Publications

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March 1999
Case

Merck & Co., Inc.: Corporate Strategy, Organization and Culture (A)

By: Michael Beer and Perry Fagan

In the early 1990s, Merck faced a series of challenges because of significant changes in its competitive and regulatory environment (e.g., growth in power of pharmaceutical buyers like managed care organizations led to price pressures and President Clinton's review of... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business or Company Management; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Management Practices and Processes; Competitive Strategy; Management Teams; Health Care and Treatment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Situation or Environment; Alignment; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

20 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

HBS Workshop Encourages Corporate Reporting on Environmental and Social Sustainability

rolling," said workshop co-organizer Beiting Cheng, an HBS doctoral student. Short of government mandates, how can corporations be motivated to adopt integrated reporting? Will shareholders be a driving... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Accounting

18 Aug 2016
News

Four Harvard Business School Faculty Members Named to Most Influential Black Corporate Directors List

January 2018
Supplement

In the Eye of a Geopolitical Storm: South Korea's Lotte Group, China and the U.S. THAAD Missile Defense System (B)

By: Andy Zelleke and Brian Tilley

This case explores Lotte Group’s challenge of how to respond to Chinese government pressure in 2017, following the Group’s February decision to transfer land to the South Korean government, on which Seoul intended to deploy the U.S.-built THAAD missile defense system.... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Corporation; Corporate Governance; Leadership; International Relations; Decision Making; South Korea; China; Japan; United States

February 2011 (Revised August 2011)
Supplement

Accounting for Catastrophes: BP PLC and Union Carbide Corporation (B)

By: David F. Hawkins and Aldo Sesia

The BP Mexican Gulf Oil spill requires BP to recognize or at least disclose investor-relevant information. View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Accounting; Natural Disasters; Pollutants; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; Mining Industry; North America

September 2005
Article

Decolonising Barclays Bank DCO? Corporate Africanisation Programmes in Nigeria, 1945-1969

The reaction of British business to the decolonisation of the Empire has been the focus of much recent research, but few studies have shed light on the continued presence of commercial activities after independence. Barclays Bank DCO in Nigeria began indigenising its... View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Foreign Direct Investment; Banks and Banking; Macroeconomics; Banking Industry; Great Britain; Nigeria

May 2021 (Revised May 2022)
Supplement

Odebrecht's 'Transformation Journey' (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Pedro Levindo

The case describes the changes in Odebrecht’s board of directors while the company had to file for court-supervised reorganization and cope with an ongoing feud within its founding family, and the new challenges that the Group’s leadership has to face. The changes in... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Misconduct; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Reputation; Mission and Purpose; Business and Government Relations; Engineering; Family Business; Emerging Markets; Construction Industry; Brazil; Latin America

Research Summary

Overview

My research examines CEO succession, top management teams, and corporate governance. View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Strategic Leadership; Leadership; Strategic Human Resource Management; CEO Succession; Top Management Teams; Corporate Governance; Organizational Change And Adaptation

September–October 2023
Article

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: The Effects of Common Ownership on Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Mark R. DesJardine, Jody Grewal and Kala Viswanathan

Common owners face an incredible investment challenge: managing systematic risk. Because common owners hold shares in multiple firms across an industry, an action (or inaction) by one firm that affects industry peers is felt more severely by common owners than by... View Details

Keywords: Common Ownership; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Institutional Investing; Corporate Governance; Risk and Uncertainty; Investment Return

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2015
Book

Political Standards: Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy

By: Karthik Ramanna

There are certain institutions underlying our modern market-capitalist system that are largely outside the interest and understanding of the general public—e.g., rulemaking for bank capital adequacy, actuarial standards, accounting standards, and auditing practice. In... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Financial Institutions; Financial Reporting; GAAP; IFRS; Lobbying; Capitalism; Sustainability; Accounting; Finance; Business and Government Relations; Leadership; Accounting Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States; China; India

October 2012 (Revised February 2013)
Case

Jim Johnson's Re-election to the Goldman Sachs Board

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Kelly Baker

The case presents the opposition by a leading institutional investor in Goldman Sachs to the re-election of Jim Johnson to the board of directors of the company. The investor, Sequoia Fund, opposes the re-election citing Jim Johnson's prior track record as the CEO of... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Corporate Governance; Director Elections; Goldman Sachs; Reputation; Institutional Investing; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Accountability; Banking Industry; New York (city, NY)

Research Summary

Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs ( Princeton University Press, October 2002)

By: Rakesh Khurana

In this book, I argue that the external CEO labor market was born in a burst of rhetoric about wresting control of corporations away from a group of self-interested insiders, as senior managers in the era of managerial capitalism had come to be portrayed. The rationale... View Details

23 Jun 2022
News

De-Facto Financial Regulation in the Form of Corporate Criminal Liability for Esg is Coming

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Corporate Inversions: Stanley Works and the Lure of Tax Havens

By: Mihir A. Desai, James R. Hines, Jr and Mark Veblen

In response to Stanley Work's announcement that it is moving to Bermuda--and the associated jump in market value--a major competitor sets out to determine how the market is valuing the consequences of moving to a tax haven and whether his company should invert to a tax... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Taxation; Financial Strategy; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; International Finance; Valuation; Financial Markets; Financial Statements; United States

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

January–February 2018
Article

Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality

By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat

More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change.
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details

Keywords: Inclusive Growth; Sustainability; Social Impact; Business Strategy; Shared Value; Impact Investing; Inequality; Corporate Governance; Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Execution; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment

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2023
Working Paper

Fencing Off Silicon Valley: Cross-Border Venture Capital and Technology Spillovers

By: Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates, Josh Lerner, Richard Townsend and Yulia Zhestkova

The treatment of foreign investors is a contentious topic in U.S. entrepreneurship policy. We model a setting where foreign corporate investments in Silicon Valley may allow U.S. entrepreneurs to pursue technologies that they could not otherwise, but may also lead to... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Corporate Venture Capital; Knowledge Spillovers; Innovation and Invention; Foreign Direct Investment; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Policy; United States

SSRN

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24 Apr 2014
News

Revamping the corporate tax code could improve America’s competitiveness and living standards

The US corporate tax code is impeding the nation’s ability to compete in the worldwide economy, according to Mihir A. Desai (MBA 1993, PhD 1998), the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance. Desai has found that current US policies... View Details

August 2005
Teaching Note

Corporate Inversions: Stanley Works and the Lure of Tax Havens (TN)

By: Mihir A. Desai, Mark Veblen and Kathleen Luchs

Keywords: Taxation; Corporate Accountability