Publications

14 Dec 2010
Op-Ed

Tax US Companies to Spur Spending

holdings--estimates of the amount held by US public corporations easily exceed $1 trillion; several technology companies alone are sitting on cash balances in excess of $20 billion--are thought to result from the absence of investment... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

26 Jan 2004
Research & Ideas

What Developing-World Companies Teach Us About Innovation

When most people think of innovation, they envision developed-world companies such as the U.S.A.'s IBM, Japan's Sony, South Korea's Samsung, Finland's Nokia, or Switzerland's Novartis, technology leaders that have stayed at the cutting... View Details

Keywords: by Donald N. Sull, Alejandro Ruelas-Gossi & Martin Escobari

2019
Article

Industrie-Holding: Creating a Community of Interest among Swiss 'Multinationals'

By: Sabine Pitteloud

This article focuses on the genesis and evolution of Industrie-Holding, a federation of Swiss multinationals, from 1942 onwards. Thanks to recent donations from the Alusuisse and Hero archives, historians now have access to the minutes of the Industrie-Holding... View Details

Keywords: Business ＆ Government Relations; Multinationals; Lobbying; Business and Government Relations; Multinational Firms and Management; Switzerland

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1986
Chapter

Competition Encountered by U.S. Companies That Manufacture Abroad

By: Robert B. Stobaugh

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Competition; Trade; Manufacturing Industry; United States

08 May 2015
News

Adopting a common language can strengthen global companies

Multinational firms are increasingly mandating a common language—typically English—to gain efficiencies and enhance collaboration overall. Associate Professor Tsedal Neeley has discovered, however, that merely mandating a common language... View Details

January 2016 (Revised May 2016)
Case

IKEA in Saudi Arabia (A)

By: Karthik Ramanna, Jérôme Lenhardt and Marc Homsy

A Swedish newspaper reveals that IKEA has erased all images of women from its catalog for Saudi Arabia. The article sparks criticism of IKEA from the Swedish government and its customers in the West. Critics contend that IKEA is not living up to its own commitments to... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Values; Islam; Multinationals; Globalization; Leadership; Equality and Inequality; Multinational Firms and Management; Religion; Organizational Culture; Gender; Consumer Products Industry; Saudi Arabia; Sweden

24 Nov 2014
Research & Ideas

Corrupting Silence: Companies Must Speak Up Against Bribes

the cost of investment in developing countries by at least 20 percent. And yet, companies are mostly silent on the subject. "The thing that struck me is how little information there is on corruption because no one wants to talk about it,"... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Fall 2019
Article

Du « défi américain » à l’expansion européenne: Les relations économiques transatlantiques des années cinquante aux années soixante-dix

By: Grace A. Ballor

Economic histories of post-war transatlantic relations have focused on two predominant narratives: US aid for European reconstruction through the Marshall Plan, and the threat of American business investment in Europe. But little research has linked these two elements.... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Corporations; Economic History; International Relations; Business History; Foreign Direct Investment; Multinational Firms and Management

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2022
Article

‘American Management’ vs ‘Swiss Labour Peace’. The Closure of the Swiss Firestone Factory in 1978

By: Sabine Pitteloud

This article focusses on the closure of the Firestone’s Swiss subsidiary in 1978. It contributes to the existing literature dealing with the ‘nationality’ of multinational companies and the impact of U.S. management style on local capitalist systems. Drawing on a... View Details

Keywords: Americanization; Capitalism; Corporate Nationality; Industrial Relations; Multinational; Narratives; Multinational Firms and Management; Nationality; Economic Systems; Labor and Management Relations; Switzerland

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September–October 2017
Article

GE's Global Growth Experiment: The Company Pushed Cross-Business Collaboration

By: Ranjay Gulati

Like many other companies, GE under Immelt had to figure out how to balance serving local needs with the economies of worldwide scale. Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati looks at how it tackled the challenge. He identifies several important takeaways for other... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management

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January–February 2015
Article

Heroic Villains: Are Foreign Investors Problems or Solutions in the Ebola Crisis?

By: Debora L. Spar

For months, the news out of West Africa has been unrelentingly grim. As of early December, the devastating Ebola epidemic had infected a reported 17,942 people and killed 6,388, according to the World Health Organization (WHO); the actual toll, which would also account... View Details

Keywords: Ebola; Multinational Corporation; Epidemics; Foreign Investment; Extractive Industries; Multinational Firms and Management; Health Pandemics; Developing Countries and Economies; Government and Politics; Africa

May 2005 (Revised October 2022)
Case

The Octopus and the Generals: The United Fruit Company in Guatemala

By: Geoffrey Jones and Marcelo Bucheli

Examines the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954 in a U.S.-backed coup in support of the United Fruit Co. Over the previous half century, United Fruit had built a large vertically integrated tropical fruit business that owned large banana... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Multinational Firms and Management; Policy; International Relations; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Central America; Guatemala; United States

September 2019 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Gap, Inc., 2019

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2000, The Gap, Inc. (Gap) was the world’s largest player in specialty fashion retailing, and companies such as Inditex of Spain, H&M of Sweden, and Fast Retailing of Japan were less than a quarter of Gap’s size. But after two decades of growth, Gap’s progress... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Change; Fashion; Multinational; Brands; Fast Fashion; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Performance Improvement; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Change Management; Strategy; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sweden; Spain; United States

2019
Article

The Social Desirability of Offshoring: A Swiss Consensus (1945–1975)

By: Sabine Pitteloud

This article focuses on the evolution of the rhetoric and practice of corporate offshoring in Switzerland from the post-war economic boom to the industrial crisis in the mid-seventies. The virtue of a historical perspective on the issue of offshoring is to show how... View Details

Keywords: Multinationals; Offshoring And Outsourcing; Relocation; Labor Relations; Multinational Firms and Management; Labor and Management Relations; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Switzerland

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July 2011 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Foxconn Technology Group (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles, George Serafeim and Beiting Cheng

In 2010, Foxconn Technology Group, the largest and fastest growing multinational company in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry, came under public scrutiny after a string of employee suicides reached the international press. Although the company was... View Details

16 May 2018
Research & Ideas

How Companies Managed Risk (and Even Benefitted) in World War Internment Camps

companies from Germany dealt with the incarceration of thousands of their German national employees in India during World War I and World War II in her recent working paper, Countering Political Risk in Colonial India: German View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Manufacturing

Research Summary

Workforce Change

By: Sandra J. Sucher

This research encompasses layoffs, furloughs and restructuring, global practices that affect millions of employees and thousands of companies every year. In this work I aim to replace bad practice that damages trust with good (or at least better) practice through... View Details

Keywords: Layoffs; Leadership And Change Management; Global Innovation; Strategic Decision Making; Multinational Corporations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; United States; France; Germany; Hungary; Finland; United Kingdom; Netherlands; China; Japan; Brazil

October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

mPharma: Scaling Access to Affordable Primary Care in Africa

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo

mPharma hopes to scale up to create the largest pan-African healthcare company ever to provide much-needed primary care in retail pharmacies; a reliable, fairly priced supply of drugs; and micro-insurance for drugs. They must prioritize launching a telemedicine... View Details