Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,278)
- Faculty Publications (796)
- September 2009
- Article
Are You Having Trouble Keeping Your Operations Focused?
As a business broadens over time, it can lose the operational edge that led to its original success. Core strengths atrophy, efficiency or quality suffers, and sharper rivals close in to take advantage of the loss of focus. In his classic article "The Focused Factory"... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
By: William R. Kerr
We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of US inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent citations.... View Details
- August 2009 (Revised August 2010)
- Supplement
Eddie Bauer (B)
By: Paul M. Healy, Sharon P. Katz and Aldo Sesia
In February 2007, shareholders of Eddie Bauer, the specialty apparel retailer, were scheduled to vote on management's proposed sale of the company to two private equity firms. More than 50% of outstanding shares in Eddie Bauer needed to be voted in favor of the deal... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Anger and Regulation
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We propose a model where voters experience an emotional cost when they observe a firm that has displayed insufficient concern for other people's welfare (altruism) in the process of making high profits. Even with few truly altruistic firms, an equilibrium may emerge... View Details
- July 2009 (Revised January 2014)
- Case
Sustainability at Millipore
By: Michael W. Toffel and Katharine Lee
This case describes Millipore Corporation's approach to becoming a more environmentally sustainable company. As he prepared for his quarterly meeting with the CEO, the Director of Sustainability needed to develop positions on several issues. Tactically, he needed to... View Details
- July 2009 (Revised May 2010)
- Case
The Millennium Challenge Corporation and Ghana
By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan
A U.S. government agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), provides aid to developing countries, focusing on poverty reduction through economic growth. It measures results through an economic rate of return based on increases in farmer incomes anticipated... View Details
- July 2009 (Revised July 2009)
- Case
Blue Ocean or Stormy Waters? Buying Nix Check Cashing
By: Peter Tufano
Kinecta Federal Credit Union has the opportunity to purchase Nix Check Cashing as part of their "blue ocean" strategy to reach the financially underserved and increase credit union membership and deposits. But they face financial as well as reputational risk. Check... View Details
- June 2009 (Revised April 2019)
- Case
Crosley
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
In October 1941, a top secret envoy from the U.S. military was sent to Crosley Corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio to request their assistance to construct a weapon that would drastically strengthen the defenses of U.S. troops: the proximity fuze. Such a fuze would allow... View Details
- Article
Mission-Driven Governance
By: Raymond Fisman, Rakesh Khurana and Edward Martenson
The purpose of this paper is to provide a useful, easily applied theory of governance performance. The existing model is fundamentally adversarial, rooted in the paradigm of principal-agent conflict. At its base is an image of governance as a never-ending struggle... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Policy Bundling to Overcome Loss Aversion: A Method for Improving Legislative Outcomes
By: Katherine L Milkman, Mary Carol Mazza, Lisa L. Shu, Chia-Jung Tsay and Max H. Bazerman
Policies that would create net benefits for society but would also involve costs frequently lack the necessary support to be enacted because losses loom larger than gains psychologically. To reduce this harmful consequence of loss aversion, we propose a new type of... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Collaboration Across Knowledge Boundaries within Diverse Teams: Reciprocal Expertise Affirmation as an Enabling Condition
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Kate Roloff and Lucy H. MacPhail
We review research on expertise diversity, psychological safety, team collaboration, and role identity to propose a model in which reciprocal affirmations of expertise identity among team members—a feature of the team environment that we conceptualize as a dimension of... View Details
- April 2009
- Journal Article
Perspectives on the Productivity Dilemma
By: Paul S. Adler, Mary Benner, David James Brunner, John Paul MacDuffie, Emi Osono, Bradley R. Staats, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Michael Tushman and Sidney G. Winter
For more than a century, operations researchers have recognized that organizations can increase efficiency by adhering strictly to proven process templates, thereby rendering operations more stable and predictable. For several decades, researchers have also recognized... View Details
- March 2009 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
Addleshaw-Goddard LLP
By: Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson and James Weber
Addleshaw-Goddard (AG), the 15th largest law firm in the U.K., is seeking ways to serve larger clients on more important legal matters. Part of this strategy involves its "Client Development Centre (CDC)," an innovative idea and set of services launched by Dr. Jim... View Details
- 2009
- Other Unpublished Work
Financing Higher Education in Australia
By: David Moss and Stephanie Lo
Even before Australian lawmakers abolished university tuition in 1973, students in Australia had long benefited from low tuition and large government subsidies. By the early 1980s, however, the nation's universities faced growing budget challenges and an apparent... View Details
- March 2009
- Article
The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing
By: F. Ferri and Tatiana Sandino
We examine the economic consequences of more than 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004, the first case in which the SEC allowed a shareholder vote on an accounting matter. Our results... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised November 2016)
- Exercise
Congo River Basin Project: Role for Dr. Beni
By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Anne Starks Acosta, Deborah M. Kolb and Cailin B. Hammer
The director of a research coalition and the founder/coordinator of an NGO consortium meet to discuss the possibility of jointly drafting a proposal for an integrated research and development project in the Congo River basin. Approved projects will receive an annual... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised November 2016)
- Exercise
Congo River Basin Project: Role for Dr. Campos
By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Anne Starks Acosta, Deborah M. Kolb and Cailin B. Hammer
The director of a research coalition and the founder/coordinator of an NGO consortium meet to discuss the possibility of jointly drafting a proposal for an integrated research and development project in the Congo River basin. Approved projects will receive an annual... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised April 2011)
- Case
Yahoo! in China (A)
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Daniel Baer
In 2007 Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, was lambasted by U.S. Representative Tom Lantos, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, for Yahoo's role in the arrest and imprisonment of Chinese journalist and democracy advocate Shi Tao. The case describes the... View Details
- Article
How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship
By: Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca and Eva Boxenbaum
As well as review the literature on the notion of institutional entrepreneurship introduced by Paul DiMaggio in 1988, we propose a model of the process of institutional entrepreneurship. We first present theoretical and definitional issues associated with the concept... View Details
- December 2008 (Revised October 2012)
- Case
Special Economic Zones in India: Public Purpose and Private Property (A)
By: Laura Alfaro and Lakshmi Iyer
In 2005, the government of India enacted the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Act in order to attract investment, generate export revenues, and create manufacturing jobs. However, several planned projects faced difficulties in acquiring land for setting up the SEZ. In... View Details