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March–April 2024
Article

How Companies Should Weigh in on a Controversy: A Better Approach to Stakeholder Management

By: David M. Bersoff, Sandra J. Sucher and Peter Tufano

Executives need guidance about managing their organizations’ engagement with societal issues—including hot-button topics such as gender, climate, and racial discrimination. Success in this realm does not mean avoiding public controversy or achieving unanimous support... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Social Issues; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Judgments; Management Practices and Processes

24 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

Passion at Work Is a Good Thing—But Only If Bosses Know How to Manage It

work actually means, which could lead to unhappy workers and frustrated managers. “As an organization, it’s not enough to just hire people for passion. Leaders also need to learn how to manage for passion.” An analysis of 200 million job... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

01 Apr 1999
News

HBS Collaboration Helps Management Education for Minority Students

careers in management. The Management Education Alliance comprises several of the country's leading business schools (including Harvard's), ten predominantly minority business schools, and thirteen U.S. companies. Since its founding, the... View Details

Keywords: Anne Kavanagh

February 2005 (Revised November 2012)
Case

Chuck's Wagon Inc.

By: Paul W. Marshall and Derek Lewis

This case describes the experiences of an HBS student as he takes on the challege of transitioning from an intern to a president at a small consumer packaged goods firm in Southern Texas. This HBS student is confronted with the opportunity to perform an operational and... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Goods; Operations Strategy; Executive Development; Strategy; Small Business; Production; Transformation; Management Skills; Financial Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Texas

2012
Working Paper

Earnings Management from the Bottom Up: An Analysis of Managerial Incentives Below the CEO

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Julie Wulf

Performance-based pay is an important instrument to align the interests of managers with the interests of shareholders. However, recent evidence suggests that high-powered incentives also provide managers with incentives to manipulate the firm's reported earnings. The... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Interests; Business and Shareholder Relations; Motivation and Incentives; Earnings Management; Performance Evaluation; Stock Options

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01 Oct 1996
News

"Service-Profit Chain" Links Members of Service Management Unit

costs of employee turnover? What are the benefits of a loyal customer base? These are questions that intrigue members of the Service Management unit. Judging from the popularity of the Service Management... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

November 1997 (Revised April 2017)
Teaching Note

Purity Steel Corporation, 2012

By: Robert Simons and Antonio Dávila

Teaching Note for (9-197-082). View Details

Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Performance Measurement; ROI; Transfer Pricing; Steel Industry

01 Feb 1997
News

Made, Not Born: HBS Courses and Entrepreneurial Management

skills, as HBS faculty and recent alumni explain in the following course profiles. Entrepreneurial Management Associate Professor Amar Bhide keeps a slide rule tacked above his office desk. "Although I don't use it anymore," he explains,... View Details

29 Jul 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Learning from the Kursk Submarine Rescue Failure: The Case for Pluralistic Risk Management

Keywords: by Anette Mikes & Amram Migdal

December 1997 (Revised May 2017)
Teaching Note

Kidder, Peabody & Co.: Creating Elusive Profits

By: Robert Simons and Antonio Dávila

Teaching Note for (9-197-038). View Details

Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Internal Controls; Risk Management; Risk And Uncertainty; Risk Assessment; Profit

03 Oct 2018
What Do You Think?

How Should Managers Deal with the Challenges of Building an Inclusive Workplace?

effectiveness.” All of these comments help us to continue the examination of an important question: What are the most effective management approaches to inclusion? What do you think? Original Column Diversity and inclusion are universal... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

January 2018 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Capital Allocation at HCA

By: W. Carl Kester and Emily R. McComb

In early 2017, HCA Holdings, an investor-owned hospital management company, faced a strategically important capital allocation decision. After the exit of its private equity sponsors in 2016, HCA had to determine how best to allocate its substantial annual free cash... View Details

Keywords: Capital Allocation; Cash Distribution Policy; Dividends; Share Repurchases; Growth Strategy And Execution; Growth Investing; Capital Expenditures; Debt Management; Debt Reduction; Debt Policy; Hospital Management; Investor-owned Hospital Chains; Capital Budgeting; Capital Structure; Cash Flow; Corporate Finance; Decision Choices and Conditions; Health Industry; United States

15 Jun 2021
News

Leading at State

Department of State. These students represented the first cohort of the Secretary’s Leadership Seminar, a six-month, custom Executive Education offering for mid-career foreign and civil service employees. The idea for the program—and the... View Details

Keywords: leadership; international relations; politics; Executive Education

March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Winning Business at Russell Reynolds (A)

By: Ethan Bernstein and Cara Mazzucco

In an effort to make compensation drive collaboration, Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) CEO Clarke Murphy sought to re-engineer the bonus system for his executive search consultants in 2016. As his HR analytics guru, Kelly Smith, points out, that risks upsetting–and... View Details

April 1997 (Revised May 1997)
Case

Mercer Management Consulting's "Grow to Be Great" (A): The Growth Initiative

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In late 1994, James Down, member of Mercer's Executive Committee, has to decide whether or not he should push ahead with the writing and publication of a book on growth--at a time when the more successful business publications focus on reengineering and cost cutting.... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Organizational Culture; Business Growth and Maturation; Knowledge Management; Product Development; Information Publishing; Books; Consulting Industry; Publishing Industry