Publications

April 2001
Supplement

Russell Reynolds Associates

By: Tarun Khanna

Features a presentation by Managing Directors Peter Drummond-Hay and Steve Scroggins of Russell Reynolds, to a class of MBA students at the Harvard Business School about the challenges of developing institutions of management and the labor market. View Details

Keywords: Management; Labor; Markets; Problems and Challenges

Article

Act Like a Scientist: Great Leaders Challenge Assumptions, Run Experiments, and Follow the Evidence

By: Stefan Thomke and Gary W. Loveman

Though they’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of overrelying on gut instinct and personal experience, managers keep failing to critically examine—much less challenge—the ideas their decisions are based on. To correct this problem they need to think and act... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Decision Making; Science; Leadership Style

Read Now

January 1998 (Revised February 1998)
Case

Sideco Americana S.A. (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Harold F. Hogan Jr

This case focuses on a decision the Sideco management team faces when customers of its newly acquired and privatized water and sewer company neglect to pay its bills. Describes the effort to transform an old-style Argentine construction and engineering company into a... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Transformation; Business or Company Management; Values and Beliefs; Argentina

October 2012
Case

Harrah's Entertainment

By: Paul A. Gompers, Kristin Mugford and J. Daniel Kim

This case examines the issues of establishing and managing a capital structure for the leveraged buyout of Harrah's Entertainment. View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Debt Markets; Loan Contracts; Covenants; Casinos; Gaming; Private Equity; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

December 1997 (Revised December 2013)
Case

CCBN.COM

By: William A. Sahlman

A new service is being developed to help investor-relations managers at public companies communicate with investors over the Internet. View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Service Operations; Internet

13 May 2015
News

Activists losing mojo?

23 Jun 2016
Video

What is Your Best Self?

August 1979
Case

Claire McCloud

Describes the situation faced by a young MBA with an economics background who is offered the opportunity to manage a high technology fiber optics business. Designed to facilitate exploring the skills and knowledge that the general manager of a technology-based firm... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Management Skills; Technology Industry

Peter Tufano is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and Senior Advisor to the Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. From 2011 to 2021, he served as the Peter Moores Dean at View Details

August 2012 (Revised October 2015)
Technical Note

A Note on Trust

By: Jim Sharpe and Charles H. Green

The effective manager and leader understands and appreciates trust at both the personal and the organizational levels. Most managers focus more on being trusted than on trusting. The best way to be trusted is to be worthy of trust—to be trustworthy. View Details

Keywords: Turnarounds; Leadership Skills; Financial Crisis; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Trust; Management Style; Leadership Style

October 2007 (Revised October 2009)
Case

Global Climate Change and BP

By: Forest L. Reinhardt and Mikell Hyman

Following the sudden resignation of Sir John Browne, Tony Hayward, BP CEO, must decide how global climate change management will figure into BP's corporate strategy. Climate change management was a major part of BP's strategy under Browne: In 1997 Browne broke from his... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Climate Change; Corporate Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Management Teams; Environmental Sustainability; Government and Politics; Energy Sources; Global Strategy; Operations; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry; United Kingdom

February 2001 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Wipro Technologies (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Suma Raju

The new general manager of Wipro's software services division has been brought on board from General Electric to develop the division into a leading provider of software services to the world's largest corporations. A native of India who received management training in... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Transformation; Change Management; Human Resources; Software; Information Technology Industry; India

Amit Goldenberg is an assistant professor in the Negotiation Organization & Markets unit, an affiliate with Harvard’s View Details

2010
Working Paper

Just Say No to Wall Street: Putting A Stop to the Earnings Game

By: Joseph Fuller and Michael C. Jensen

Putting an end to the "earnings game" requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative by avoiding earnings guidance and managing expectations in such a way that their stocks trade reasonably close to their intrinsic value. In place of earnings forecasts, management should... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Performance Expectations; Goals and Objectives; Risk and Uncertainty; Growth and Development Strategy; Decisions; Risk Management; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Value; Projects

SSRN

October 2021 (Revised September 2022)
Case

SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Pippa Armerding, Gamze Yucaoglu and Fares Khrais

The case opens in August 2021, as Habib and Shahysta Hassim, husband and wife co-founders of the data labeling company SmartOne, contemplate the strategy of the high growth company. Between 2016 and 2021, SmartOne had kept doubling its size every two years and now,... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Data Labeling; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Operations; Business Model; Growth Management; Growth and Development Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Africa; Madagascar; Europe; France; United States