Information - Publications - Faculty & Research

William A. Sahlman

William Sahlman is a Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Mr. Sahlman received an A.B. degree in Economics from Princeton University (1972), an M.B.A. from Harvard University (1975), and a Ph.D. in Business... View Details

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Compute Cluster & Data Storage RCS offers a local compute cluster to work with large data, access storage, and utilize databases, along with guidance on other research computing environments. News New HBSGrid Project Space Request Requirements 11 Feb 2025 We would like... View Details

Robert Simons

Robert Simons is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School. For over 35 years, Simons has taught accounting, management control, and strategy execution courses in both the Harvard MBA and Executive Education Programs. For 2024/25, he is teaching a... View Details

02 Apr 2024
Research & Ideas

Employees Out Sick? Inside One Company's Creative Approach to Staying Productive

placing a table at each station, where individuals would sign in and out for their shifts. They found that managers struck informal agreements with the managers on either side of them to lend and borrow workers as needed. Since managers... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Fashion

08 Jul 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Delegation in Multi-Establishment Firms: Adaptation vs. Coordination in I.T. Purchasing Authority

Keywords: by Kristina McElheran

March – April 2009
Article

Market Research and Innovation Strategy in a Duopoly

By: Dominique Lauga and Elie Ofek

We model a duopoly in which ex-ante identical firms must decide where to direct their innovation efforts. The firms face market uncertainty about consumers' preferences for innovation on two product attributes and technology uncertainty about the success of their R&D... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Innovation and Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Research and Development; Competitive Strategy

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Research Summary

Understanding Financial Communication Strategy

Greg Miller is investigating financial communication. Financial communication is the process through which managers explain the firm to the external stakeholders. While capital providers are the primary audience for this information, effective financial communication... View Details

December 2024
Article

Proxy Advisory Firms and Corporate Shareholder Engagement

By: Aiyesha Dey, Austin Starkweather and Joshua White

We study how Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) affect firms’ engagement with shareholders. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using say-on-pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers ISS to review engagement activities. Firms receiving ISS... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Governing and Advisory Boards; Policy; Voting

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June 2024
Article

Stereotypes and Belief Updating

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Manuela Collis and Leena Kulkarni

We explore how feedback shapes, and perpetuates, gender gaps in self-assessments. Participants in our experiment take tests of their ability across different domains. We elicit their beliefs of their performance before and after feedback. We find that, even after the... View Details

Keywords: Beliefs; Stereotypes; Self-assessment; Performance Evaluation; Gender; Cognition and Thinking; Perception; Knowledge Sharing

October 2008
Article

Sociopolitical Dynamics in Relations Between Top Managers and Security Analysts: Favor Rendering, Reciprocity, and Analyst Stock Recommendations

By: James Westphal and Michael B. Clement

We examine how the disclosure of negative firm information may prompt top executives to render personal and professional favors for security analysts, who may reciprocate by rating firms relatively positively. We further examine how negative ratings may prompt... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Relationships; Power and Influence; Ethics

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August 2018
Article

The Impact of the Entry of Biosimilars: Evidence from Europe

By: Fiona M. Scott Morton, Ariel Dora Stern and Scott Stern

Biologics represent a substantial and growing share of the U.S. drug market. Traditional “small molecule” generics quickly erode the price and share of the branded product upon entry; however, only a few biosimilars have been approved in the U.S. since 2015, thereby... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Biosimilars; Biologics; Pharmaceutical Competition; Healthcare Spending; Innovation; Health Care and Treatment; Spending; Market Entry and Exit; Competition; Innovation and Invention; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Europe

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Article

Integrated Strategy: Residual Market and Exchange Imperfections as the Foundation of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dennis Yao

Market imperfections are central to understanding the mechanisms that permit firms to capture value. Many of these imperfections are competed away when firms struggle to attain and defend competitive advantages, making markets more efficient in the process. The... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Strategy; Nonmarket Strategy; Market Imperfections; Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

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2014
Chapter

Remapping the Flow of Funds

By: Juliane Begenau, Monika Piazzesi and Martin Schneider

This article argues that quantitative analysis of credit market positions would benefit tremendously if the additional information about the structure of payment streams were more readily available. Most available data on credit market positions, such as the Flow of... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Credit

Citation

February 2013
Article

An Activity-Generating Theory of Regulation

By: Joshua Schwartzstein and Andrei Shleifer

We propose an activity-generating theory of regulation. When courts make errors, tort litigation becomes unpredictable and as such imposes risk on firms, thereby discouraging entry, innovation, and other socially desirable activity. When social returns to activity are... View Details

Keywords: Courts and Trials; Lawsuits and Litigation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Theory

July 2014 (Revised November 2014)
Background Note

The Structure and Functioning of the Fashion Industry

By: Mukti Khaire and Hannah Catzen

Fashion is the quintessential social-consumption good; all consumers comply with or react to fashion. Although very few consumers actually control trends, virtually every consumer is affected by fashion and contributes to it by adopting or rejecting popular styles. A... View Details

Keywords: Fashion And Creative Industries; Fashion; Retail; Creativity; Supply and Industry; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry

Citation

Educators

June 2014
Case

Riverview Law: Applying Business Sense to the Legal Market

By: Heidi K. Gardner and Silvia Hodges Silverstein

Riverview Law, run like a business rather than a traditional law firm, wants to expand its unconventional concept from the UK to the US. The firm's approach includes performing all legal work for annual fixed-price contracts, using data and analytics to advise clients... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Professional Services; Disruptive Innovation; Law Firms; Client Service; Culture; Recruiting; Management; Professional Services Firms; Business Model; Legal Services Industry; United Kingdom; United States

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2014
Working Paper

The New Empirical Economics of Management

By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen

Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Microeconomics

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2014
Working Paper

Pay Harmony: Peer Comparison and Executive Compensation

By: Claudine Gartenberg and Julie Wulf

This study suggests that peer comparison affects both wage setting and productivity within firms. We report three changes in division manager compensation following a 1991–1992 controversy over executive pay. We argue that this controversy increased wage comparisons... View Details

Keywords: Pay-for-Performance; Internal Labor Markets; Peer Comparison; Firm Geography; Behavior; Executive Compensation; Policy

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