Publications

17 Sep 2014
News

Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter to Launch New U.S. Cluster Mapping Tool

TeachingInterests

Making Corporate Boards More Effective

By: Suraj Srinivasan

While a corporate board may have broadly defined legal duties, its role in evaluating management, providing strategic oversight, and dealing with the complexity of today's regulatory environment has never been more tested—or more critically dependent on effective... View Details

April 2025
Article

Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity and Decreased Stability in Intra-organizational Communication Networks During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Christopher White, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Fereshteh Amini, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Jeffrey Weston and Carey E. Priebe

Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by COVID-19, related work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. To understand these shifts, we analyzed aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within 4,361 organizations... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; COVID-19; Communication Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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September 2011 (Revised December 2011)
Case

CARD Group: Mutually Reinforcing Institutions

By: Cynthia A. Montgomery, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Dawn Lau

CARD (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development) is a Philippines-based microfinance organization that began as an NGO and has since expanded into eight related entities providing services to the poor. Under Founding Director Dr. Aristotle Alip's leadership, CARD... View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Partners and Partnerships; Non-Governmental Organizations; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Philippines

Article

ESG Integration in Investment Management: Myths and Realities

By: Sakis Kotsantonis, Christopher Pinney and George Serafeim

The authors’ aim in this article is to set the record straight on the financial performance of sustainable investing while also correcting a number of other widespread misconceptions about this rapidly growing set of principles and methods. Myth Number 1:... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Investment Management; Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance

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18 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Unspoken Cues: Encouraging Morals Without Mandates

Many institutions promote and even mandate moral behavior and values among their members, but how they do it differs greatly. Some organizations such as religious groups may proscribe very specifically what is acceptable behavior—think... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Education

January 2004 (Revised May 2004)
Background Note

Strategy and Positioning in Professional Service Firms

By: Ashish Nanda

This case provides a definition of strategy, distinguishes between corporate and practice strategy, and discusses how and why developing and implementing strategy for professional service firms is different from developing and implementing strategy for commercial... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Service Industry

November–December 2014
Article

Using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing to Identify Value-Improvement Opportunities in Healthcare

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski, Megan Abbott, Alexis Guzman, Laurence Higgins, John Meara, Erin Padden, Apurva Shah, Peter Waters, Marco Weidemeier, Samuel Wertheimer and Thomas W. Feeley

As healthcare providers cope with pricing pressures and increased accountability for performance, they should be rededicating themselves to improving the value they deliver to their patients: better outcomes and lower costs. Time-driven activity-based costing offers... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States; Europe

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November 2010 (Revised June 2011)
Case

La Fageda

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Joan Enric Ricart and Jordan Mitchell

La Fageda is a manufacturer of high-quality, naturally-made yogurts in northern Catalonia, Spain. La Fageda is substantially different from its main competitors such as multinational Danone in that it is a 270-person workers' cooperative with 60 percent of its... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Business Model; Production; Cooperative Ownership; Quality; Competition; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Spain

2020
Working Paper

Recognition Incentives for Internal Crowdsourcing: A Field Experiment at NASA

By: Jana Gallus, Olivia S. Jung and Karim R. Lakhani

What might motivate employees to participate in internal crowdsourcing, a peer-based approach to innovation? Should organizations use incentives that are congruent with their established hierarchical structures, or should they use incentives that are aligned with the... View Details

Keywords: Online Platforms; Employee Engagement; Managerial Recognition; Innovation and Management; Employees; Motivation and Incentives

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11 AM – 12 PM EST, 25 Jan 2018
Webinars: Trending@HBS

Becoming Effective Change Makers: The Power of Networks

Instituting change in an organization or in a sector of society has always been the bane of leaders. However, some leaders do succeed--often spectacularly--at transforming their organizations and even whole sectors of society. What makes some change makers triumph in a... View Details

9 May 2011 - 11 May 2011
Conference Presentation

How Firms Respond to Mandatory Information Disclosure

By: Anil Doshi, Michael Toffel and Glen W. S. Dowell

When new institutional pressures arise, which organizations are particularly likely to resist or acquiesce? When subjected to new information disclosure mandates, an increasingly popular form of market-based government regulation, which types of organizations are... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Environmental Regulation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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12 May 2023
Blog Post

Breaking Barriers and Building Community: Get to Know the HBS Women's Student Association (WSA)

What is the WSA? The WSA, or Women’s Student Association, is a student-led organization at Harvard Business School for anyone who identifies as a woman. We’re the largest student organization on campus. What... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

11 Oct 2007
Working Paper Summaries

How Firms Respond to Being Rated

Keywords: by Aaron K. Chatterji & Michael W. Toffel

March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
Teaching Note

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades is an exercise in which students are asked to analyze and make a recommendation on the basis of simulated experimental data. The setting is a hypothetical restaurant review company called RestaurantGrades (RG), which shows... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Marketing; Digital Marketing; Analysis; Performance Effectiveness

December 2016 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Nutrition Science Initiative: Are All Calories Created Equal?

By: Kevin Schulman and Matan Dabora

In 2012, Gary Taubes lunched the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), a not-for-profit organization aiming to question the mainstream scientific paradigm regarding obesity and dietary recommendations. This case provides a brief scientific background on obesity and its... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Nutrition

April 2005
Case

Handleman Company

By: Janice H. Hammond and Kevin Dolan

Describes the organization and operations of the Handleman Co., an intermediary in the music industry that buys recorded music and resells it to mass retailers such as Wal-Mart. The company provides distribution, inventory management, retail merchandising, and category... View Details

Keywords: Business Organization; Music Entertainment; Cost Management; Growth and Development; Business or Company Management; Distribution Channels; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Online Technology; Value Creation; Music Industry

January 1985 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Turner Construction Co.

By: Frank V. Cespedes

In June, 1984, a vice president at Turner Construction Co. must decide whether to approve a construction project being considered by one of Turner's territorial offices and how to manage that territory general manager's apparent reluctance to pursue another account... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Projects; Market Entry and Exit; Integration; Contracts; Marketing Strategy; Sales; Business or Company Management; Business Offices; Geographic Location; Construction Industry

February 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

1436: The First Pure Chinese Luxury Fashion Brand?

By: Anat Keinan, Sandrine Crener and Hannah H. Chang

The case traces the birth of 1436, a new luxury brand specializing in cashmere garments. It describes how this venture emerged organically out of a combination of manufacturing and retail expertise with the ambition of creating the first pure Chinese luxury brand. The... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Luxury; Global Strategy; Fashion Industry; China