Publications
Publications
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(3,946)
- Faculty Publications (985)
- Article
Why Do Firms Have 'Purpose'? The Firm's Role as a Carrier of Identity and Reputation
By: Rebecca Henderson and Eric Van den Steen
Why do so many firms publicly espouse a "purpose" beyond simple profit maximization? And why do so many managers and employees appear to care deeply about this purpose and to believe that it is critically important? In this paper we argue that the conventional answers... View Details
- April 2015 (Revised October 2017)
- Teaching Note
Buffett's Bid for Media General's Newspapers
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Annelena Lobb
On May 12, 2012, BH Media Group, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, announced an offer to buy Media General's (MEG) newspaper division for $142 million in cash and provide debt financing to the struggling firm. Reactions from investors and industry... View Details
Keywords: Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Bankruptcy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Valuation; Capital Structure; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Strategy; Risk Management; Executive Compensation; Cash Flow; Business Exit or Shutdown; Media; Advertising; Restructuring; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Publishing Industry; United States
- April 14, 2015
- Article
The Type of Socially Responsible Investments That Make Firms More Profitable
By: George Serafeim
- April 2015 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Comcast Corporation (A)
In March 2015, the U.S. television industry received a major wake-up call. HBO, a premium cable channel with over 30 million subscribers, had announced it would begin offering a standalone streaming service. This new service would allow customers to bypass the cable... View Details
- April 2015
- Article
Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers
By: Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz and Leora Klapper
This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk assessment and lending decisions. We first show that while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable... View Details
- March 2015 (Revised December 2016)
- Case
Philips Healthcare Latin America
By: Sunil Gupta
On a beautiful sunny afternoon in October 2013, Daniel Mazon (GMP 15), decided to take some time out of his busy schedule of the General Management Program (GMP) at the Harvard Business School to reflect on his company's situation. Mazon was the Vice President and... View Details
- March 2015
- Teaching Note
Kiehl's Since 1851: Pathway to Profitable Growth
By: Leslie John and Robert J. Dolan
- March 2015
- Article
Business Model Evaluation: Quantifying Walmart's Sources of Advantage
By: Humberto Brea-Solís, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Emili Grifell-Tatjé
We develop an analytical framework on the basis of the economics of business performance to provide quantitative insight into the link between a firm's business model choices and its profit consequences. The method is applied to Walmart by building a qualitative... View Details
- February 2015 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
Intrapreneurship at DaVita HealthCare Partners
By: Joseph B. Fuller, David J. Collis and Matthew G. Preble
Josh Golomb, president and general manager of DaVita Rx (Rx), was about to meet with Kent Thiry, CEO of Rx's corporate parent, DaVita Healthcare Partners Inc. (DaVita), in August 2013. The two would discuss whether Golomb should lead a new DaVita venture, Paladina... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Making the Business Case for Environmental Sustainability
Can a business case be made for acting sustainably? This is a difficult question to answer precisely, largely because there is no generally accepted definition of the term "sustainability". Is it acting sustainably to protect the human rights of the firm's workforce?... View Details
- January 2015 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
Omar Selim: Building a Values-Based Asset Management Firm (A)
By: George Serafeim, Rebecca Henderson and Shannon Gombos
The sustainable investing market was a recent phenomenon in the first decade of the 21st century. However, an increasing number of investors began to integrated Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues in investment decisions. At Barclays Capital, Omar Selim... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; ESG; Social Business; Entrepreneurs; Scaling; Emerging Market Entrepreneurship; Not For Profit; Entrepreneurial Finance; Mentoring; Business Networks; Hybrid Nonprofit Funding; Investing; Investment Management; Asset Management; Values and Beliefs; Religion; Personal Development and Career; Business Startups; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry; Europe; Germany; United Kingdom
- January 2015
- Case
Burberry in 2014
By: Anita Elberse
In February 2014, Burberry's chief executive officer Angela Ahrendts is preparing to hand the reins of the English luxury fashion company to chief creative officer Christopher Bailey. Under their partnership, in place since 2006, Burberry's revenues have tripled to... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing Strategy
By: Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar and Elie Ofek
Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for firms. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a "self-matching policy." Self-matching allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and in-store prices... View Details
- January 2015
- Article
Competing with Privacy
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
We analyze the implications of consumer privacy for competition in the marketplace. We consider a market where firms set prices and disclosure levels for consumer information, and consumers observe both before deciding which firm to patronize and how much information... View Details
- December 2014 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Social Business at Novartis: Arogya Parivar
By: Michael E. Porter, Mark R. Kramer and David Lane
Late in 2013, Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez was considering whether or how to deepen the company's investment in Arogya Parivar, its profitable program that sold Novartis medicines in rural India while expanding access to medicine and health information to millions of... View Details
- December 2014
- Article
Market Competition, Earnings Management, and Persistence in Accounting Profitability Around the World
We examine how cross-country differences in product, capital, and labor market competition, and earnings management affect mean reversion in accounting return on assets. Using a sample of 48,465 unique firms from 49 countries, we find that accounting returns mean... View Details
- 2014
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Marketing Reading: Creating Customer Value
By: Sunil Gupta
This Reading explores how firms can create value for their customers. The goal of any business is to delight customers by understanding its customers' needs and to provide products and services to meet those needs. As a result, it is critical to understand what... View Details
- 2014
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Marketing Reading: Customer Management
By: Sunil Gupta
This Reading on customer management sheds light on how companies should evaluate and manage their customers in order to grow profitably. Customer management allows marketing managers to inform investment decisions by drilling down into each customer's profitability or... View Details
- 2014
- Other Unpublished Work
Turning a Profit While Doing Good: Aligning Sustainability with Corporate Performance
By: George Serafeim
- November 2014
- Case
Jazztel
By: Jay Lorsch and Emily McTague
In October 2004 Fernández Pujals, founder of Telepizza, an international home delivery pizza business, bought 24.9% of Jazztel (€90 million), a telecom company. At the time, Jazztel was near bankruptcy and needed a capital injection to finish the year. Over the next... View Details