by James Sebenius - Publications - Faculty & Research

12 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: Jan. 12

to meet or beat key benchmarks. This paper examines this hypothesis by testing how different types of marketing expenditures are used to boost earnings for a durable commodity consumer product, which can be easily stockpiled View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Apr 1996
News

Technology for Learning's Sake

telecommunications." McFarlan, in fact, was involved in overseeing one of the earliest regular uses of computers in the MBA Program when the "Business Game" became an annual exercise for generations of MBAs beginning in the mid-1960s. Originally introduced View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; photo by David Zadig

17 May 2004
Research & Ideas

Why We Don’t Study Corporate Responsibility

For too long, scholarship in the field of management has looked at economic performance rather than social welfare, argue HBS professor Joshua Margolis and colleagues James P. Walsh, of University of Michigan Business School, and Klaus... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

28 Aug 2013
News

Five Remarkable Leaders Receive 2013 Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Awards

15 Aug 2005
HBS Case

Classic Cases Live On at HBS

case has been interesting, Berg notes. Once, during an MBA class attended by Lincoln's president, a student declared that he had high regard for Lincoln but he preferred three-piece suits and executive dining halls to eating in a company... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

06 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

The Best Place for Retirement Funds

thinking about where to hold them, specifically, inside or outside of tax-deferred accounts. "Getting this decision right can be pretty close to a free lunch," says Bergstresser, who with colleague James Poterba, a professor at... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

Cultural Entrepreneurship in NYC

During weeklong January-term trips to New York City in 2013 and 2014, students from across Harvard University studied cultural entrepreneurship: new ventures in fashion, food, fine arts, and design. Students explored how such ventures are launched, and how proximity... View Details

Research Summary

Working Papers

By: Dennis A. Yao

Anton, James J. and Dennis A. Yao (2011). "Delay as Agenda Setting."

Abstract: In this paper we examine a class of... View Details

06 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

Money and Quotas Motivate the Sales Force Best

just given it—conditional versus unconditional. Doug J. Chung, an assistant professor in the Marketing unit, and Das Narayandas, the James J. Hill Professor of Business Administration, explain what kind of bump managers can expect from... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Retail

22 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Advertising: It’s Not ‘Mad Men’ Anymore

recognition system was essentially dismantled in 1956 with a consent decree signed by the trade associations involved in administering the system. But nothing much changed. As Silk, Mohammad Arzaghi, Ernst R. Berndt, and View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Advertising

10 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Become a Value Creator

As a young teacher at Harvard Business School, Brian J. Hall called on longtime professor James Cash for a favor: Hall wanted to study the inner workings of General Electric, and he needed Cash's help to get in touch with top-level... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

21 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Don’t Get Buried in Customer Data—Use It

With the advent of customer relationship management (CRM) in the late 1990s, companies came to believe that by using technology to tailor their offerings to individual consumers' needs, customer loyalty—and company profits—would... View Details

Keywords: by Jean Ayers

31 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

The Faculty Reader: Who is Reading What This Summer?

eager to finally read Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown. Brown chronicles how nine boys from working-class families won... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Information; Publishing

18 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Breaking Through a Growth Stall

where a company seems weighted down by the bounds of its original start-up business model, a lack of experience by its founder(s), and an accelerating, expense-fueled burn rate through working capital and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

07 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

Dividends from Schumpeter’s Noble Failure

Business Cycles was Joseph Schumpeter's least successful book when measured by its professed aims and several other yardsticks. Yet the book contains two vital aspects that have largely been overlooked. First, the prodigious research that... View Details

Keywords: by Thomas K. McCraw

07 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How an African History Scholar Became a Modern Righter of Wrongs

ourselves that we’re relevant because we’re important, or we can show people that we’re relevant.” It was the first time the British Government would be sued by any former colonized population, and the lawyers were eager to move forward.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Spirit at Work: The Search for Deeper Meaning in the Workplace

"spiritual anchors for the new millennium." Clearly, something of a nonmaterial nature is stirring in the corporate temple. But questions abound. Just what does it mean to bring spirituality into the workplace? Is this an appropriate way to help people feel... View Details

Keywords: by Marguerite Rigoglioso

19 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

Business Research that Makes for Smarter Public Policy

went to Washington, I saw a tremendous need for fact-based analysis to inform policymaking” Last spring, Toffel sought to change that by taking the unusual step of convening academics and government regulators in the same room for a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Video

Moving the Eliot Table

Research Summary

The Value Profit Chain: Treat Employees Like Customers and Customers Like Employees

By: W. Earl Sasser

W. Earl Sasser, Jr., Leonard A. Schlesinger, and James L. Heskett complted a multi-firm study that provides further empirical verification of relationships established in their earlier examinations of 'breakthrough' service and the service profit chain.... View Details

Publications