Publications

November 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Roll-Ups and Surprise Billing: Collisions at the Intersection of Private Equity and Patient Care

By: Trevor Fetter and Kira Seiger

This case describes the increasing investment by private equity (PE) firms in patient care and other healthcare services. The case focuses on investments in physician staffing firms and roll-up strategy investments in physician practice management (PPM). Included in... View Details

October 2015
Case

Clearwater Seafoods

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Clearwater sought to market value-added shellfish products in a traditionally commodities based industry, while facing supply uncertainties and regulatory, environmental, and foreign exchange challenges. Clearwater harvested lobsters, clams, scallops, shrimp, and other... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Profit; Goods and Commodities; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Product Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Canada

January 2020 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Freelancer, Ltd.

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Platforms; Digital Labor; Labor; Human Resources; Management; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines

05 Jun 2019
Working Paper Summaries

How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice

Keywords: by Ryan W. Buell and Basak Kalkanci

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Sawyer’s research focuses on U.S. political economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, concentrating on the development of competition policy and the administrative state. While the conventional history of U.S. competition policy portrays the... View Details

Forthcoming
Article

What's My Employee Worth? The Effects of Salary Benchmarking

By: Zoë B. Cullen, Shengwu Li and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

While U.S. legislation prohibits employers from sharing information about their employees’ compensation with each other, companies are still allowed to acquire and use more aggregated data provided by third parties. Most medium and large firms report using this type... View Details

Keywords: Information Sharing; Wages; Policy; Compensation and Benefits

September 2013 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Morning Star Company: Self-Management at Work

By: Francesca Gino, Bradley R. Staats, Brian J. Hall and Tiffany Y. Chang

Morning Star, a collection of affiliated companies, had grown steadily since 1970 when Chris Rufer, president and founder, started the business hauling tomatoes to processing plants in a truck. The company's main products continued to be tomato-based, including a... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Motivation and Incentives; Working Conditions; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Food; Management Practices and Processes; Compensation and Benefits; Manufacturing Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

June 2017
Article

Is Operating Flexibility Harmful under Debt?

By: Nikolaos Trichakis, Dan A. Iancu and Gerry Tsoukalas

We study the inefficiencies stemming from a firm's operating flexibility under debt. We find that flexibility in replenishing or liquidating inventory, by providing risk-shifting incentives, could lead to borrowing costs that erase more than a third of the firm's... View Details

Keywords: Covenants; Risk-shifting; Inventory; Agency Costs; Debt Financing; Risk Management; Borrowing and Debt

December 2016
Article

Deal Process Design in Management Buyouts

By: Guhan Subramanian

Management buyouts (MBOs) are an economically and legally significant class of transaction: not only do they account for more than $10 billion in deal volume per year, on average, but they also play an important role in defining the relationship between inside and... View Details

Keywords: Management Buyout; Deal Structuring; Acquisition; Design; Fairness

February 2014
Article

Learning by Supplying

By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley

Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Organizations; Learning

Program

Leading in the Digital Era

required for people to leverage those technologies? Blending explorations of technology, organizational transformation, and leadership, this program will help you master the mindset, capabilities, and practices required to drive your... View Details

2021
Article

Institutional Policies for a Healthy Anthropocene Society

By: Andrew J. Hoffman, P. Devereaux Jennings and Nicholas A. Poggioli

The Anthropocene epoch refers to the geological epoch, now underway, that is defined by monumental, human-caused geophysical changes in planetary ecosystems. Human society is also changing, marked by an equally profound shift in attitudes, beliefs, and practices. In... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Values and Beliefs; Climate Change; Natural Environment; Society

2008
Book

Revisiting Rental Housing: Policies, Programs, and Priorities

By: Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky

Rental housing is increasingly recognized as a vital housing option in the United States. Yet government policies and programs continue to grapple with widespread problems, including affordability, distressed urban neighborhoods, poor-quality housing stock,... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Government and Politics; Housing; Renting or Rental; Problems and Challenges; United States

2014
Article

Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity

By: Jooa Julia Lee, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats

People believe that weather conditions influence their everyday work life, but to date, little is known about how weather affects individual productivity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we predict and find that bad weather increases individual productivity and that... View Details

Keywords: Productivity; Opportunity Cost; Distractions; Weather; Performance Productivity; Cognition and Thinking

December 2010 (Revised June 2018)
Case

The Pecora Hearings

By: David Moss, Cole Bolton and Eugene Kintgen

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Senate Banking Committee began a much-publicized investigation of the nation's financial sector. The hearings, which came to be known as the Pecora hearings after the Banking Committee's lead counsel Ferdinand Pecora,... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Fairness; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Institutions; Debt Securities; Stocks; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government Legislation; History; Financial Services Industry; United States

04 Nov 2008
First Look

First Look: November 4, 2008

Lerner, and Jean Tirole Abstract The sub-prime crisis has shown a harsh spotlight on the practices of securities underwriters, which provided too many complex securities that proved to ultimately have little value. This uproar calls... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

03 Aug 2009
Research & Ideas

Corporate Social Responsibility in a Downturn

Kasturi "Kash" Rangan, the Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School, argues that corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are more necessary than ever. Rangan says that when carefully planned... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 Oct 2004
What Do You Think?

Does Speed Trump Intellectual Property?

observations of the practices of Japanese manufacturers, concluded that increased speed from product conception to market not only reduced cost but increased quality, variety, and productivity; reduced... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

July–August 2023
Article

Demand Learning and Pricing for Varying Assortments

By: Kris Ferreira and Emily Mower

Problem Definition: We consider the problem of demand learning and pricing for retailers who offer assortments of substitutable products that change frequently, e.g., due to limited inventory, perishable or time-sensitive products, or the retailer’s desire to... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; Pricing And Revenue Management; Retailing; Demand Estimation; Pricing Algorithm; Marketing; Price; Demand and Consumers; Mathematical Methods