Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,677)
- Faculty Publications (691)
- March 2008
- Background Note
Marketing Input and Innovation Strategy
By: Elie Ofek
This note develops a framework for considering the challenges of incorporating marketing input when setting innovation strategy. The framework lays out the possible innovation opportunities a firm can entertain and describes how the customer knowledge gained from... View Details
- March – April 2008
- Article
Interorganizational Trust, Governance Choice, and Exchange Performance
By: Ranjay Gulati and Jackson Nickerson
This paper looks at when and how preexisting interorganizational trust influences the choice of governance and in turn the performance of exchange relationships. We theorize that preexisting interorganizational trust complements the choice of governance mode (make,... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained
By: Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson and Peter Tufano
In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card... View Details
- 2008
- Article
Diversification of Chinese Companies: An International Comparison
By: Joseph P.H. Fan, Jun Huang, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Troy D. Smith and Mengxin Zhao
The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic comparison of the level of business diversification in China and eight other large economies for the 2001-2005 period. The reasons why publicly listed Chinese firms are more diversified than companies elsewhere are... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Entrepreneurship and Urban Success: Toward a Policy Consensus
By: Zoltan J. Acs, Edward L. Glaeser, Robert E. Litan, Lee Fleming, Stephan J. Goetz, William R. Kerr, Steven Klepper, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Olav Sorenson and William C. Strange
Like all politics, all entrepreneurship is local. Individuals launch firms and, if successful, expand their enterprises to other locations. But new firms must start somewhere, even if their businesses are conducted largely or exclusively on the Internet. Likewise,... View Details
- January – February 2008
- Article
Managing the Impact of Employee Turnover on Performance: The Role of Process Conformance
By: Zeynep Ton and Robert S. Huckman
We examine the impact of employee turnover on operating performance in settings that require high levels of knowledge exploitation. Using 48 months of turnover data from U.S. stores of a major retail chain, we find that, on average, employee turnover is associated with... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Control Data Corporation and the Urban Crisis
By: Tom Nicholas and Laura Gaie Singleton
Control Data Corporation is considering its response to the assassination of renowned civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Four months prior, William Norris, president of the Minneapolis-based computer firm had already committed to building a plant in a low-income... View Details
- November 2007
- Article
Solve the Succession Crisis by Growing Inside-Outside Leaders
By: Joseph L. Bower
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. In his interviews and data analysis, Harvard Business School professor Bower found... View Details
- Article
Gross National Happiness As an Answer to the Easterlin Paradox?
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
The Easterlin Paradox refers to the fact that happiness data are typically stationary in spite of considerable increases in income. This amounts to a rejection of the hypothesis that current income is the only argument in the utility function. We find that the... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Intra-Industry Foreign Direct Investment
By: Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton
We use a new firm level data set that establishes the location, ownership, and activity of 650,000 multinational subsidiaries -- close to a comprehensive picture of global multinational activity. A number of patterns emerge from the data. Most foreign direct investment... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Intra-Industry Foreign Direct Investment
By: Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton
We use a new firm level data set that establishes the location, ownership, and activity of 650,000 multinational subsidiaries—close to a comprehensive picture of global multinational activity. A number of patterns emerge from the data. Most foreign direct investment... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services
By: Robert S. Huckman, Bradley R. Staats and David M. Upton
Much of the literature on team learning views experience as a unidimensional concept captured by the cumulative production volume of, or the number of projects completed by, a team. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing
By: Fabrizio Ferri and Tatiana Sandino
In this paper we examine the economic consequences of over 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004–the first case where the SEC has allowed an accounting matter to be subject to an advisory... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised November 2010)
- Case
Grand Central Publishing
By: Anita Elberse
In April 2007, Grand Central's publisher Jamie Raab and editor Karen Kosztolnyik were involved in a frantic bidding war for a proposed book on the life of cat Dewey, billed as the feline answer to the best-selling "Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Trouble with a Bubble
By: Tom Nicholas
Examines technology, firm performance, and the stock market during the 1929 Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s was an extraordinary period of technological progress marked by a strong run-up in stock market prices. Firms invested heavily in... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm
This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager 'interpersonal authority' over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as... View Details
- June 2007
- Article
Does Employment Protection Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States
By: David H Autor, William R. Kerr and Adriana D. Kugler
Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distorting production choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiring below efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affect... View Details
Keywords: Theory; Production; Selection and Staffing; Cost; Employment; Capital; Performance Productivity; United States
- June 2007
- Article
Which Levers Boost ROI?
By: Margeaux Cvar and John A. Quelch
The article refers to ROI, or return on investment, and focuses on a rational strategy for financial markets that uses outside industry comparisons. The first step is to identify parallel businesses that have similar characteristics such as growth, capital, and market... View Details
- May 2007
- Article
Location Strategies and Knowledge Spillovers
By: Juan Alcacer and Wilbur Chung
Given the importance of proximity for knowledge spillovers, we examine firms' location choices expecting differences in firms' strategies. Firms will locate to maximize their net spillovers as a function of locations' knowledge activity, their own capabilities, and... View Details
- April 2007 (Revised October 2007)
- Background Note
An Overview of Project Finance & Infrastructure Finance - 2006 Update
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Aldo Sesia
Provides an introduction to the fields of project finance and infrastructure finance, and gives a statistical overview of project-financed investments over the years from 2002 to 2006. Examples of project-financed investments include the $4 billion Chad-Cameroon... View Details