Publications

04 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Want to Make Diversity Stick? Break the Cycle of Sameness

and people of color to senior roles tend to hire people with similar demographics to replace them when they leave, allowing for diversity to “stick.” The findings also raise an important question at a time when many corporate diversity,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2013
Working Paper

Cross-Border Reverse Mergers: Causes and Consequences

By: Jordan Siegel and Yanbo Wang

We study non-U.S. companies that have used reverse mergers as a means to adopt U.S. corporate law (and sometimes U.S. securities law as well). Early adopters of cross-border reverse mergers and those firms that hired a Big Four auditor exhibited superior corporate... View Details

Keywords: Reverse Merger; Corporate Law; Corporate Governance; Nevada; United States

SSRN

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May 2009
Case

Montgomery County Business Roundtable for Education

By: Allen S. Grossman and Geoff Eckman Marietta

Montgomery County Business Roundtable for Education (MCBRE) was a business-public education partnership with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) that promoted cross-sector knowledge sharing and academic excellence. Its suite of core student programs, such as “720,”... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Knowledge Sharing; Leadership; Partners and Partnerships; Education; Business and Community Relations; Education Industry; United States

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05 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

5 Companies Where Employees Move Up the Ladder Fast

Worker Advancement,” a worker’s choice of company has considerable bearing on how fast they climb the ranks, how likely they are to land a better job elsewhere, and whether they’ll be hired and promoted. The study specifically looks at... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

03 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

When Showing Know-How Backfires for Women Managers

Fixing the impression management problem Feldberg urges managers to be aware of these invisible pressures and for supervisors to hire more women into managerial roles, which reduces this behavior. She found that gender differences in... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Retail; Consumer Products

24 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

Passion at Work Is a Good Thing—But Only If Bosses Know How to Manage It

work actually means, which could lead to unhappy workers and frustrated managers. “As an organization, it’s not enough to just hire people for passion. Leaders also need to learn how to manage for passion.” An analysis of 200 million job... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

26 Apr 2016
First Look

April 26

April 2016 Review of Economic Studies Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring By: Stanton, Christopher, and Catherine Thomas Abstract—Online markets for remote labor services allow workers and firms to contract... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

to operate at scale and consider whether to replace them. Here are a few tips in areas I find to be the most challenging at this stage: People When it comes to employees, there are two areas where CEO/founders often get tripped up as their companies grow: View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

2022
Article

Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium

By: Nathan Wilmers and Letian Zhang

Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Equality and Inequality; Wages; Recruitment

February 2019
Article

The Market for Financial Adviser Misconduct

By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru

We construct a novel database containing the universe of financial advisers in the United States from 2005 to 2015, representing approximately 10% of employment of the finance and insurance sector. We provide the first large-scale study that documents the economy-wide... View Details

Keywords: Financial Advisors; Brokers; Consumer Finance; Financial Misconduct And Fraud; FINRA; Financial Institutions; Crime and Corruption; Organizational Culture; Personal Finance; Financial Services Industry

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November 2015
Case

Katherine Schuler at Boxes & Bins, Inc.

By: Linda A. Hill and James Kindley

This case is about Katherine Schuler, soon to become senior vice president of marketing at a fast-growing retail organization, Boxes & Bins (B&B). Part of Schuler's success has been due to her "fit" into a company with clear values and principles. In particular, B&B... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Personal Development and Career; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry

November 2010
Article

Which of These People Is Your Future CEO?

By: Boris Groysberg, Andrew Hill and Toby Johnson

Americans have long believed that U.S. military officers-trained for high-stakes positions, resilience, and mental agility-make excellent CEOs. That belief is sound, but the authors' analysis of the performance of 45 companies led by CEOs with military experience... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Training; Leadership Style; Managerial Roles; Situation or Environment; United States

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07 Mar 2023
HBS Case

ChatGPT: Did Big Tech Set Up the World for an AI Bias Disaster?

computer systems to recognize text and image. While at Stanford, Gebru collaborated with AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, who had hired people to tag the contents of 15 million images, noting if they included a cat or a cello. This dataset would... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Technology

05 Dec 2022
What Do You Think?

How Would Jack Welch’s Leadership Style Fare in Today’s World?

He didn’t hire acolytes. I first met him in 1981, after he visited the class of the late HBS professor Richard Vancil, not long after he had become CEO. As we left class, he was in deep discussion with a woman student in the class who had... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Industrial Products; Media & Broadcasting; Medical Devices & Supplies; Manufacturing

27 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

Why Companies Should Share Their DEI Data (Even When It’s Unflattering)

pandemic’s uneven demands on labor markets and supply chains. The study notes that Amazon’s 2020 EEO-1 suggested that three in five workers hired to cover the pandemic surge in sales were people of color, but only 3.6 percent of its... View Details

Keywords: by Shalene Gupta

November 2020
Article

Tackling Youth Unemployment: Evidence from a Labor Market Experiment in Uganda

By: Livia Alfonsi, Oriana Bandiera, Vittorio Bassi, Robin Burgess, Imran Rasul, Munshi Sulaiman and Anna Vitali

We design a labor market experiment to compare demand- and supply-side policies to tackle youth unemployment, a key issue in low-income countries. The experiment tracks 1700 workers and 1500 firms over four years to compare the effect of offering workers either... View Details

Keywords: Employment; Training; Competency and Skills; Developing Countries and Economies

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December 2023 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Research In Motion: Launching and Scaling the World's First Smartphone Empire (A)

By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad

In 2005, Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry smartphone was a sensation. After its launch in 1999, the groundbreaking BlackBerry had captured the hearts and minds of corporate America through its secure wireless email service. The device was so addictive and... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Management Style; Product Development; Managerial Roles; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; United States; Canada

January 2023
Article

Firm-Induced Migration Paths and Strategic Human-Capital Outcomes

By: Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Victoria Sevcenko

Firm-induced migration typically entails firms relocating workers to fill value-creating positions at destination locations. But such relocated workers are often exposed to external employment opportunities at their destinations, possibly triggering turnover. We... View Details

Keywords: Worker Relocation; Turnover; Firm-induced Migration; Smaller Towns; Employee Mobility; Geographic Mobility; Migration; Clusters; Employees; Geographic Location; Performance; Opportunities; Retention; Human Capital; Talent and Talent Management

February 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

San Francisco Ballet: On 'Pointe' for the Future

By: Rohit Deshpandé and Nicole Tempest Keller

The SF Ballet was regarded as one of the top ballet companies in the world. It had an enviable earned revenue percentage of almost 50% and had an internationally recognized ballet school. However, by 2019 the Ballet faced a number of challenges. Ballet was a European... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Demographics; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Cultural Entrepreneurship; United States; San Francisco