Publications

October 1993 (Revised June 1997)
Case

Champion International

By: David F. Hawkins

Management must decide which first quarter's earnings numbers to report. The company is classified by its securities market as a "growth" company. The corporate controller prefers a quarterly earnings figure that represents a decline in earnings. View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Financial Reporting; Judgments; Leadership; Management Teams; Corporate Disclosure

March 2011
Article

Restaurant Organizational Forms and Community in the U.S. in 2005

By: Glenn R. Carroll and Magnus Thor Torfason

Recent sociological theory and research highlights food, drink, and restaurants as culturally meaningful and related to social identity. An implication of this view holds that the prevalence of corporate chain restaurants affects the sociological character of... View Details

Keywords: Demographics; Age; Supply Chain Management; Culture; Balance and Stability; Income Characteristics; Research; Civil Society or Community; Identity; Theory; Society; Service Industry; United States

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05 Jul 2016
First Look

July 5, 2016

applications. For example, a scandal covered in a long-form news article leads to a 10% drop in applications the following year. This is roughly the same as the impact on applications of dropping 10 spots in the U.S. News and World Report... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2003 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Scott Lawson's Dilemma

By: Thomas R. Piper

The head of SysCom's test equipment division is concerned about how to answer employee and customer questions concerning the possible sale or liquidation of the division. The consequences of alternative approaches (full transparency vs. strong optimism and reassurance)... View Details

Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Interpersonal Communication; Business Divisions; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry

Research Summary

Fabrizio Ferri's research focuses on a number of corporate governance issues, with particular emphasis on executive compensation and shareholder activism. His dissertation investigates the determinants and consequences of firms' decision to reprice... View Details

August 2017
Case

Boston Public Schools' Long Term Financial Plan

By: C. Fritz Foley, Victor Wu and F. Katelynn Boland

In the fall of 2016, the senior leadership team of Boston Public Schools prepared a report indicating that costs were expected to grow faster than revenues for many years to come. They faced questions about whether the projections would be believed and about how to... View Details

Keywords: Financial Planning; Education Reform; Education; Budgets and Budgeting; Corporate Finance; Public Administration Industry; United States; Boston

18 May 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Embracing Paradox

Keywords: Re: Michael L. Tushman

January 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

The Rise and Fall of Lehman Brothers

By: Stuart C. Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Sarah L. Abbott

With nearly $700 billion in assets, Lehman was the largest U.S. bankruptcy in history. In 2007, Lehman achieved record earnings of over $4 billion on revenues of $60 billion. By September 2008 the fourth largest investment bank in the world was bankrupt. How had a... View Details

03 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 3, 2018

and the normative orientation of medical professionals. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54600 Summer 2018 California Management Review CSR Needs CPR: Corporate Sustainability and Politics By: Lyon,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2003
Book

Profits You Can Trust: Spotting and Surviving Accounting Landmines

By: H. David Sherman, S. David Young and Harris Collingwood

Profits You Can Trust gives managers, directors, lenders, audit partners and analysts a clear framework to demystify global financial reporting in a market fraught with danger. Filled with provocative and enlightening examples, it offers a fresh perspective and clear... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Corporate Finance; Economics; Financial Reporting

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2015
Working Paper

Client Service, Compensation, and the Sell-Side Analyst Objective Function: An Empirical Analysis of Relational Incentives in the Investment-Research Industry

By: David A. Maber, Boris Groysberg and Paul M. Healy

This paper investigates how sell-side analysts build and sustain their client networks; the economic gains to successfully managing this challenge; and the metrics through which these incentives are delivered. In a typical semiannual period, the average analyst... View Details

Keywords: Networks; Measurement and Metrics; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Jobs and Positions

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June 2001 (Revised August 2003)
Case

Home Depot, Inc. in the New Millennium

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Jeremy Cott

After nearly two decades of spectacular performance, Home Depot reported a disappointing performance in the year 2000. The company began expanding its business scope as a result of saturating its growth in the core business. This case explores whether the disappointing... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Expansion; Valuation; Performance; Business Strategy; Corporate Finance; Retail Industry

Web

Curriculum | MBA

Business School Financial Reporting and Control Harvard Business School Leadership & Organizational Behavior Harvard Business School Marketing Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Management Harvard Business School More on the... View Details

October 2012
Supplement

Olympus (B)

By: Jay W. Lorsch, Suraj Srinivasan and Kathleen Durante

This case outlines Michael Woodford's awards and honors, after having been fired from Olympus in October 2011. It discusses the repercussions following an investigation into the fraud and the report that was released thereafter. It also discusses the lawsuit that... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Corporate Governance; Health Industry; Electronics Industry; Japan

29 May 2001
Research & Ideas

Race Does Matter in Mentoring

responsibility for a functional department within a business unit—for example, the director of marketing or a plant manager.) And Stage 3 covered upper middle management to the executive level. (A person in this stage became a corporate... View Details

Keywords: by David A. Thomas

September 2017
Article

Reexamining Staggered Boards and Shareholder Value

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Alma Cohen

Cohen and Wang (2013) (CW2013) provide evidence consistent with market participants perceiving staggered boards to be value reducing. Amihud and Stoyanov (2016) (AS2016) contests these findings, reporting some specifications under which the results are not... View Details

Keywords: Staggered Boards; Takeover Defense; Antitakeover Provision; Firm Value; Delaware; Airgas; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Value

2020
Working Paper

Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Raymond Kluender

We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates.... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Financial Distress; COVID-19; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Crisis; Health Pandemics; United States