Publications

March–April 2020
Article

What's Really Holding Women Back? It's Not What Most People Think

By: R. Ely and Irene Padavic

Ask people to explain why women remain so dramatically underrepresented in the senior ranks of most companies, and you will hear from the vast majority a lament that goes something like this: High-level jobs require extremely long hours, women's devotion to family... View Details

Keywords: Overwork; Employment; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Work-Life Balance; Organizational Culture

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July 2008 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Amazon: The Brink of Bankruptcy

By: Lynda M. Applegate

Enables a thorough analysis of the Amazon.com business model and its evolution from 1994 to 2001. The case ends with the company poised on the brink of bankruptcy and enables discussion of how to turnaround the company and leverage proprietary assets. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Restructuring; Entrepreneurship; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Business History; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy

August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
Case

PayPal: The Next Chapter

By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb

Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Finance; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Social Entrepreneurship; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry

Blog

Leading Successful Digital Transformation

transformation in large organizations for three main reasons: Focus on optimization and efficiency: Many companies use technology to cut costs, improve efficiency, or enhance the productivity of their current operations. Artificial... View Details

27 Jun 2011
Research & Ideas

Recovering from the Need to Achieve

and humidity. If high-achievement types want to be as effective as they can be, they have to tune themselves up every day and be aware." DeLong says he didn't write the book to create organizations "that feel good or that are... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

20 Apr 2021
Book

A Simple Question That Can Guide Companies to Epic Success

not contribute to the firm’s competitive standing. When I visit companies, I am always impressed by the myriad of activities I observe. At the same time, I often find myself at a loss to see how certain initiatives will help increase WTP or decrease WTS. If your View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

24 Sep 2019
Blog Post

Launching a Career in Clean Energy

out there to all of the industry events sponsored by organizations like Greentown Labs and the New England Clean Energy Council. There’s no shortage of clean energy events in Boston where you can get out and meet people, which could... View Details

08 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

A Balanced Scorecard Approach To Measure Customer Profitability

The approach has been successfully applied in more than 100 organizations and readily scales up even to companies with hundreds of thousands of products and services, dozens of operating departments, and thousands of customers. The end... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

24 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 24, 2017

including aging populations and medical technology. But an underlying and misunderstood source of health care’s escalating costs has been the inability of health care provider organizations (such as large academic medical centers) to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Jan 2011
HBS Case

Terror at the Taj

On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists simultaneously struck sites. Of the five locations—all well-known landmarks—the beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower would become most closely associated with the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Accommodations

2015
Working Paper

A Normative Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategy, Know-How, and Competition

By: Gary P. Pisano

The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Organizations

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Web

Beth Clark | About

member for Quintrix, a workforce development company dedicated to increasing diversification in IT organizations, and the MA Chapter of the National Financial Educators Council (NFEC), an organization focused on enhancing financial... View Details

25 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Beauty Entrepreneur Madam Walker

some kind of conspiratorial development that was imposed by manipulative entrepreneurs trying to make women feel a certain way. It was much more organic and part of a huge social transformation." Church And Capital One of the secrets... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Beauty & Cosmetics

January 2022
Article

Why is Corporate Virtue in the Eye of The Beholder? The Case of ESG Ratings

By: Dane Christensen, George Serafeim and Anywhere Sikochi

Despite the rising use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, there is substantial disagreement across rating agencies regarding what rating to give to individual firms. As what drives this disagreement is unclear, we examine whether a firm’s ESG... View Details

Keywords: ESG Ratings; Rating Agency Disagreement; ESG Disclosure; Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure

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March 2016 (Revised April 2019)
Technical Note

ESG Metrics: Reshaping Capitalism?

By: George Serafeim

In the past twenty-five years, the world had seen an exponential growth in the number of companies reporting environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. Investor interest in ESG data also grew rapidly. A growing belief that increasing levels of social inequality... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; Sustainability; Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Responsibilities To Society; Environment; Social Impact Investment; ESG; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Measurement and Metrics; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Accountability; Accounting; Economic Systems

30 Sep 2014
First Look

First Look: September 30

enterprise in management and organization research, the lack of a cohesive knowledge base in this area is concerning. In this chapter, we propose that the underdevelopment of the attendant research infrastructure is an important, but... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Mar 2024
News

In Harmony

yang. Korean and American. Novelist and dealmaker. Kim will tell you that these parts of himself are in harmony, preferring that word to the more Western concept of “balance,” which implies a trade-off. When asked, he will also say that he doesn’t subscribe to any... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; photograph by Jun Michael Park

February 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Roche's Acquisition of Genentech

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin, Bo Becker and Vincent Marie Dessain

Franz Humer, CEO of the Roche Group, must decide whether to mount a hostile tender offer for the publicly-owned shares of Roche's biotechnology subsidiary, Genentech. The case provides opportunities to analyze Roche's strategy with respect to Genentech, the pros and... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Subsidiaries; Negotiation Offer; Organizational Culture; Corporate Strategy; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland

January 2011
Case

Clean Edge Razor: Splitting Hairs in Product Positioning

By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham

After three years of development, Paramount Health and Beauty Company is preparing to launch a new technologically advanced vibrating razor called Clean Edge. The innovative new design of Clean Edge provides superior performance by stimulating the hair follicles to... View Details

Keywords: Project Management; Interdepartmental Relations; Organizational Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Conflict Management; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Relationships; Product Development; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry