Publications

July–August 2018
Article

When Technology Gets Ahead of Society

By: Tarun Khanna

New technologies can be unsettling for industry incumbents, regulators, and consumers, because norms and institutions for dealing with them don’t yet exist. Interestingly, businesspeople in emerging economies face similar challenges: The rules are unclear and... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Society; Situation or Environment; Infrastructure; Entrepreneurship; Performance Effectiveness; Cooperation

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Article

Political Skill: Explaining the Effects of Nonnative Accent on Managerial Hiring and Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang, Marcia Frideger and Jone L. Pearce

We propose and test a new theory explaining glass-ceiling bias against nonnative speakers as driven by perceptions that nonnative speakers have weak political skill. Although nonnative accent is a complex signal, its effects on assessments of the speakers' political... View Details

Keywords: Spoken Communication; Prejudice and Bias; Competency and Skills; Selection and Staffing; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Decisions

Article

Products to Platforms: Making the Leap

By: Feng Zhu and Nathan Furr

Following the path of companies such as Apple and Amazon, more and more firms are trying to become not just product purveyors but also platform providers, facilitating direct connections between customers and other groups. Although launching a platform can generate new... View Details

Keywords: Product; Digital Platforms; Expansion

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Article

Everybody Else Is Doing It: Exploring Social Transmission of Lying Behavior

By: Heather E. Mann, Ximena Garcia-Rada, Daniel Houser and Dan Ariely

Lying is a common occurrence in social interactions, but what predicts whether an individual will tell a lie? While previous studies have focused on personality factors, here we asked whether lying tendencies might be transmitted through social networks. Using an... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Social and Collaborative Networks

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March 2014 (Revised October 2014)
Teaching Note

ISS A/S: The Buyout

By: Lucy White and Carsten Bienz

Provides the opportunity to value a leveraged buyout; and to examine the nature and extent of a company's responsibilities to its bondholders. Here, the context is a "going private" transaction in Europe, where the financing plan called for the addition to the... View Details

Keywords: LBO; Private Equity; Contracts; Global Business; International Business; Finance; Ethics; Law; Service Industry; Europe

February 2014 (Revised October 2014)
Case

ISS A/S: The Buyout

By: Clayton Rose, Carsten Bienz and Lucy White

Provides the opportunity to value a leveraged buy-out; and to examine the nature and extent of a company's responsibilities to its bondholders. Here, the context is a "going private" transaction in Europe, where the financing plan called for the addition to the... View Details

Keywords: LBO; Private Equity; Contracts; Global Business; International Business; Finance; Ethics; Law; Service Industry; Europe

May 2013 (Revised September 2013)
Case

The Kashagan Production Sharing Agreement (PSA)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Florian Bitsch

When discovered in the 1990s, the Kashagan oil field was the second largest oil field in the world. The project sponsors (equity investors) signed a 40-year production sharing agreement (PSA) with the Kazakh government in 1997, with the expectation the field would... View Details

November 2012
Article

Does Management Really Work?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

HBR's 90th anniversary is a sensible time to revisit a basic question: Are organizations more likely to succeed if they adopt good management practices? The answer may seem obvious to most HBR readers, but these three economists cast their net much wider than that. In... View Details

Keywords: Best Practices; Consulting Firms; Corporations; Cost Control; Employee Training; Executive Ability (Management); Executives—training Of; Hospitals—administration; Industrial Management—research; Productivity Incentives; School Management Teams; Work Environment; Management; Research

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April 2012
Article

Coming Through When It Matters Most

By: Heidi K. Gardner

All teams would like to think they do their best work when the stakes are highest-when the company's future or their own rests on the outcome of their projects. But too often something else happens. In extensive studies of teams at professional service firms, I have... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Projects; Performance Expectations; Failure; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Experience and Expertise; Knowledge Sharing

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July–September 2012
Article

The (Un)Hidden Turmoil of Language in Global Collaboration

By: Tsedal Neeley, Pamela J. Hinds and Catherine D. Cramton

Companies are increasingly relying on a lingua franca, or common language (usually English), to facilitate cross-border collaboration. Despite the numerous benefits of a lingua franca, our research reveals myriad challenges that disrupt collaboration and contribute to... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Loss; Spoken Communication; Performance Productivity; Research; Global Range; Problems and Challenges; Diversity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

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April 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

General Motors Technical Center India – Powertrain Engineering

By: Willy Shih, William Jurist, Brian McIntosh and Helen Wang

Prabjot Nanua was proud of the growing capabilities of the General Motors Technical Center India Powertrain Engineering group that he oversaw. Since 2003, engineers there had expanded the center's capabilities, developing a reputation within GM for completing... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Headquarters; Research and Development; Business Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; India

October 2011 (Revised May 2015)
Case

The American Repertory Theater

By: Rohit Deshpande, Allen S. Grossman and Ryan Johnson

When Diane Paulus, artistic director and CEO of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) first started in 2008, she attracted media coverage around an aesthetic that aimed to give the audience more ownership over the theater experience, excited theatergoers by... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Arts; Business Model; Leading Change; Media; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Nonprofit Organizations; Competitive Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; North and Central America

2009
Working Paper

Anger and Regulation

By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra

We propose a model where voters experience an emotional cost when they observe a firm that has displayed insufficient concern for other people's welfare (altruism) in the process of making high profits. Even with few truly altruistic firms, an equilibrium may emerge... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Consumer Behavior; Monopoly; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Emotions; Welfare