Publications

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11 Jan 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Does Shareholder Proxy Access Improve Firm Value? Evidence from the Business Roundtable Challenge

Keywords: by Bo Becker, Daniel B. Bergstresser & Guhan Subramanian; Financial Services

2024
Working Paper

Do Collusive Norms Maximize Profits? Evidence From a Vegetable Market Experiment in India

By: Abhijit Banerjee, Greg Fischer, Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe and Benjamin N. Roth

Social norms have been shown to facilitate anti-competitive behavior in decentralized markets. We demonstrate that these norms can also reduce aggregate profits. First, we present descriptive evidence of competition-suppressing norms in Kolkata vegetable markets.... View Details

Keywords: Collusion; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Small Business; Microeconomics; Kolkata

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November 2013 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Valuing Yahoo! in 2013

By: Luis M. Viceira and Atul Khosla

In late July 2013, Danielle Engle, Managing Director of Clairemont Capital, was contemplating what to do about a large investment her fund had in the stock of Yahoo! Inc. In mid-2012, Clairemont had invested nearly $75M in Yahoo! after the tech company settled a highly... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Decision Making; Investment Activism; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Valuation

July 2010
Supplement

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Customer Lifetime Value Analysis (CW)

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery

Customers are increasingly being viewed as assets that bring value to the firm. Customer lifetime value is a metric which allows managers to understand the overall value of their customer base and relate it to three customer strategies firms employ: asset acquisition -... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Decisions; Framework; Management Practices and Processes; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Mathematical Methods; Value

10 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Become a Value Creator

asked how he could pay back the favor. Cash put his arm around his colleague's shoulder and said, "You don't owe me anything, Brian. This is the way we do things here. Just pay it forward." “Shareholder value or profits are... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

19 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Activist Board Members Increase Firm’s Market Value

Public company shareholders have long complained that corporate boards don't always act in the best interest of their investors. But does the addition of a shareholder-sponsored board member increase the market View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

January 2001 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Ford Motor Company's Value Enhancement Plan

By: Andre F. Perold

In April 2000, Ford Motor Co. announced a shareholder Value Enhancement Plan (VEP) to significantly recapitalize the firm's ownership structure. Ford had accumulated $23 billion in cash reserves and under the VEP would return as much as $10 billion of this cash to... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Forecasting and Prediction; Capital Structure; Cash; Financial Liquidity; Policy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Value; Auto Industry

May 2024
Background Note

Pricing Strategy and Channels of Distribution: Where Value Delivery and Value Capture Intersect

By: Elie Ofek

Channels of distribution are a critical component of a firm’s go-to-market strategy. A company may elect to sell its products directly to customers (DTC) without the assistance of any intermediaries or, alternatively, it may seek several channel partners to help it... View Details

Keywords: Price; Distribution Channels; Business Strategy; Markets

June 2000 (Revised September 2000)
Case

Amazon.com: Exploiting the Value of Digital Business Infrastructure

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Meredith Collura

Enables a thorough analysis of Amazon.com and the company's value proposition, in terms of its business concept, digital business capabilities, and community and shareholder value. Examines the company's complex set of business models and web of business relationships,... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Asset Pricing; Capital; Financial Management; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry

08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

27 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

Corporate Values and Employee Cynicism

about leaders when leaders do four things: (i) Explicitly acknowledge the tension among multiple aims. Sometimes values bump up against one another—consider the cases in which leaders need to manage tradeoffs between View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

June 2017
Article

The Social Trajectory of a Finance Professor and the Common Sense of Capital

By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana

This paper traces the career of Michael Jensen, a Chicago finance PhD turned Harvard Business School professor to reveal the intellectual and social conditions that enabled the emergence and institutionalization of what we call the “neoliberal common sense of capital,”... View Details

Keywords: Executive Pay; The Firm; Michael Jensen; Neo-Liberalism; Shareholder Value; Agency Theory; Corporate Governance; Executive Compensation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Transformation

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June 2015 (Revised September 2017)
Supplement

Generating Higher Value at IBM

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield

This case analyzes IBM's financial performance and its capital allocation decisions over a 10-year period from 2004-2013, during which IBM returned more than $140B to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. During this time, CEO Sam... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Share Repurchases; Earnings Guidance; Financial Statement Analysis; Financial Ratios; Payout Policy; Earnings Per Share (EPS); Earnings Management; Change Management; Leadership; Transformation; Financial Strategy

2012
Other Unpublished Work

Measuring Shared Value: How to Unlock Value by Linking Business and Social Results

By: Michael E. Porter, Greg Hills, Marc Pfitzer, Sonja Patscheke and Elizabeth Hawkins

Measuring shared value allows companies to maximize opportunities for innovation, growth, and social impact at scale. This article explains the specific purpose of shared value measurement and offers a step-by-step process and pragmatic approaches to measurement with... View Details

Keywords: Society

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May 2015 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Generating Higher Value at IBM (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and E. Scott Mayfield

This case analyzes IBM's financial performance and its capital allocation decisions over a 10-year period from 2004-2013, during which IBM returned more than $140B to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. During this time, CEO Sam... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Share Repurchases; Earnings Guidance; Financial Statement Analysis; Financial Ratios; Payout Policy; Earnings Per Share (EPS); Earnings Management; Change Management; Leadership; Transformation; Financial Strategy

March 2016 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Michael Milken: The Junk Bond King

By: Tom Nicholas and Matthew G. Preble

Michael Milken, an investment banker who dominated the junk bond market in the 1980s, was sentenced to jail in 1990 after pleading guilty to a number of securities and tax-related felonies. In the preceding decade, Milken had helped usher in a new wave of leveraged buy... View Details

Keywords: Junk Bonds; High-yield Bonds; Financial Innovation; Shareholder Value; Bonds; Capital; Capital Structure; Cost of Capital; Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Finance; Investment Banking; Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Ownership; Private Equity; Restructuring; United States

29 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

How Organizations Create Social Value

better focus on creating economic value by minimizing costs and maximizing efficiency. Companies can bring social value into alignment with their core competencies, improving... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

Summer 2014
Article

When Does a Platform Create Value by Limiting Choice?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Hanna Halaburda

We present a theory for why it might be rational for a platform to limit the number of applications available on it. Our model is based on the observation that even if users prefer application variety, applications often also exhibit direct network effects. When there... View Details

Keywords: Platform Governance; Direct Network Effects; Indirect Network Effects; Complements; Tragedy Of The Commons; Equilibrium Selection; Coordination; Foresight; Strategy; Value Creation; Digital Platforms; Balance and Stability; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Network Effects

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September 2014 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Turkcell

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Charles C.Y. Wang and Esel Cekin

This case centers around the shareholder dispute between three major shareholders of Turkcell, and how its management vied against increasing regulatory intervention and market competition in the absence of a fully-functioning board. The battle for control of the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Performance; Regulatory Environment; Telecommunications; Marketing; Value Added; Pricing; Shareholder; Boards Of Directors; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Conflict and Resolution; Business and Shareholder Relations; Telecommunications Industry; Turkey