Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,319)
- Faculty Publications (603)
- July 2009 (Revised January 2014)
- Case
Sustainability at Millipore
By: Michael W. Toffel and Katharine Lee
This case describes Millipore Corporation's approach to becoming a more environmentally sustainable company. As he prepared for his quarterly meeting with the CEO, the Director of Sustainability needed to develop positions on several issues. Tactically, he needed to... View Details
- June 2009 (Revised January 2011)
- Case
Target Corporation: Ackman versus the Board
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Suraj Srinivasan and James Weber
After 15 years of great performance, Target's faltering performance during an economic downturn led an activist shareholder to initiate a proxy fight. Target Corporation, the second largest discount store retailer in the U.S., had competed successfully against industry... View Details
- May 2009 (Revised December 2009)
- Case
Reliance Baking Soda: Optimizing Promotional Spending
By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham
Reliance Baking Soda is Stewart Corporation's oldest and most established product. The new Domestic Brand Director needs to create a 2008 marketing budget that delivers a profit increase of 10% over 2007 levels. She must first evaluate the effectiveness of past... View Details
- May 2009
- Case
Montgomery County Business Roundtable for Education
By: Allen S. Grossman and Geoff Eckman Marietta
Montgomery County Business Roundtable for Education (MCBRE) was a business-public education partnership with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) that promoted cross-sector knowledge sharing and academic excellence. Its suite of core student programs, such as “720,”... View Details
- May 2009
- Article
Synchronicity and Firm Interlocks in an Emerging Market
By: Tarun Khanna and Catherine Thomas
Stock price synchronicity has been attributed to poor corporate governance and a lack of firm-level transparency. This paper investigates the association between different kinds of firm interlocks, control groups, and synchronicity in Chile. A unique data set... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised May 2010)
- Case
Partners In Health: HIV Care in Rwanda
By: Michael E. Porter, Scott S. Lee, Joseph Rhatigan and Jim Yong Kim
In 2005, Partners in Health (PIH) was invited by the Rwandan Ministry of Health to assume responsibility for the management of public health care in two rural districts in Eastern Rwanda and create an HIV treatment program at these sites. PIH successfully implemented a... View Details
- 2009
- Book
The Adventures of an IT Leader
By: Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan and Shannon O'Donnell
Becoming an effective IT manager presents a host of challenges-from anticipating emerging technology to managing relationships with vendors, employees, and other managers. Ultimately, a good IT manager must be a strong business leader, not just a technical... View Details
- March 2009
- Case
Barbara Norris: Leading Change in the General Surgery Unit
By: Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria and Deborah Bell
Barbara Norris struggles to address the many problems facing her as a recently promoted nurse manager in the General Surgery Unit (GSU) at Eastern Massachusetts University Hospital (EMU). She has inherited a unit with the lowest employee satisfaction scores and highest... View Details
- March 2009
- Case
Baosteel Group: Governance with Chinese Characteristics
By: Lynn S. Paine and G.A. Donovan
The new outsider-dominated board of directors of China's state-owned Baosteel Group must decide whether to modify the Group's structure. With the completion of a pending acquisition, the Group will control four publicly listed steel-producing subsidiaries, and board... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised November 2016)
- Exercise
Congo River Basin Project: Role for Dr. Beni
By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Anne Starks Acosta, Deborah M. Kolb and Cailin B. Hammer
The director of a research coalition and the founder/coordinator of an NGO consortium meet to discuss the possibility of jointly drafting a proposal for an integrated research and development project in the Congo River basin. Approved projects will receive an annual... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised November 2016)
- Exercise
Congo River Basin Project: Role for Dr. Campos
By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Anne Starks Acosta, Deborah M. Kolb and Cailin B. Hammer
The director of a research coalition and the founder/coordinator of an NGO consortium meet to discuss the possibility of jointly drafting a proposal for an integrated research and development project in the Congo River basin. Approved projects will receive an annual... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised February 2009)
- Case
Pitney Bowes: Employer Health Strategy
By: Michael E. Porter and Jennifer F Baron
Pitney Bowes, a Fortune 500 mail and document management firm, offered its first health plans in the years following World War II. Over the ensuing decades, Pitney Bowes adapted its approach to employee health amid rising health care costs, shifting employer attitudes... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised May 2009)
- Case
Innovation at Mahindra & Mahindra (A)
By: Stefan H. Thomke and Briana Doerr Luthra
Describes the Mahindra & Mahindra Group's approach to innovation. The Group is among the top industrial houses in India and its managing director Anand Mahindra has put innovation at the core of its growth strategy. Emphasis is placed on managing the balance between... View Details
- December 2008 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
The World Food Programme during the Global Food Crisis (A)
By: Anette Mikes, Peter Tufano, Eric D. Werker and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve
Rising food prices threatened an unprecedented number of people around the world with malnutrition or starvation in 2008. The new Executive Director of the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP)—the world's largest food relief agency—must not only address this... View Details
- December 2008
- Article
Corporate Governance and Agency Conflicts
By: Aiyesha Dey
I investigate whether corporate governance is associated with the level of agency conflicts in firms. I employ exploratory principal components analysis on 22 individual governance variables to obtain seven factors that represent the different dimensions of governance... View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
Corporate Honesty and Business Education: A Behavioral Model
By: Rakesh Khurana and Herbert Gintis
Since the mid-1970s neoclassical economic theory has dominated business school thinking and teaching in dealing with the nature of human motivation. However valuable in understanding competitive product and financial markets, neoclassical economic theory employs an... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A1)
By: Fabrizio Ferri, V.G. Narayanan and James Weber
Two activist investors, one a founder and one a hedge fund manager, seek to improve board oversight at a chain restaurant company. Prestley Blake founded Friendly Ice Cream in 1935 with his brother, and the two created a chain of full-service restaurants. In 1979, they... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Supplement
Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A2)
By: V.G. Narayanan, Fabrizio Ferri and James Weber
The A1 and A2 versions of the “Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A)” split the original A case into two parts. The A1 case ends as activists Sardar Biglari and Phil Cooley prepare to meet with CEO Don Smith at Friendly's headquarters in September 2006. The... View Details
- Article
MIT Roundtable on Corporate Risk Management
By: Robert C. Merton
Against the backdrop of financial crisis, a distinguished group of academics and practitioners discusses the contribution of financial management and innovation to corporate growth and value, along with the pitfalls and unintended consequences of such innovation.... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of 'Independent' Directors
By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy
We test the hypothesis that firms appoint independent directors who are overly sympathetic to management, while still technically independent according to regulatory definitions. We explore a subset of independent directors for whom we have detailed, micro-level data... View Details