance
This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details
- January 2021
- Case
Egon Zehnder: Beyond Search?
By: Ashish Nanda and Margaret Cross
In 2019, Egon Zehnder chair Jill Ader and CEO Edilson Camara faced a critical question: how should the global executive search firm approach its burgeoning advisory service offering? Since 2003, the firm’s advisory practice had grown as a conglomeration of grassroots... View Details
- November 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Wes Hall and the BlackNorth Initiative
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Marilyn Morgan Westner and Reza Satchu
Wes Hall founded Kingsdale Advisors and built it into one of Canada’s leading shareholder services and advisory firms. Influenced by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and a series of social injustices—specifically the death of George Floyd in police custody—Hall... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Digging for Gold: Paulson & Co.'s Activism in the Gold Sector
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Jonah S. Goldberg
The case describes the efforts of hedge fund Paulson & Co to influence corporate governance and improve performance in the gold industry. In an innovative move, the hedge fund led the creation of the Shareholder Gold Council, a consortium of large investors in gold... View Details
- July 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Board Diversity at Amazon (A)
By: Aiyesha Dey and Anu Atluru
The case revolves around the decisions that the board of directors of ecommerce giant Amazon would need to make in response to the controversial letter that activist shareholder CtW investment group sent to Amazon’s shareholders, urging them to vote in favor of a... View Details
Keywords: Board Of Directors; Boards; Governing and Advisory Boards; Diversity; Gender; Race; United States
- February 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Shaping the Governance Debate at ISS
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Jonah S. Goldberg and Calvin O. Liou
ISS is the world’s largest provider of corporate governance research, data, analytics, and voting services. The case uses the effort of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to impose an array of new regulations that would severely restrict the functioning of... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit
The case revolves around the actions that Barbara Novick, co-founder and Vice-Chair of Blackrock, and Michelle Edkins, Global Head of Investment Stewardship, would need to take in response to the controversial CEO letters from Laurence (Larry) Fink, Chairman and CEO of... View Details
Keywords: Boards Of Directors; Institutional Investors; Disclosure; Transparency; Corporate Purpose; Corporate Profits; ESG; ESG Disclosure Metrics; Corporate Sustainability; Engagement Strategy Of Institutions; Stewardship Role Of Institutions; BlackRock; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Institutional Investing; Accounting; Corporate Disclosure; Mission and Purpose; Profit; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Diversity; Corporate Accountability; Financial Services Industry; United States
- August 2019 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Baroo (A): Pet Concierge
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Susie L. Ma
Baroo CEO Lindsay Hyde was facing unrest from the board of her pet services startup in August 2017. One board member (and lead investor) was alarmed that Baroo’s growth was slowing while its appetite for funding was accelerating. Hyde wanted to hit the gas and continue... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Bank Boards: What Has Changed Since the Financial Crisis?
By: Shiva Rajgopal, Suraj Srinivasan and Forester Wong
Several government-mandated committees investigating the financial crisis highlighted four key deficiencies in the composition of bank boards before the crisis: (i) group think among bank board members; (ii) absence of prior banking experience of board members; (iii)... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Are ISS Recommendations Informative? Evidence from Assessments of Compensation Practices
By: Ana Albuquerque, Mary Ellen Carter and Susanna Gallani
Using detailed information from the largest proxy advisor in the U.S., Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we examine whether proxy advisors’ assessments of firms’ compensation practices are able to identify poor compensation practices as measured by subsequent... View Details
- February 2019
- Article
The Market for Financial Adviser Misconduct
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
We construct a novel database containing the universe of financial advisers in the United States from 2005 to 2015, representing approximately 10% of employment of the finance and insurance sector. We provide the first large-scale study that documents the economy-wide... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
African Bank Investments Limited (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Less than a year after joining the board of African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), the newest director finds himself in difficult discussions with other directors about removing the struggling company’s CEO. The case is set in South Africa in mid-2014 as shares in... View Details
- October 2018
- Supplement
African Bank Investments Limited (B)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Less than a year after joining the board of African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), the newest director finds himself in difficult discussions with other directors about removing the struggling company’s CEO. The case is set in South Africa in mid-2014 as shares in... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds
By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb
After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details
- April 2018 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Tesla's CEO Compensation Plan
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Sarah Mehta
Tesla’s board of directors proposed an unusual compensation plan for the company’s CEO Elon Musk. The plan payouts were entirely contingent on achieving very ambitious market value, sales, and EBIT targets over the next ten years. If all the targets were achieved,... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
China Vanke: Battle for Control (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Charles C.Y. Wang, Dawn H. Lau and Anthony K. Woo
In June 2016, the board of China Vanke, one of China’s largest and best-known private residential real estate developers, must vote on a proposed acquisition that is opposed by its largest shareholders, state-owned China Resources Co. and the lesser-known property... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised March 2018)
- Teaching Note
OpenInvest
By: Boris Vallee and Caitlin Reimers Brumme
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolio to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapon manufacturers stocks or overweighting LGBTQ... View Details