Publications

June 2009
Supplement

Executive Remuneration at Royal Dutch Shell (B)

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Kaitlyn Simpson

At the 2009 Shell annual meeting, the majority of shareholders vote against the exclusive pay package. The B case compares the remuneration committee perspective (and their rationale for using discretion to award the bonuses) as well as the shareholder perspective (and... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Executive Compensation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Perspective; Energy Industry

October 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Arlan Hamilton and Backstage Capital

By: Laura Huang and Sarah Mehta

Frustrated by an inability to convince existing venture capital firms to invest in companies led by women, people of color, and LGBT founders, Arlan Hamilton started her own firm, Backstage Capital, in 2015. Hamilton understood the untapped potential of companies run... View Details

Keywords: Black Leadership; LGBTQ; Women; People Of Color; Entrepreneurship; Mission and Purpose; Venture Capital; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Identity; Personal Characteristics; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Gender; Race

22 May 2024
HBS Case

Banned or Not, TikTok Is a Force Companies Can’t Afford to Ignore

the voice of the presenter.” One way to think about it, Ghosh says, is that TikTok “views you as this complex being. Even when something has worked with you, it will favor that, but it will not exclusively give you that. Because it knows... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology

23 Dec 2021
News

Taking Over a State by a Religious Movement Was Basically Inconceivable to Most Outside Observers

March 2023 (Revised May 2025)
Case

On

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karolin Frankenberger and Sascha Mader

Founded in 2010, in just one decade, the Swiss company On had established itself as a main player in global sports footwear and apparel. Based on an unconventional strategy which one of the founders labeled as “obsessively distinct,” On grew its sales with a compound... View Details

June 2020
Article

Frenemies in Platform Markets: Heterogeneous Profit Foci as Drivers of Compatibility Decisions

By: Ron Adner, Jianqing Chen and Feng Zhu

We study compatibility decisions of two competing platform owners that generate profits through both hardware sales and royalties from content sales. We consider a game-theoretic model in which two platforms offer different standalone utilities to users. We find that... View Details

Keywords: Compatibility; Platform Competition; Profit Foci; Digital Platforms; Competition; Profit; Decision Making

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We study compatibility decisions of two competing platform owners that generate profits through both hardware sales and royalties from content sales. We consider a game-theoretic model in which two platforms offer different standalone utilities to users. We find that... View Details

2008
Book

On Competition

By: M. E. Porter

Competition is one of society's most powerful forces for making things better in many ﬁelds of human endeavor. The study of competition and the creation of value, in their full richness, have preoccupied me for several decades. Competition is pervasive, whether it... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Practice; Competitive Strategy; Theory; Value Creation

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October 2013
Article

Shattering the Myth of Separate Worlds: Negotiating Non-Work Identities at Work

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Erin M. Reid

How much of our self is defined by our work? Fundamental changes in the social organization of work are destabilizing the relationship between work and the self. As a result, parts of the self traditionally considered outside the domain of work, i.e., "non-work"... View Details

Keywords: Identity; Diversity; Strategy; Jobs and Positions; Work-Life Balance

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August 2011 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Language and Globalization: 'Englishnization' at Rakuten (A)

By: Tsedal Neeley

Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO of Rakuten, (Japan's largest online retailer), is at the helm of an organization that is rapidly expanding into global markets. In a critical stride toward becoming the world's No. 1 Internet services company, Mikitani announces... View Details

Keywords: Teaching; Human Capital; Change Management; Transformation; Social Enterprise; Communication Strategy; Internet and the Web; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Leadership; Global Strategy; Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Japan

2022
Article

The Turn Toward Creative Work

By: Spencer Harrison, Elizabeth D. Rouse, Colin M. Fisher and Teresa M. Amabile

In this Academy of Management Collections essay, we curate a set of articles from the Academy of Management family of journals that showcase the evolution of creativity research within organizational scholarship. The articles reveal a shift from the study of... View Details

Keywords: Creative Work; Creative Process; Creativity; Organizational Culture

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20 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

Users Love Ello, But What’s the Business Model?

As yet, there is no foolproof way to monetize social capital. If there were, Ello would be well on its way to financial success. The upstart social networking site set the internet abuzz recently by... View Details

Keywords: Re: John A. Deighton & Sunil Gupta; Publishing; Financial Services

January 2024
Case

ECOALF: Fashion for the Future

By: Elizabeth A. Keenan, Diego Aparicio, Carlota Moniz and María José Satrústegui

ECOALF, a Spanish fashion brand and sustainability pioneer, aimed to tackle the industry's challenges of excessive consumption and production. The brand's mission was to create timeless apparel exclusively from recycled and eco-responsible materials, matching the... View Details

01 Dec 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation

Keywords: by Carliss Y. Baldwin & Eric von Hippel

October 2003
Case

Financing Biodiversity Conservation by the Global Conservation Fund

By: Mihir A. Desai and Julia Stevens

The Global Conservation Fund is an international nonprofit organization with a $100 million endowment and an exclusive focus on land preservation. The fund and its director must decide which projects to fund over the next year and what financing mechanism to use.... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Protection; Project Evaluation; Environmental Sustainability; Projects; Finance; Decision Making; Financial Instruments; Nonprofit Organizations

January 1991 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Black Caucus Groups at Xerox Corp. (A)

In 1970 Xerox had a very progressive affirmative action program yet, once hired, black employees faced serious problems, due both to overt discrimination and to their exclusion from the informal networks of support, information and mentoring that the other salespeople... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Alliances; Race Characteristics; Employees; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; United States

July 2004 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Opium and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century

By: Geoffrey Jones, Elisabeth Koll and Alexis Gendron

This case examines the role of Jardine Matheson, a trading company founded by two Scottish merchants, in the opium trade between India and China during the nineteenth century. The two Opium Wars fought between Western powers and China, which sought to stop opium... View Details

Keywords: History; Globalized Economies and Regions; Ethnicity; Multinational Firms and Management; Groups and Teams; Trade; Social and Collaborative Networks; China; United Kingdom

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Lords of the Harvest: Third-Party Signaling and Regulatory Approval of Genetically Modified Organisms

By: Shon R. Hiatt and Sangchan Park

Little is known about the factors that influence regulatory agencies' decision making. We posit that regulatory agencies are influenced by the firms they regulate, but not exclusively via political influence as is argued in the traditional regulatory-capture... View Details

Keywords: Genetics; Decision Choices and Conditions; Reputation; Agribusiness; Power and Influence; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States