Publications

Register to Read

March 1995 (Revised April 1997)
Case

Co-operative Bank, The

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Srikant M. Datar

A British bank with strong roots in the cooperative movement encounters declining profitability in an increasingly competitive and deregulated financial services industry. It attempts to grow by broadening its customer base and increasing the range of products and... View Details

Keywords: Product; Competition; Expansion; Cost Management; Activity Based Costing and Management; Profit; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

Educators

Purchase

Research Summary

Evolution of Competitive Advantage

Anita M. McGahan is studying the evolution of competitive advantage among firms in a cross section of industries. She is particularly interested in the structural conditions that enable firms to develop an enduring competitive advantage in new markets. McGahan has... View Details

2011
Article

Fundamental Freedom or Fringe Benefit?: Rice University and the Evolution of Academic Tenure, 1935-1963

In 1935, fewer than half of a sample of seventy-eight prominent universities employed formal tenure policies, but by 1973 almost 100 percent had instituted tenure. The intervening years generated many of the policies that still govern practices at American... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Compensation and Benefits; Education Industry

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

The ABCs of Addressing Climate Change (From a Business Perspective)

something? Based on my experience as a real estate and construction CEO and my academic research on urbanization, new cities, and the finance of sustainable infrastructure, I... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Energy; Utilities

Article

The Deception Spiral: Corporate Obfuscation Leads to Perceptions of Immorality and Cheating Behavior

By: D.M. Markowitz, M. Kouchaki, J.T. Hancock and F. Gino

In four studies, we evaluated how corporate misconduct relates to language patterns, perceptions of immorality, and unethical behavior. First, we analyzed nearly 190 codes of conduct from S&P 500 manufacturing companies and observed that corporations with ethics... View Details

Keywords: Obfuscation; Corporate Unethicality; Deception; Deception Spiral; Organizations; Values and Beliefs; Ethics; Perception; Behavior

2023
Working Paper

The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior: Evidence from Young U.S. Movers, 1992–2021

By: Jacob R. Brown, Enrico Cantoni, Sahil Chinoy, Martin Koenen and Vincent Pons

We ask how childhood environment shapes political behavior. We measure young voters’ participation and party affiliation in nationally comprehensive voter files and reconstruct their childhood location histories based on their parents’ addresses. We compare outcomes of... View Details

Keywords: Political Parties; Government and Politics; Age; Residency; Voting

Purchase

25 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Steer Clear of the Blind Spots That Derail Experiments

Should companies let employees keep working remotely after the COVID-19 pandemic ends? Assessing the impact of remote work has involved a lot of... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

22 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The ‘Mother of Fair Trade’ was an Unabashed Price Protectionist

fair trade activists were aware that these provisions lacked enforcement power. They needed the government on their side. So Gleason and Philip conducted a statewide survey of more than 1,200 California... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Health; Legal Services

08 Aug 2022
HBS Case

Building an 'ARMY' of Fans: Marketing Lessons from K-Pop Sensation BTS

itself improbably shattering records held by Justin Bieber and The Jackson 5, and amassing 100 million fans. In 2019, BTS joined The Beatles and The Monkees as View Details

Keywords: by Shalene Gupta; Media & Broadcasting; Music

08 Jul 2002
What Do You Think?

Have We Carried the Concept of Alignment Too Far?

Paulson said last month, "I cannot think of a time when business overall has been held in less repute." Regardless of the facts and the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

08 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The Civic Benefits of Google Street View and Yelp

says Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Michael Luca. That may be about to change. Thanks to the Internet, mobile apps, and a wide range of useful programs online, residents add to View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

Research Summary

Growth and the Quality of Foreign Direct Investment: Is All FDI Equal? (joint with Andrew Charlton)

By: Laura Alfaro

In this paper we distinguish different qualities of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. Establishing the quality of FDI, however, is a difficult concept. Quality, that is the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth, is a combination and... View Details

05 Jul 2023
HBS Case

What Kind of Leader Are You? How Three Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment

based on their past experience ... and then the context shifts, and they try to apply the same recipe, and it fails.” The analysis stems from one... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

2014
Working Paper

Opting Out of Good Governance

By: C. Fritz Foley, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Jonathan Greenstein and Eric Zwick

Cross-listing on a U.S. exchange does not bond foreign firms to follow the corporate governance rules of that exchange. Hand-collected data show that 80% of cross-listed firms opt out of at least one exchange governance rule, instead committing to observe the rules of... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Globalization; Corporate Governance

January–February 2018
Article

Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye

By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Bruce G.S. Hardie

We investigate the increasingly common business setting in which companies face the possibility of both observed and unobserved customer attrition (i.e., “overt” and “silent” churn) in the same pool of customers. This is the case for many online-based services where... View Details

Keywords: Churn; Retention; Attrition; Customer Base Analysis; Hidden Markov Models; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior

2025
Working Paper

The Hidden Costs of Working Multiple Jobs: Implications for Spending Behavior and Wellbeing

By: Paige Tsai and Ryan W. Buell

Problem definition: Amidst inflation, rising costs of living, an explosion in remote and gig working opportunities, and an increase in the part-time labor mix in economies around the world, it is becoming evermore commonplace for people to earn labor income... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Operations; Employee Behavior; Job Design and Levels; Personal Finance; Well-being; Happiness; Satisfaction; Wages

SSRN

2015
Other Unpublished Work

Do Managers Have a Role to Play in Sustaining the Institutions of Capitalism?

By: Rebecca Henderson and Karthik Ramanna

In a capitalist system based on free markets, do managers have responsibilities to the system itself? If they do, should these responsibilities shape their behavior when they engage in the political processes that structure the institutions of capitalism? The... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; Lobbying; Leadership; Economic Systems; Managerial Roles; Business and Government Relations

2009
Working Paper

Endowments, Fiscal Federalism, and the Cost of Capital for States: Evidence from Brazil, 1891-1930

By: Andre C. Martinez Fritscher and Aldo Musacchio

There is a large amount of literature that aims to explain what determines country risk (defined as the difference between the yield of a sovereign's bonds and the risk free rate). In this paper, we contribute to the discussion by arguing that an important explanatory... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Cost of Capital; Revenue; Sovereign Finance; Goods and Commodities; Taxation; Business History; Risk and Uncertainty; Brazil