Publications

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01 Dec 2012
News

Recognizing Volunteers and Donors

HBS as "eternally motivated." Clearly, her attitude is contagious. Donor Spotlight Jeanette Montgomery Evert (OPM 13, 1988) and Herbert P. Evert (MBA 1958) Jeanette Montgomery Evert (OPM 13, 1988) and... View Details

April 2017
Teaching Note

Sesame Workshop: Bringing Big Bird Back to Health (Abridged)

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ryan Raffaelli, Ai-Ling Jamila Malone and Jonathan Cohen

Sesame Workshop was in the middle of a turnaround in 2016. CEO Jeff Dunn had reorganized and shifted the iconic institution to respond to digital disruption and a consensus culture. This Teaching Note helps instructors teach the abridged and full-length versions of... View Details

Keywords: Turnaround; NGO; Non-profit; Organization Alignment; Managing Change; Philanthropy; Media; Television; Reorganization; Talent; Innovation; Risk Aversion; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Restructuring; Identity; Transformation; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

January 2009
Case

The Federal Reserve and the Banking Crisis of 1931

By: David A. Moss and Cole Bolton

In early October 1931, in the midst of a global economic depression, the U.S. banking system was in crisis—with bank suspensions running at near record levels. At the same time, the broader economy was sputtering, and U.S. gold reserves had come under severe pressure... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Crisis; Central Banking; Business History; Crisis Management; Banking Industry; United States

Educators

2013
Chapter

Weighted Generating Functions for Type II Lattices and Codes

By: Noam D. Elkies and Scott Duke Kominers

We give a new structural development of harmonic polynomials on Hamming space, and harmonic weight enumerators of binary linear codes, that parallels one approach to harmonic polynomials on Euclidean space and weighted theta functions of Euclidean lattices. Namely, we... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods

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November 2006 (Revised November 2007)
Case

Strategy in the Twenty First Century Pharmaceutical Industry: Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc.

By: David J. Collis and Troy Smith

The global pharmaceutical industry has gone through substantial changes in the last few decades and pharmaceutical firms face major challenges including headline-grabbing litigation, imminent patent expirations, new technologies, rising drug development costs, generic... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Research and Development; Corporate Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

Educators

June 2014
Supplement

Chung and Dasgupta: Information for Jordan Ramirez

By: Ian Larkin and Karen Huang

The "Promotion Process at Chung and Dasgupta, LLP" set of cases explores the roles of general and firm-specific human capital in employee performance measurement, feedback, and promotion/compensation decisions. In the cases, a leading law firm must decide whether to... View Details

Keywords: Performance Appraisal; Performance Measurement; Employee Feedback; Motivation; Promotions; Human Capital; Performance Evaluation; Management Systems; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Legal Services Industry; United States; Massachusetts

Web

Diversity and Equity - Alumni

Giving Diversity and Equity Giving Diversity and Equity Foster Inclusion Differences—in identities, experiences, View Details

June 2018
Article

Firm Turnover and the Return of Racial Establishment Segregation

By: John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning

Racial segregation between American workplaces is greater today than it was a generation ago. This increase has happened alongside the declines in within-establishment occupational segregation on which most prior research has focused. We examine more than 40 years of... View Details

Keywords: Firm Entry; Stratification; Segregration; Entrepreneurship; Business Ventures; Employees; Diversity; Race; Segmentation; United States

17 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

What the Stockdale Paradox Tells Us About Crisis Leadership

each person introduce themselves by their name, job title, mission, and their immediate tasks (e.g, “I’m Sarah, I’m a creative, I’m creating a brand for Client X, I’m in this meeting to present findings and... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

Web

Biography - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

literature on environmental economics. Dr. Porter also developed a body of work on the role of corporations in society. His ideas have changed the way companies approach philanthropy and corporate social... View Details

01 Jun 2009
News

Crisis and Creativity

"I'll be happy to give you innovative thinking. What are the guidelines?" © The New Yorker Collection 2005 Leo Cullum from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved. Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, recently echoed Machiavelli... View Details

Keywords: Bhaskar Chakravorti

04 Feb 2020
News

How to Set Up — and Learn — from Experiments

27 Aug 2020
News

The value of talking to strangers — and nodding acquaintances

March 1997
Article

Transactions Costs and Capital Structure Choice: Evidence from Financially Distressed Firms

By: S. C. Gilson

This study provides evidence that transactions costs discourage debt reductions by financially distressed firms when they restructure their debt out of court. As a result, these firms remain highly leveraged and one-in-three subsequently experience financial distress.... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Capital Structure; Decision Choices and Conditions; Information; Finance; Business Ventures

Find at Harvard

22 Sep 2010
News

Homecoming Day: Private Equity And Venture Veterans Go Back To School

21 Aug 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, August 21, 2018

conflict, we propose that commutes serve as transitions between home and work roles. Because employees hold no defined role during their commute, lengthy commutes keep employees in limbo between their home View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2013
Working Paper

Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space

By: Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

We study the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. To identify social influence properly, we introduce latent space as an approach to control for latent homophily, the idea that "birds of a feather flock together." In a series of... View Details

Keywords: Social Influence; Social Network; Mobile App; Peer Effects; Latent Homophily; Latent Space; Proxy Variables; Familiarity; Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Social and Collaborative Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Power and Influence; Social Media

26 Feb 2001
Research & Ideas

David, Goliath, and Disruption

How many of us ever said we wanted to do that?" Schreck asked the room. "I'm sure I didn't wake up one morning saying, 'I just want to write chicken-scratch, slowly, on a Palm.' It's just a horrible behavioral change. But we all do it." Jeffrey Miller,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2013
Other Unpublished Work

Household Bargaining and Excess Fertility: An Experimental Study in Zambia

By: Nava Ashraf, Erica Field and Jean Lee

We posit that household decision-making over fertility is characterized by moral hazard due to the fact that most contraception can only be perfectly observed by the woman. Using an experiment in Zambia that varied whether women were given access to contraceptives... View Details

Keywords: Family and Family Relationships; Negotiation; Developing Countries and Economies; Zambia