Corporate Performance - Publications - Faculty & Research

19 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: “The Architecture of Innovation”

The key to managing innovation starts, and probably ends, with incentives. In his new book, The Architecture of Innovation: The Economics of Creative Organizations, Harvard Business School Professor Josh Lerner puts it this way: "After too many board meetings in... View Details

Keywords: by Josh Lerner; Financial Services

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

companies. This remedy is best observed in formerly public companies that—aided by professional buyout firms—have been taken private and armed with active directors who pursue commonsense governance practices that have stood the test of time. In arguing for the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

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Professor Sherman's research has long focused on financial reporting, performance measurement/management, and financial literacy issues facing corporate management and Boards of Directors in global businesses. He also actively studies methods to improve productivity in... View Details

2019
White Paper

Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy

By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing

Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed... View Details

Keywords: Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Background; Economic Systems; Economy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Statements

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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

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March 2014
Module Note

Implementing Environmentally Sustainable Operations

By: Michael W. Toffel

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September 2016
Case

Partners Group: Ain't No Mountain High Enough

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Ricardo Andrade

Partners Group (PG), a Swiss-based PE manager, initiated a series of strategic shifts and evolved from a predominately fund-of-funds manager into a large, multi-asset class PE firm focused on direct investments. PG was the first PE firm to go public in 2006. A number... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Management Practices and Processes; Entrepreneurship

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21 May 2007
Research & Ideas

Fixing the Marketing-CEO Disconnect

Similarly, Kinko's was measuring on-time performance for copying large batch jobs for their corporate accounts. Their staff was thus engaged in back office activities to generate these copies. However in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

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By: Ethan C. Rouen

Relying on empirical archival methodologies—as well as techniques in data science—to develop and structure new sources of data by which to approach questions of looming disclosure changes, Professor Rouen has focused on one of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s... View Details

11 Oct 2007
Working Paper Summaries

How Firms Respond to Being Rated

Keywords: by Aaron K. Chatterji & Michael W. Toffel

03 Sep 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Supply Chain Screening Without Certification: The Critical Role of Stakeholder Pressure

Keywords: by Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell & Michael W. Toffel

Robert S. Kaplan

Robert S. Kaplan is Senior Fellow and Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He joined the HBS faculty in 1984 after spending 16 years on the faculty of the business school at Carnegie-Mellon University, where he... View Details

Keywords: health care; nonprofit industry

March–April 2024
Article

Case Study: Navigating Labor Unrest

By: Jorge Tamayo

Paulo Ferreira, the president of Luna Brazil, has an ambitious plan to turn around the dismal performance of the plant he oversees in Campinas. The wrinkle is, he needs the buy-in of the powerful local union, which is still smarting from a 10-year-old labor conflict... View Details

Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Layoffs; Manufacturing; Labor and Management Relations; Labor Unions; Negotiation Tactics; Conflict and Resolution; Performance Improvement; Corporate Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Brazil

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John D. Dionne has been a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School since 2014 and is a recently retired Senior Managing Director and Senior Advisor to Blackstone. He is also Managing Partner of Franconia Capital, a... View Details

07 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

What Leaders Need to Do To Restore Investor Confidence

At the beginning of the year, corporate skullduggery seemed limited to one or two egregious examples. A couple of bad apples won't spoil the whole bunch, we said to ourselves. But in the past several months, rottenness may have achieved a... View Details

Keywords: by Harvard Management Update

Broadening Focus: Spillovers, Complementarities and Specialization in the Hospital Industry

The long-standing argument that focused operations outperform others stands in contrast to claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. Within the literature on corporate strategy, this tension between focus and breadth is reconciled by the concept of... View Details

Frances X. Frei

Frances Frei is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders accelerate performance and design for excellence in leadership, strategy, and operations. She regularly advises senior executives... View Details

Keywords: airline; banking; fast food; financial services; health care; hotels ＆ motels; management consulting; media; nonprofit industry; professional services; retail financial services; service industry; sports; telecommunications; tourism; travel

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By: Rohit Deshpande

Customer Centricity Rohit Deshpandé's research program focuses on Customer-Centricity. A stream of projects examines the interaction between corporate and national culture as they influence the development and implementation of global marketing strategies in high... View Details

2018
Working Paper

When to Take the Leap: The Antecedents and Consequences of Leapfrog CEOs

By: J. Yo-Jud Cheng

Much of the prior research on CEO successions focuses on differences between CEOs appointed from within the firm and those appointed from outside; however, this dichotomy neglects significant heterogeneity in CEOs’ career trajectories. In this study, I examine the... View Details

Keywords: Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Innovation and Management

Citation

April 2004 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Accounting Fraud at WorldCom

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David Kiron

The principal players in WorldCom's accounting fraud included CFO Scott Sullivan, the General Accounting and Internal Audit departments, external auditor Arthur Andersen, and the board of directors. The case provides sufficient detail to allow for a full discussion of... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Governing and Advisory Boards; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Financial Reporting; Organizational Culture; Corporate Governance; Accounting Audits

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