Publications

November 2008
Article

Chartering New Territory: Diversification, Legitimacy and Practice Area Creation in Professional Service Firms

By: Heidi Gardner, N. Anand and Timothy Morris

Diversification into innovative domains through new practice area creation is a critical imperative for professional services firms. Using theories of organizational territoriality and corporate charters, we conceptualize professional firms as federations of distinct... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Lawfulness; Code Law; Management Practices and Processes; Service Operations; Innovation and Invention; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

05 Mar 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Will I Stay or Will I Go? Cooperative and Competitive Effects of Workgroup Sex and Race Composition on Turnover

Keywords: by Kathleen L. McGinn & Katherine L. Milkman

14 Oct 2017
News

Johnson and Bloomberg Talk Innovation, Housing Costs, and Trump

September 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

X-IT and Kidde (A)

By: Constance E. Bagley and David Lane

Involves a start-up, X-IT Products LLC, whose founders had designed an innovative, lightweight, and easy-to-use--yet strong--escape ladder. After X-IT had filed a patent application for the ladder in the United States, X-IT was approached by Kidde PLC, one of the... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Negotiation Process; Agreements and Arrangements; Ethics; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business Startups; Consumer Products Industry

Educators

March 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Gender and Free Speech at Google (A)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Martha J. Crawford and Sarah Mehta

In August 2017, Google fired James Damore, a 28-year-old software engineer who had been employed by the company since 2013. The move came after Damore penned an internal company memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” which posited that innate biological... View Details

Keywords: Free Speech; Representation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Human Resources; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Labor; Employment; Lawsuits and Litigation; Organizational Culture; Technology Industry; United States; California

Educators

2016
Working Paper

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Modern Administrative State, 1912–1925: Trade Associations, Codes of Fair Competition, and State Building

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

From its founding in 1912 through the interwar years, the Chamber's history shows a persistent preoccupation with progressive economics and policy-making. Rather than flouting the new ideas of institutional economics, which favored federal regulators overseeing data... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Trade; Business and Government Relations; Competition; United States

Read Now

March 2018
Teaching Note

Making Target the Target: Boycotts and Corporate Political Activity (A) and (B)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Victor Wu

Through the challenges facing Target, the case examines the ways in which corporations can become involved in political and legislative debates and processes, ranging from campaign contributions to lobbying. In 2016, Target CEO Brian Cornell must determine how to... View Details

01 Jun 2000
News

Of Dugouts and Sweatshops

students at the student-organized Leadership and Ethics Forum last March. Under Reich's review was a labor inspector's ruling that a batboy for the minor-league Savannah Cardinals be removed from his dream job because of View Details

Keywords: Eileen K. McCluskey

2011
Working Paper

Fiduciary Duties and Equity-Debtholder Conflicts

By: Bo Becker and Per Stromberg

We use an important legal event as a natural experiment to examine the effect of management fiduciary duties on equity-debt conflicts. A 1991 Delaware bankruptcy ruling changed the nature of corporate directors' fiduciary duties in firms incorporated in that state.... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Capital Structure; Equity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Laws and Statutes; Conflict and Resolution; Welfare or Wellbeing; Delaware

Read Now

08 Mar 2017
News

Safe, Secure, and Prosperous

Maria Fernandez (AMP 187, 2014) is the deputy secretary of the Intelligence and Capability Group for the Australia Department of Immigration and Border Protection. In this interview, she describes how her... View Details

December 2010
Article

Social Preferences and Strategic Uncertainty: An Experiment on Markets and Contracts

This paper reports a three-phase experiment on a stylized labor market. In the first two phases, agents face simple games, which we use to estimate subjects' social and reciprocity concerns. In the last phase, four principals compete by offering agents a contract from... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Risk and Uncertainty; Markets; Contracts; Decisions; Distribution; Labor; Game Theory

23 Jan 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Tommy Koh: Background and Major Accomplishments of the ’Great Negotiator, 2014

Keywords: by James K. Sebenius & Laurence A. Green

14 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Process and Performance

Keywords: by Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim; Accounting

Summer 2016
Article

Open Content, Linus' Law, and Neutral Point of View

By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu

The diffusion of the Internet and digital technologies has enabled many organizations to use the open-content production model to produce and disseminate knowledge. While several prior studies have shown that the open-content production model can lead to high-quality... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Internet and the Web; Balance and Stability; Operations; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Dissemination

January 2023
Article

Racial Diversity and Racial Policy Preferences: The Great Migration and Civil Rights

By: Alvaro Calderon, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

Between 1940 and 1970, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States, during the Second Great Migration. This same period witnessed the struggle and eventual success of the civil rights movement in ending institutionalized... View Details

Keywords: Civil Rights; Great Migration; History; Race; Rights; Prejudice and Bias; Government Legislation

15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for General Motors? Or are those just headlights from an oncoming train? Among Harvard Business School faculty, it depends on whom you ask. The carmaker—home to such storied brands as Cadillac, Buick, View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

25 Nov 2020
News

Microsoft’s New ‘Productivity Score’ Lets Your Boss Monitor How Often You Use Email And Attend Video Meetings

2004
Working Paper

Contract Rights and Risk Aversion: Foreign Banks and the Mexican Economy, 1997-2004

By: Stephen Haber and Aldo Musacchio

In 1997 Mexico allowed foreign banks unrestricted entry to the market. What impact did foreign mergers and acquisitions have on Mexico's banks? We find that all banks in Mexico have become increasingly risk averse, and that foreign banks are even more so. Foreign banks... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Contracts; Market Entry and Exit; Globalization; Microeconomics; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Mexico