Publications

Mihir A. Desai is the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He received his Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard... View Details

Geoffrey G. Jones

Geoffrey Jones is the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, and Faculty Chair of the School's Business History Initiative. He holds degrees of BA, MA and PhD from Cambridge University, UK. He has an honorary Doctorate in Economics and Business Administration... View Details

Keywords: banking; beauty products; construction; consumer products; energy; entertainment; fashion; financial services; food; food processing; green technology; petroleum; service industry

January 2021 (Revised February 2021)
Case

TCS: From Physical Offices to Borderless Work

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Malini Sen

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a multinational IT services company headquartered in Mumbai, is a subsidiary of one of India’s most reputed conglomerates, the Tata Group. In 2020, TCS was valued at $144.7 billion, the highest for any company in the IT sector,... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Organizational Structure; Change Management; Transformation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Customer Satisfaction; Information Technology Industry; India; Asia; United States; Europe

November, 2022
Article

Role of Context in Knowledge Flows: Host Country versus Headquarters as Sources of MNC Subsidiary Knowledge Inheritance

By: Mike Horia Teodorescu, Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna

We respond to calls in the strategy and international business literature for elucidating how multinational subsidiaries develop contextual intelligence in host countries and how they use the local context as a source of valuable opportunities for learning. Applying... View Details

Keywords: MNCs; Knowledge Flows; Innovation; Gravity Model; Absorptive Capacity; Multinational Firms and Management; Business Subsidiaries; Knowledge Management; Business Headquarters; Innovation and Invention

November 2010 (Revised June 2011)
Case

La Fageda

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Joan Enric Ricart and Jordan Mitchell

La Fageda is a manufacturer of high-quality, naturally-made yogurts in northern Catalonia, Spain. La Fageda is substantially different from its main competitors such as multinational Danone in that it is a 270-person workers' cooperative with 60 percent of its... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Business Model; Production; Cooperative Ownership; Quality; Competition; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Spain

19 Nov 2019
News

Lessons from IBM in Nazi Germany

February 1997 (Revised September 1997)
Case

Bidding for Antamina

By: Peter Tufano

In June 1996, executives of the multinational mining company RTZ-CRA contemplate bidding to acquire the Antamina copper and zinc mine in Peru. The Antamina project is being offered for sale by auction as part of the privatization of Peru's state mining company. RTZ-CRA... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Mining; Mining Industry; Peru

June 2011 (Revised October 2012)
Case

IBM China Development Lab Shanghai: Capability by Design

By: Willy Shih, Kamen Bliznashki and Fan Zhao

When IBM shifted from a traditional territory-based multinational organization to what it called a globally integrated enterprise, it established its headquarters for "Growth Markets" in Shanghai and "Established Markets" in New York. This positioned its China... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Global Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Research and Development; Emerging Markets; Product Development; Information Technology Industry; China

July 2021
Article

Multinationality and Capital Structure Dynamics: A Corporate Governance Explanation

By: Daniel Gyimah, Nana Abena Kwansa, Anthony K. Kyiu and Anywhere Sikochi

This paper examines the impact of corporate governance on capital structure dynamics. Using ordinary least squares regressions on 17,496 firm-year observations for 2,294 U.S. multinational companies (MNCs) over the period 1990–2018, we find that MNCs with strong... View Details

Keywords: Multinationality; Speed Of Adjustment; Corporate Governance; Multinational Firms and Management; Capital Structure

April 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Exporting Livability: Investing in New Urban Centers

By: John D. Macomber and Essie Alamsyah

Can Singapore urban design, policy continuity, and system of laws be exported outside of Singapore to accelerate the effective development of new urban agglomerations? Nina Yang, CEO of Sustainable Urban Development at Ascendas-Singbridge, a large real estate company... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Projects; Design; City; Business and Government Relations; Expansion; Real Estate Industry; China; Singapore

October 2002 (Revised November 2002)
Case

Welfare State and its Impact on Business Competitiveness, The: Sweden Inc. for Sale?

By: Huw Pill, Petter Johnsson, Ola Nordquist and Ingrid Vogel

The Swedish Model--sometimes presented as a third way between savage capitalism and unrealistic socialism--was much lauded in the 1960s. It was viewed as a strategy that addressed social concerns while supporting economic growth. However, the financial and currency... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Welfare; Government and Politics; Taxation; Competition; Public Administration Industry; Sweden

Article

Control, Performance, and Knowledge Transfers in Large Multinationals: Unilever in the United States, 1945-1980

By: G. Jones

This article considers key issues relating to the organization and performance of large multinational firms in the post-Second World War period. Although foreign direct investment is defined by ownership and control, in practice the nature of that "control" is far from... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Governance Controls; Performance; Business or Company Management; Ownership; Consumer Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States

February 2002 (Revised March 2002)
Case

India's Intellectual Property Rights Regime and the Pharmaceutical Industry

In 1970, the Indian government significantly revised its patent law, Patents and Design Act of 1911. The 1911 act was enacted when India was a colony of Great Britain, and it was controversial because it led to the total dominance of India's pharmaceutical market by... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Pharmaceutical Industry; Great Britain; India

2014
Teaching Note

Changhong: Journey to Shared Services (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Haiyan Zhang and Guo Jia

Founded in 1958 and headquartered in Mianyang - an emerging inland science and technology city in Sichuan Province, Changhong Electric Co., Ltd., started from the military industry. It then entered the color TV industry and subsequently expanded to a wide range of... View Details

Keywords: China; Appliances; Finance ＆ Insurance; China

March 2020
Article

Do Managers Matter? A Natural Experiment from 42 R&D Labs in India

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Christos A. Makridis

We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the staggered entry of new managers into India’s 42 public R&D labs between 1994 and 2006 to study how alignment between the CEO and middle-level managers affect research productivity. We show that the introduction of new lab... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Innovation; Productivity; Management; Alignment; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity; India

2018
Chapter

Transportation Cost and the Geography of Foreign Investment

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen

Falling transportation costs and rapid technological progress in recent decades have precipitated an explosion of cross-border flows in goods, services, investments, and ideas led by multinational firms. Extensive research has sought to understand the geographic... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Cost; Transportation; Geographic Scope; Geographic Location