Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,678)
- Faculty Publications (545)
Argus
→
- Article
Is It Time for Auditor Independence Yet?
By: M. H. Bazerman and D. A. Moore
Well before the collapse of Enron and Arthur Andersen, we argued that the auditing system had been corrupted by the incentives auditors face to please their clients. We stated that even honest auditors were incapable of independence within the current regulatory... View Details
- November 29, 2011
- Article
The Role of The Board in Creating a Sustainable Strategy
By: Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
While conceptually elegant, the belief that a corporation's role is to maximize value for shareholders is under increasing challenge as society's expectations for companies change. An equally elegant new concept that takes account of these dual pressures has yet to... View Details
Keywords: Value Creation; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Expectations; Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Practices and Processes; Decisions; Risk and Uncertainty; Cost vs Benefits; Information
- November 2011
- Article
How Great Companies Think Differently
Corporate leaders have long subscribed to the belief that the sole purpose of business is to make money. That narrow view, deeply embedded in the American capitalist system, molds the actions of most corporations, constraining them to focus on maximizing short-term... View Details
- 2011
- Book
Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business
The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. The global financial meltdown of 2008 nearly triggered another Great Depression, economies in Europe are still teetering, and powerful... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
The Economics of Housing Finance Reform
By: David S. Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam
This paper analyzes the two leading types of proposals for reform of the housing finance system: (i) broad-based, explicit, priced government guarantees of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and (ii) privatization. Both proposals have drawbacks. Properly-priced... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
- June 2011
- Article
Elder Abuse: How the Moderns Mistreat Classical Realism
By: Joseph M. Parent and Josh Baron
Neorealists narrate their origins by explaining that classical realists committed a multitude of sins and were therefore displaced. The classics unscientifically explained world politics primarily through individual-level characteristics, typically a will to power that... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Organizations in the Shadow of Communities
By: Siobhan O'Mahony and Karim R. Lakhani
The concept of a community form is drawn upon in many subfields of organizational theory. Although there is not much convergence on a level of analysis, there is convergence on a mode of action that is increasingly relevant to a knowledge-based economy marked by porous... View Details
- June 2011
- Article
The Paradox of Excellence
By: Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong
Why is it that so many smart, ambitious professionals are less productive and satisfied than they could be? We argue that it's often because they're afraid to demonstrate any sign of weakness. They're reluctant to ask important questions or try new... View Details
- Article
The Role of Finance and Private Investment in Developing Sustainable Cities
By: John D. Macomber
Three trends will drive urban investment, development, and entrepreneurship in the next two decades. This article provides tools to identify the situations and circumstances that will be most favorable for private sector involvement in consideration of these trends.... View Details
Keywords: Trends; Demographics; Private Sector; Investment; City; Infrastructure; Opportunities; Urban Development
- June 2011
- Article
Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act
By: Dhammika Dharmapala, C. Fritz Foley and Kristin J. Forbes
This paper analyzes the impact of the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, which provided a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings and thereby reduced the cost to U.S. multinationals of accessing a source of internal capital. Lawmakers and lobbyists... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
On Knowing and Doing: A Perspective on the Synergies between Research and Practice
By: Michael Tushman
The current rigor/relevance debate is a central strategic issue for business schools and their faculty. I argue that ongoing relationships with firms, rooted on the joint acknowledgement of the importance of faculty research by firms and respect for practice by... View Details
- April 2011
- Article
Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success
By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano
We argue that for a variety of psychological reasons, it is often much harder for leaders and organizations to learn from success than to learn from failure. Success creates three kinds of traps that often impede deep learning. The first is attribution error or the... View Details
- February 2011
- Article
The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage and Determination Through Brand Biography
By: Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan, Jill Avery and Juliet B. Schor
We introduce the concept of an underdog brand biography (UBB) to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author an historical account of their humble origins, lack of resources, and determined struggle against the odds. We identify two essential... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Brand Management; Brands; Brand Building; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Advertising; Marketing Communication; Biography; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Emerging Markets; Network Effects; Demand and Consumers; Marketing Communications; Cost vs Benefits; Perspective; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing Strategy; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Advertising Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Food and Beverage Industry
- 2011
- Working Paper
From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America
By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana
As the main producers of managerial elites, business schools represent strategic research sites for understanding the formation of economic practices and representations. This article draws on historical material to analyze the changing place of economics in American... View Details
- 2011
- Article
Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads
By: Srikant M. Datar, David A. Garvin and Patrick Cullen
The paper seeks to examine major challenges facing MBA programs and to argue that they will have to reconsider their value proposition. It aims to explore effective curricular and programmatic responses as opportunities for MBA programs to innovate. The paper also aims... View Details
- 2011
- Article
The Consumer Psychology of Mail-in Rebates
By: John T. Gourville and Dilip Soman
Consumers who buy a product intending to use an accompanying mail-in rebate often do not redeem the rebate. To explain this behavior, we argue that consumers use an anchoring and adjustment approach to predicting the likelihood of redeeming a rebate. In keeping with... View Details
- Article
Values, Purpose, Meaning, and Expectations: Why Culture and Context Matter
The "rational person" standard, based on assumptions of economic self-interest, has long prevailed in legal reasoning. But understanding of decision making, behavioral choices, and possibilities for action must be enlarged to include a variety of factors that give... View Details
- December 2010 (Revised March 2013)
- Case
Asian Agri and the Future of Palm Oil
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
For Asian Agri and other Indonesian palm oil producers, the future promised rising demand from fast-growing Asian populations, but also intensifying criticism from environmental groups. With the highest yield and lowest production cost of any edible oil, palm oil... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Regulating for Legitimacy: Consumer Credit Access in France and America
Theories of legitimate regulation have emphasized the role of governments either in fixing market failures to promote greater efficiency or in restricting the efficient functioning of markets in order to pursue public welfare goals. In either case, features of markets... View Details