Publications

June 2011 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Home Essentials: Building a Global Service Business with Local Operations

By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr and David Lane

Chris Exline founded Home Essentials, a furniture rental business targeted toward expatriates, in Singapore but rapidly moved the base of operations to Hong Kong. The company was highly successful in Singapore and Hong Kong and then pursued rapid global expansion.... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Renting or Rental; Corporate Governance; Global Strategy; Failure; Singapore; Hong Kong

Research Summary

Globalization and the Family Business

As business becomes more global and competitive, many family companies are extending their operations through various means to remain competitive in their industries. Professor Davis is teaming with Professor Jon Martinez of Universidad de los Andes and Florence Tsai... View Details

24 Apr 2014
News

Driving the family business onto a global stage

Anand Mahindra (AB 1977, MBA 1981), as chairman and managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), has grown the family business into a thriving Indian multinational automotive manufacturing corporation,... View Details

January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Huawei: A Global Tech Giant in the Crossfire of a Digital Cold War

By: William C. Kirby, Billy Chan and John P. McHugh

By 2020, Ren Zhengfei, CEO of Huawei, had transformed the small telephone switch manufacturer he founded in 1987 into a $120 billion telecommunications company poised to lead the lucrative rollout of fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks. However, an emerging... View Details

Keywords: International Strategy; Government And Business; Digital Infrastructure; Political Risk; Information Technology; Infrastructure; Business and Government Relations; Government and Politics; Information Infrastructure; Technology Industry; China; United States

01 Dec 2017
News

2017 in Real Estate: A Local Business Goes Global

Real estate has traditionally been a local business, but more and more, it’s becoming global, the same way so many other businesses have. On a year-to-year basis, we’ve been... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate

07 Apr 2003
What Do You Think?

Should Global Business Initiatives Be Devalued?

an interesting concept of the importance of a "national brand."—Jim Heskett Others, while agreeing with this thesis, were not so sanguine about whether this will happen without greater efforts to influence foreign policy by... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

January 2014
Case

Anglo American: Implementing a 'Social Way' for Global Mining

By: Christopher Marquis, David Plumb, Tom Blathwayt and Zoe Yang

The mining giant Anglo American attempts to differentiate itself through its social performance, yet public expectations are still growing. Maintaining a "social license" to operate was increasingly challenging and critical to business success.

The case... View Details

Keywords: Global Mining; Localization; Socioeconomic Issues; Procurement; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Supply Chain Management; Globalization; Reputation; Emerging Markets; Mining Industry; South Africa

26 Oct 2018
News

A Chance to Lead

Lillian Lincoln Lambert (MBA 1969) is a retired business executive and author of The Road to Someplace Better: From the Segregated South to Harvard Business School and Beyond.... View Details

TeachingInterests

Globalization and Emerging Markets

Globalization and Emerging Markets is designed for students who will be investing, managing a business or nonprofit, or working for a government in an emerging market. The unit of analysis of the course ranges from countries to multinational and domestic companies... View Details

01 Jun 2015
News

Exploring Global Business Practices

Enhancing the Worldview of HBS Students and Faculty Building on a legacy of global engagement, Harvard Business School has made internationalization View Details

09 Nov 2017
News

A Chance to Lead

John Brennan (MBA 1980) is chairman emeritus, the Vanguard Group. In this interview he recalls his early time at the business and the opportunity presented to him to lead. “In the summer of 1982, I moved out to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania,... View Details

04 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

The Business of Global Poverty

"A Conference on Global Poverty: Business Solutions and Approaches," with a goal of beginning to identify the characteristics of successful enterprises and leaders in... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

22 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

Restoring a Global Economy, 1950–1980

The 1950s onwards saw the beginning of the reconstruction of a new global economy. Between 1950 and 1973 the annual real GDP growth of developed market economies averaged around 5 percent. This growth was... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones

2013
Chapter

The Global and the Local in the Beauty Industry: A Historical Perspective

By: G. Jones

This chapter explores the impact of the global beauty industry on beauty ideals. It shows that as the industry internationalized from the late nineteenth century, there was a homogenization of beauty ideals and practices around the world. Western and white beauty... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Globalization; History; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Asia; Europe; Latin America; Middle East; North and Central America; South America

02 Aug 2017
News

Going Green in Global Businesses

December 2002
Article

Business Enterprises and Global Worlds

By: G. Jones

The role of business enterprise in integrating economies is one of the central historical themes of the last two centuries. Although globalization—both in its current iteration and in its nineteenth-century form—has been widely studied, the role of the firm, as opposed... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Multinational Firms and Management; Organizations; Emerging Markets; Behavior; Business Ventures; United States