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- All HBS Web
(1,698)
- News (278)
- Research (1,262)
- Events (2)
- Multimedia (14)
- Faculty Publications (809)
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- May 2004 (Revised April 2006)
- Case
Ultra: The Quest for Leadership (A)
By: Dwight B. Crane and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho
Ultra is one of a small group of competing Brazilian petrochemical companies, each of which buys raw material and is a minority owner of Copene, a "cracking" company that provides ethylene and other materials. Because of an industry restructuring, an auction of shares... View Details
Keywords: Capital; Capital Budgeting; Investment; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Industry Structures; Cash Flow; Cost of Capital; Valuation; Bids and Bidding; Economy; Ownership Stake; Chemical Industry; Brazil
Crane, Dwight B., and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho. "Ultra: The Quest for Leadership (A)." Harvard Business School Case 204-146, May 2004. (Revised April 2006.)
- December 1999 (Revised March 2000)
- Case
Workplace Safety at Alcoa (B)
At the May 1996 annual shareholders meeting, Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill reported that Alcoa was making great progress toward becoming a world-class leader, both in terms of workplace safety and profitability. This validated of O'Neill's decade-long emphasis on safety as... View Details
Spear, Steven J. "Workplace Safety at Alcoa (B)." Harvard Business School Case 600-068, December 1999. (Revised March 2000.)
- 23 Apr 2019
- First Look
New Research and Ideas, April 23, 2019
offer opportunities for future research. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=56001 Rehabilitating Corporate Purpose By: Salter, Malcolm S. Abstract—In this paper, I address how the ascendance of the theory of View Details
Keywords: Dina Gerdeman
- June 2007 (Revised December 2007)
- Case
AFL-CIO: Office of Investment and Home Depot
By: Rakesh Khurana and James Weber
Describes the AFL-CIO: Office of Investments activities in their campaign to improve governance at Home Depot by calling attention to Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli's compensation package and the company's poor performance. The AFL-CIO Office of Investments advocates... View Details
Keywords: Investment; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Labor Unions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business and Shareholder Relations
Khurana, Rakesh, and James Weber. "AFL-CIO: Office of Investment and Home Depot." Harvard Business School Case 407-097, June 2007. (Revised December 2007.)
- January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Pioneer Natural Resources: Enhancing the Capital Return Strategy with Variable Dividends
In February 2021, Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources (an independent oil and gas company based in Texas), was considering the possibility of enhancing the firm’s capital return strategy by introducing a variable dividend tied to cash flows in... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Finance; Cash Flow; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Value Creation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Profit; Policy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; United States; North America; Texas
Esty, Benjamin C., Elisabeth Kempf, and E. Scott Mayfield. "Pioneer Natural Resources: Enhancing the Capital Return Strategy with Variable Dividends." Harvard Business School Case 224-001, January 2024. (Revised May 2024.)
- October 2017 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Snap Inc. Goes Public (A)
By: Lynn Sharp Paine and Will Hurwitz
Snap Inc.’s chairman must decide how to address investor concerns about the company’s unprecedented plans to issue only non-voting shares in its upcoming IPO. The case is set in early 2017 following the public availability of Snap’s IPO filing with the U.S. Securities... View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Capital Structure; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Going Public; Business and Shareholder Relations; Leadership; Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; California
Paine, Lynn Sharp, and Will Hurwitz. "Snap Inc. Goes Public (A)." Harvard Business School Case 318-042, October 2017. (Revised April 2024.)
- 30 Apr 2024
- Book
When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners
willing to approve continued sales of a drug known to be lethal to some customers in fulfilment of their assigned role to maximise value for shareholders (Armstrong, 1977, p. 204). And so on. Yet, the insights from this research and their... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- January 15, 2019
- Article
Is Your Company's Strategy Aligned with Your Ownership Model?
By: Josh Baron
The legacy of Vanguard founder John Bogle has brought attention to the transformative influence of ownership structures within the business world. Bogle's revolutionary insight into the limitations of active fund management led to the widespread adoption of index... View Details
Keywords: Ownership Type; Business Strategy; Organizational Structure; Strength and Weakness; Competitive Advantage
Baron, Josh. "Is Your Company's Strategy Aligned with Your Ownership Model?" Harvard Business Review (website) (January 15, 2019).
- 2025
- Chapter
Critical Choices in Designing a Board: An Overview
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Lynn S. Paine
Board design is never one-size-fits-all. It’s a series of critical choices—each with trade-offs—that can define how a board functions, governs, and delivers strategic value.
That’s the premise of "Critical Choices in Designing a Board," a... View Details
Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards
Srinivasan, Suraj, and Lynn S. Paine. "Critical Choices in Designing a Board: An Overview." Chap. 3 in NYSE & JP Morgan, Public Company Series: Board Structure and Composition, edited by Joseph Hall and Stephen Byeff, 17–23. Public Company Series. Caxton Business & Legal, Inc., 2025.
- November 2020
- Teaching Note
Valuing Celgene's CVR
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 221-031. When Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) acquired Celgene Corporation in November 2019, Celgene shareholders received cash, BMS stock, and a contingent value right (CVRs) that would pay $9 if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos
By: Ethan Rouen and Akari Furukawa
TJX Companies reported a CEO pay ratio of 1,596-to-1 in 2019, leaving board chair Carol Meyrowitz with a host of questions about whether, and how, she could take action to address concerns raised by having one of the highest pay ratios in the S&P 500. As a retail... View Details
Keywords: CEO Pay Ratio; Income; Equality and Inequality; Executive Compensation; Corporate Disclosure; Business and Stakeholder Relations
Rouen, Ethan, and Akari Furukawa. "Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos." Harvard Business School Case 120-063, December 2019. (Revised May 2020.)
- Article
The Art of Balancing Autonomy and Control: What Managers Can Learn from Hackathon Organizers about Spurring Innovation.
By: Hila Lifshitz - Assaf, Sarah Lebovitz and Lior Zalmanson
Today, managers recognize that innovation requires a high level of work autonomy for their employees. This encourages curiosity, enables independent thinking, and provides an environment in which employees can experiment and test new problem-solving approaches with... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Hackathon; Autonomy; Control; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management
Lifshitz - Assaf, Hila, Sarah Lebovitz, and Lior Zalmanson. "The Art of Balancing Autonomy and Control: What Managers Can Learn from Hackathon Organizers about Spurring Innovation." MIT Sloan Management Review 60, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 1–6.
- 2012
- Working Paper
A Framework for Research on Corporate Accountability Reporting
By: Karthik Ramanna
This paper provides an accounting-based conceptual framing of the phenomenon of corporate accountability reporting. Such reporting is seen as arising from a delegator's (e.g., a citizenry) demand to hold a delegate (e.g., shareholders) to account. When effective,... View Details
Keywords: Integrated Corporate Reporting; For-Profit Firms; Framework; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Research; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues
Ramanna, Karthik. "A Framework for Research on Corporate Accountability Reporting." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-021, September 2011. (Revised July 2012, October 2012.)
- September 2016
- Article
Disproportional Control Rights and the Bonding Role of Debt
By: Aiyesha Dey, Valeri Nikolaev and Xue Wang
We examine the governance role of debt in the context of U.S.-based dual class ownership structures. We hypothesize that the use of debt alleviates the conflict between shareholder classes by balancing the power of controlling insiders. We document that dual class... View Details
Keywords: Dual Class; Private Debt; Debt Covenants; Bonding Mechanisms; Ownership Type; Capital Structure; Borrowing and Debt
Dey, Aiyesha, Valeri Nikolaev, and Xue Wang. "Disproportional Control Rights and the Bonding Role of Debt." Management Science 62, no. 9 (September 2016): 2581–2614.
- May 2016
- Article
'Both/And' Leadership
By: Wendy K. Smith, Marianne Lewis and Michael Tushman
Leaders face a multitude of strategic paradoxes—contradictory pressures that are too often viewed as "either/or" choices. There are innovation paradoxes, in which the pursuit of new offerings and processes conflicts with the mandate to sustain the tried and... View Details
Smith, Wendy K., Marianne Lewis, and Michael Tushman. "'Both/And' Leadership." Harvard Business Review 94, no. 5 (May 2016): 62–70.
- November 2010 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
Washout: The Founders' Tale and the Investors' Tale
By: Lena G. Goldberg and Chad M. Carr
The competing narratives of the founders of Alantec, Inc. and the venture capitalists who funded the company are explored in the context of Kalashian v. Advent VI Ltd. a California Superior Court case. The founders of the company, which produced switches for computer... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Venture Capital; Governance Controls; Governing and Advisory Boards; Lawsuits and Litigation; Managerial Roles; Ownership Stake; Business and Shareholder Relations; Conflict and Resolution; Technology Industry
Goldberg, Lena G., and Chad M. Carr. "Washout: The Founders' Tale and the Investors' Tale." Harvard Business School Case 311-078, November 2010. (Revised November 2017.)
- 2019
- Working Paper
Intelligent Design of Inclusive Growth Strategies
By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat
Improving corporate engagement with society, as advocated in the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement, should not be viewed as a zero-sum proposition where attention to new stakeholders detracts from delivering shareholder value. Corporate programs for sustainable and... View Details
Keywords: Inclusion; Sustainability; Performance Measures; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Strategy; Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations
Kaplan, Robert S., George Serafeim, and Eduardo Tugendhat. "Intelligent Design of Inclusive Growth Strategies." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-050, October 2019.
- October 2018
- Case
African Bank Investments Limited (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Less than a year after joining the board of African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), the newest director finds himself in difficult discussions with other directors about removing the struggling company’s CEO. The case is set in South Africa in mid-2014 as shares in... View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Personal Finance; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Insurance; Leadership; Management; Risk Management; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry; Africa; South Africa
Paine, Lynn S., and Will Hurwitz. "African Bank Investments Limited (A)." Harvard Business School Case 319-052, October 2018.
- 16 May 2017
- First Look
First Look at New Ideas and Research, May 16
promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do. The theory regards View Details
Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty
- 2024
- Working Paper
Corporate Culture Homogeneity and Top Executive Incentive Design: Evidence from CEO Compensation Contracts
By: Dennis Campbell, Ruidi Shang and Zhifang Zhang
We examine how corporate cultures characterized by high degrees of homogeneity in the underlying values and beliefs of organizational members are related to the design of CEO incentive compensation contracts. We argue that culture homogeneity within firms lowers... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Culture; Compensation Design; Accounting; Management Control; Incentive Systems; Organizational Culture; Job Design and Levels; Governance; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives
Campbell, Dennis, Ruidi Shang, and Zhifang Zhang. "Corporate Culture Homogeneity and Top Executive Incentive Design: Evidence from CEO Compensation Contracts." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-054, February 2024.