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- April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
- Case
Linden Lab: Crossing the Chasm
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
In early 2008, managers at Linden Lab, creator of the virtual world Second Life, faced decisions about the company's growth strategy. Despite profound initial skepticism about demand for a user-generated virtual world that was not a traditional game, Second Life had... View Details
- March 2009
- Background Note
Evaluating M&A Deals: Floors, Caps, and Collars
As equity consideration has become more popular in acquisitions, so has the use of the "pricing-protection" mechanisms, such as floors, caps, and collars. These contractual devices provide insurance to the shareholders of the target and may protect the buyer as well.... View Details
- March 2009
- Article
The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing
By: F. Ferri and Tatiana Sandino
We examine the economic consequences of more than 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004, the first case in which the SEC allowed a shareholder vote on an accounting matter. Our results... View Details
- 2009
- Other Unpublished Work
Bridge Building in Venture Capital-Backed Acquisitions
By: Paul A. Gompers and Yuhai Xuan
We study the role of common venture capital investors in alleviating asymmetric information between public acquirers and private venture capital-backed targets. We find that acquisition announcement returns are more positive for acquisitions in which both the target... View Details
- January 2009
- Article
From Regional Star to Global Leader
By: Nitin Nohria
Yang Jianguo was recently promoted from country manager for China to global head of product development at a staid French perfume maker. He was chosen for his technical smarts and his knowledge of emerging markets—a critical avenue for growth, given that sales in the... View Details
- Article
Investor Activism and Takeovers
By: Robin Greenwood and Michael Schor
Recent work documents large positive abnormal returns around the time that a hedge fund announces its activist intentions with a publicly listed firm. We show that these returns are largely explained by the ability of activists to force target firms into a takeover: In... View Details
- 2008
- Other Unpublished Work
Are Private Equity Firms Better Managed?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity,... View Details
- November 2008
- Case
The Hong Kong & China Gas Company Ltd.: Negotiating Joint Ventures in China
By: James K. Sebenius, Michael Shih-ta Chen and Medha Samant
To deliver 5-6 major new Chinese joint ventures annually, Hong Kong China Gas executives began extracting cross-border negotiating lessons from their 80 existing Chinese JVs. Chairman Alfred Chan and CEO Peter Wong knew that HKGC's growth strategy required significant... View Details
- November 2008 (Revised November 2008)
- Case
Cyworld: Creating and Capturing Value in a Social Network
By: Sunil Gupta and Sangman Han
In May 2008, the new CEO of Cyworld, a social network company in Korea, had to decide how to create and capture value from his rapidly growing user base. Cyworld was founded in 1999, and in 2003 it was acquired by SK Telecom, a leading mobile service provider in Korea.... View Details
- November 2008
- Journal Article
Can Research Committees Add Value for Investors? An Analysis of Lehman Brothers' Ten Uncommon Values® Recommendations
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Yang Gui
Since 1949 Lehman Brothers has used an investment committee to select the top ten recommendations made by its analysts each year. We examine the performance of this committee's recommendations and find that on average its selections generated abnormal returns of 2.7%... View Details
- October 2008
- Article
Navigating the Bind of Necessary Evils: Psychological Engagement and the Production of Interpersonally Sensitive Behavior
By: Joshua D. Margolis and Andrew Molinsky
We develop grounded theory about how individuals respond to the subjective experience of performing "necessary evils" and how that influences the way they treat targets of their actions. Despite the importance and difficulty of delivering just, compassionate treatment... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
Ithmar Capital
By: Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon
The founders of Ithmar Capital, a mid-market private equity fund targeting businesses in and addressing the Gulf Co-operation Council countries, are about to raise their third fund, targeting $1 billion. The firm's current strategy as demonstrated in Funds I ($70... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Agricultural Credit in India
By: Shawn A. Cole
This paper integrates theories of political budget cycles with theories of tactical electoral redistribution to test for political capture in a novel way. Studying banks in India, I find that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised July 2009)
- Case
COFCO Xinjiang Tunhe Co., Ltd.
By: David E. Bell and Aldo Sesia
In 2005, COFCO Ltd., one of China's largest and most successful companies, acquired Xinjiang Tunhe, a tomato processing firm, which had been, in recent years, poorly managed. COFCO changed Tunhe's management team and set out to create a culture of professionalism and... View Details
- June 2008
- Article
Psychological Influence in Negotiation: An Introduction Long Overdue
By: Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman
This paper discusses the causes and consequences of the (surprisingly) limited extent to which social influence research has penetrated the field of negotiation and then presents a framework for bridging the gap between these two literatures. The paper notes that one... View Details
Keywords: Social Issues; Research; Framework; Negotiation Tactics; Decisions; Power and Influence; Behavior; Ethics
- 2008
- Working Paper
Agency and Institutions: A Review of Institutional Entrepreneurship
By: Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca and Eva Boxenbaum
This paper analyzes the literature that has been published on institutional entrepreneurship since Paul DiMaggio introduced the notion in 1988. Based on a systematic selection and analysis of articles, the paper outlines an emerging consensus on the definition and... View Details
- May 2008
- Article
When Winning Is Everything
By: Deepak Malhotra, Gillian Ku and J. Keith Murnighan
In the heat of competition, executives can easily become obsessed with beating their rivals. This adrenaline-fueled emotional state, which the authors call competitive arousal, often leads to bad decisions. Managers can minimize the potential for competitive arousal... View Details
- November 2006
- Article
Find Your Sweet Spot
By: Rob Markey, Gerard Du Toit and James Allen
Charged with extending their unit’s product lines and boosting top-line growth over the next three years, product managers at one global consumer goods company wanted to identify the most attractive customer segments to target and how best to reach them. So they turned... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised August 2008)
- Case
Quanta Computer and the One Laptop Per Child Initiative
By: Willy Shih, Chintay Shih and Jyun-Chen Wang
When Quanta Computer, Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of laptop computers, first joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, it faced a challenge trying to balance the cost objectives of a laptop computer targeted at children of the developing world with... View Details
- January 2008
- Background Note
Equity Derivatives
By: Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford
The goal of these simulations is to understand the dynamic replication technique behind the Black-Scholes/Merton options model. The simulations focus on a single stock and a risk-free discount bond, which are used to replicate a contingent payoff. The underlying stock... View Details