Publications

Find at Harvard

September 2010 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Gone Rural

By: Andre F. Perold

Gone Rural employs 750 women in rural communities across Swaziland to produce handwoven baskets and other hand-crafted items. The women are mostly grandmothers caring for children orphaned as a result of the country's high AIDS-related death rate. The company has a... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Growth and Development; Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Corporate Finance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Swaziland

Web

Placement - Doctoral

Nam Marketing, 2024 Placement: Ohio State University, Max M. Fisher College of Business, Department of Marketing and Logistics Dissertation: Communicating with consumers: How firms’ responses to societal change influence consumer behavior... View Details

Web

Managing the Future of Work

organization and create the workforce of the future? Spotlight Data And Technology In Action: Community Colleges Advancing Economic Mobility Edited by Joseph B. Fuller, Kerry McKittrick & Amanda Holloway FEB 2025 Across the country, View Details

24 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 24

view, the fact remains that an effective conversation about sustainability requires the participation of both sides of the market. There are two main mechanisms for companies to communicate to the market as a way of starting this... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 20, 2019
Editorial

Why Asking for Advice Is More Effective Than Asking for Feedback

By: Jaewon Yoon, Hayley Blunden, Ariella S. Kristal and A.V. Whillans

Conventional wisdom says you should ask your colleagues for feedback. However, research suggests that feedback often has no (or even a negative) impact on our performance. This is because the feedback we receive is often too vague—it fails to highlight what we can... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Advice; Advice Seeking; Feedback Culture; Advice Taking; Interpersonal Communication

Find at Harvard

Read Now

2016
Working Paper

Entrepreneurs and the Co-Creation of Ecotourism in Costa Rica

By: Geoffrey Jones and Andrew Spadafora

Between the 1970s and the 2000s, Costa Rica became established as the world’s leading ecotourism destination. This working paper suggests that although Costa Rica benefited from biodiversity and a pleasant climate, the country’s preeminence in ecotourism requires more... View Details

Keywords: Tourism; Latin America; Business History; Sustainable Strategy; Sustainability; Nonprofit; Entrepreneurs; Environment; Entrepreneurship; History; Environmental Sustainability; Tourism Industry; Costa Rica

SSRN

Read Now

January 1990
Case

Ashland Oil, Inc.: Trouble at Floreffe (A)

This case series involves a crisis in business ethics and management decision making, when one of the company's diesel fuel storage tanks collapses, releasing nearly one million gallons of oil into the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. Divided into four cases guiding the... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Decision Making; Crisis Management; Energy Sources; Energy Industry

August 2005
Background Note

Dual Class Share Companies

By: Samuel L. Hayes III, Lynn S. Paine and Christopher Bruner

Provides a brief historical overview of dual class share companies in the United States, focusing on the New York Stock Exchange's evolving position on dual class structures since the 1920s, the impact of hostile takeovers on their use since the 1980s, and recent... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Debates; Capital Structure; Equity; Business History; Law; Organizational Structure; Business and Shareholder Relations; Perspective; Europe; United States

December 2021
Article

Left- and Right-Leaning News Organizations Use Negative Emotional Content and Elicit User Engagement Similarly

By: Andrea Bellovary, Nathaniel Young and Amit Goldenberg

Negativity has historically dominated news content; however, little research has examined how news organizations use affect on social media, where content is generally positive. In the current project we ask a few questions: Do news organizations on Twitter use... View Details

Keywords: Negative Press; Twitter; Political Affiliation; Affect; News; Media; Internet and the Web; Emotions; Perspective; Social Media

Read Now

Article

Exploring the Duality Between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the 'Mirroring' Hypothesis

By: Alan MacCormack, Carliss Y. Baldwin and John Rusnak

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that the organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are... View Details

Keywords: Organization Design; Architecture; Modularity; Open Source Software; Communication; Design; Governance; Management Practices and Processes; Open Source Distribution; Product Design; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Structure; Performance; Problems and Challenges; Behavior; Software

July 2021 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Fynd

By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani

Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Business Model; Acquisition; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Growth and Development Strategy; Communications Industry; Communications Industry; Communications Industry; India; Mumbai

Forthcoming
Article

Engaging Customers with AI in Online Chats: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Das Narayandas

We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) affected the productivity of customer service agents and customer sentiment in online interactions. Collaborating with a meal delivery company, we conducted a randomized field experiment that exploited exogenous variation in... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Efficiency

Web

CSV Explained - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

value holds the key to unlocking the next wave of business innovation and growth. It will also reconnect company success and community success in ways that have been lost in an age of narrow management approaches, short-term thinking, and... View Details

30 Apr 2024
Book

When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners

large. Thirty years on, this seems like an obvious point, but it perhaps bears repeating, as corporate misconduct does not appear to have abated over this period. If anything, its scope, scale, and impact have all increased as companies... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Program

Transforming Customer Experiences

customers to thrive Communicate your organization's strategic service mission Leverage technology to create and enhance service offerings and improve delivery Expand your personal and professional network Extend your network by living and... View Details

26 Apr 2024
HBS Case

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

write a case study about how Sanders, known as “Coach Prime,” applies a military commander’s approach to motivating his team. “Deion reminds me of military officers I’ve served under because of the clear way he communicates and the... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Sports

November 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Kickstarter: Crowdfunding for the Arts

By: Rohit Deshpandé and Alexis Lefort

Kickstarter was a virtual crowdfunding platform and community that allowed creators of all kinds to raise funding for creative projects. The executive team was wrestling with a tension in its business model: the organization earned the majority of its revenue from... View Details

Keywords: Fundraising; Mission; Crowdfunding; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Arts; Web Services Industry; United States