Publications

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October 2023 (Revised July 2025)
Case

Thermo Fisher Scientific: Foray into Contract Research

By: Satish Tadikonda, William Marks and Kevin Emancipator

After publicly declaring that they would not enter the contract research organization (CRO) business in 2017, Thermo Fisher purchased Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD), one of the biggest players in the CRO space, in 2021. Much had changed in the intervening... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Biotechnology Industry

27 Jul 2021
Interview

Amy Edmondson on How to Create a Psychologically-Safe Workplace and What to Do If You Don't Work in One

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Harvard Business School Professor and renowned business expert, Amy Edmondson, talks about the growing link between psychological safety at work and the results that high-performing teams accomplish. She details what psychological safety is, how to create a... View Details

Keywords: Psychological Safety; Teaming; Groups and Teams; Trust; Performance

January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Chemours (A)

By: David G. Fubini and David Lane

The July 2015 spin-off of DuPont’s performance chemicals division as the independent company Chemours burdened new CEO Mark Vergnano and his team with perilous challenges. Despite market-leading offerings in several areas, the company faced a glutted market for its... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Chemicals; Leading Change; Crisis Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Chemical Industry; United States

2016
Working Paper

Bias in Official Fiscal Forecasts: Can Private Forecasts Help?

By: Jeffrey A. Frankel and Jesse Schreger

Government forecasts of GDP growth and budget balances are generally more over optimistic than private sector forecasts. When official forecasts are especially optimistic relative to private forecasts ex ante, they are more likely also to be over optimistic relative to... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Macroeconomics

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2011
Other Unpublished Work

What Do Private Firms Look Like?

By: John Asker, Joan Farre-Mensa and Alexander Ljungqvist

Private firms in the U.S. are not subject to public reporting requirements, so relatively little is known about their characteristics and behavior—until now. This Data Appendix describes a new database on private U.S. firms, created by Sageworks Inc. in cooperation... View Details

Keywords: Data and Data Sets; Behavior; Public Sector; Corporate Disclosure; Private Sector; Financial Statements; United States

SSRN

31 Jul 2018
News

Are Stock Buybacks Starving the Economy?

31 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Can Insurance Technology Solve the Uninsured Driver Problem?

assets or savings to protect, coverage may provide minimal benefits. Low-income drivers also may not see insurance as a great deal, since they drive less often but are rarely rewarded with lower premiums because it is too costly View Details

Keywords: by Ray Kluender; Insurance

23 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Face Value: Do Certain Physical Features Help People Get Ahead?

not even be aware of how much someone’s facial attributes are driving interpersonal judgments,” Zhang says. An empirical method for capturing charisma Traditionally, people assess charisma based on... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

January 2023
Article

Racial Diversity and Racial Policy Preferences: The Great Migration and Civil Rights

By: Alvaro Calderon, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

Between 1940 and 1970, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States, during the Second Great Migration. This same period witnessed the struggle and eventual success of the civil rights movement in ending institutionalized... View Details

Keywords: Civil Rights; Great Migration; History; Race; Rights; Prejudice and Bias; Government Legislation

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April 2022
Case

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

"Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The case identifies six distinct phases in the... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Gender; Management; Employees; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Equity; United States

Article

Asset Accumulation and Labor Force Participation of Disability Insurance Applicants

By: Pian Shu

This paper provides empirical evidence of the existence of forward-looking asset-accumulation behavior among disability-insurance applicants, previously examined only in the theoretical literature. Using panel data from the RAND Health and Retirement Study, I show that... View Details

Keywords: Disability Insurance; Asset Accumulation; Labor Force Participation; Assets; Behavior; Employment; Insurance; Insurance Industry; United States

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26 Jul 2016
Working Paper Summaries

The Impact of the Entry of Biosimilars: Evidence from Europe

Keywords: by Fiona Scott Morton, Ariel Dora Stern, and Scott Stern; Health; Biotechnology; Pharmaceutical

Other Article

Sidestepping Some of the Partisan Debate: An Interview with Max Stier

By: Aaron K. Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel

Whereas some organizational leaders are engaging in CEO activism by speaking out on social and political issues not directly related to their bottom line, some leaders want to avoid doing so. Some, in fact, hold neutrality as a core component of their strategy. But... View Details

Keywords: Social Issues; Government and Politics; Leadership; Communication Strategy

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June 2009 (Revised October 2011)
Case

Mina O'Reilly at Logan Airport's TSA

By: Michel Anteby and Erin McFee

Mina O'Reilly, an officer at Logan Airport's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in Boston, must discipline an employee responsible for a security breach that resulted in a 45-minute terminal closure during peak hours, a potential threat to traveler safety,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Accountability; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Culture; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; Boston

03 Oct 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Cartels and Competition: Neither Markets nor Hierarchies

Keywords: by Jeffrey Fear

2021
Working Paper

Once Bitten, Twice Shy: Learning from Corporate Fraud and Corporate Governance Spillovers

By: Trung Nguyen

This paper finds that investors learn from their experience with corporate fraud and financial misconduct and modify their investment behavior to avoid suspicious firms and increase corporate governance efforts. More specially, mutual funds that experienced corporate... View Details

Keywords: Institutional Investors; Investor Experience; Shareholder Voting; Corporate Fraud; Corporate Governance; Institutional Investing; Behavior; Change; Learning

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August 2017
Supplement

PTC: A Transformation to IoT (B)

By: Rajiv Lal and Sarah McAra

In 2013, manufacturing software company PTC Inc. entered the Internet of Things (IoT) market under the leadership of CEO Jim Heppelmann, but the company’s culture was not fully aligned with the new strategic direction. Historically, PTC's culture was defined by... View Details

Keywords: Internet Of Things; Corporate Culture; Human Resources

August 2007 (Revised September 2008)
Case

Marketing the "$100 Laptop" (A)

By: John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In 2002, Professor Nicholas Negroponte, a successful venture capitalist, author, and co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, announced his intention to build a PC so cheap as to make it possible to provide... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Internet and the Web; Information Technology; Product Development; Technological Innovation; Nonprofit Organizations; Marketing Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Developing Countries and Economies; Manufacturing Industry; Information Technology Industry; Computer Industry; Cambridge