Short-termism - Publications - Faculty & Research

01 Sep 2016
News

The Big Business of Little Loans

Banks. Amid the excitement, abuses have also appeared, with some online lenders reportedly charging as much as 50 percent in interest on some short-term loans. It’s been enough to attract the attention of regulators, with everyone from... View Details

Keywords: Nancy Miller

01 Apr 1998
News

Microfinance's Big Payoff: Michael Chu and ACCION International

short-term business loans to the self-employed poor. Chu, a native of China, grew up in Montevideo, Uruguay. After graduating from Dartmouth and HBS, he held senior management positions with several firms, including The Boston Consulting... View Details

26 Aug 2009
Op-Ed

Where Cash for Clunkers Ran Off the Road

short-term incentive programs designed to shape consumer purchase behavior. It has no experience in such initiatives and proved itself incapable of forecasting demand associated with different incentive levels. And the auto industry... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Auto

05 Jul 2006
Op-Ed

Corporate Governance Activists are Headed in the Wrong Direction

Long-term investors? Short-term investors? Transient investors? In addition, how are dispersed shareholders to sort out which nominees deserve their "for" votes? In the case of re-nominations, how is an incumbent's past... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Hinsey

24 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

In Troubled Africa, Botswana Flowers

(diamonds) and have managed this resource extremely well. Working with De Beers, the government has consistently and strategically limited its sales of diamonds, striving to keep prices steady over the long run rather than maximizing View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

01 Sep 2009
News

From Bytes to Bites

2001 she came on board full-time to help run Hearon’s company, Nice Ventures. “It was going to be a short-term change,” she recalls. “I thought I’d bring in some new financing, we’d restructure, and I’d go back to working in Silicon... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Food Services and Drinking Places; Hospitality; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

01 Mar 2011
News

The Rankings Game

short-term “fixes” to move up in the rankings rather than focusing on long-term educational quality. As tensions rose, HBS and Wharton declared in 2004 that the media rankings were “meaningless beauty contests,” and they would no longer... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; rankings; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

15 Nov 2016
First Look

November 15, 2016

Falato, Antonio, and David Scharfstein Abstract—We present evidence that pressure to maximize short-term stock prices and earnings leads banks to increase risk. We start by showing that banks increase risk when they transition from... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

07 Sep 2007
What Do You Think?

Are Elite Business Schools Fostering the Deprofessionalization of Management?

of managers and shareholders. Takeovers were favored as a means of enforcing the urgency of such alignment. At about this time, according to Khurana, deregulation came along that both made it possible and more tempting for agents to act in ways that served the View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

14 Dec 2018
Blog Post

The ABCs of Recruiting at HBS

First-year students participate in a Global Immersion at the end of the second semester. They travel all over the world participating in short-term consulting projects that add value to our global company partners and help students build... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

01 Oct 2002
News

Sam Hayes

could do one thing, I would eliminate quarterly reports. While I think the best market is a well-informed market, I believe we've created a short-term numbers game that plays to the darker side of managerial action, and is a negative... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons

20 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

How CEOs Sustain Higher-Ambition Goals

At a recent Harvard Business School conference, dozens of CEOs committed to the idea of working toward "higher-ambition" goals that go beyond just short-term shareholder value. Inspired by the book Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

16 Jul 2021
Op-Ed

For Entrepreneurs, the Benefits of Slowing Down

historically putting off building a robust platform in order to meet short-term customer needs), process debt (taking shortcuts for the sake of expediency to get things done without stopping to make core business process robust and... View Details

Keywords: by Jeffrey Bussgang

25 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

MNCs in Asia: Investing in the Future

contributed to the development of a business-oriented society with increased short-term opportunity for MNCs. "The dot-com bubble brought practices, ambitions, and goals to China that are here to stay," he added.... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

01 Dec 2015
First Look

December 1, 2015

the value of long-term relative to short-term investments. Empirically, we can, therefore, compare the reduction of long-term relative to short-term investments within firms, allowing for firm-times-year... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty Views on Debt Crisis

at stake but which, more to the point, are S&P's customers, appear to have ignored the agency's opinion entirely. Revealingly, S&P simultaneously "affirmed the 'A-1+' short-term Rating" for the United States, suggesting... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

29 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

Hunting for a Hot Job in High Tech? Try 'Digitization Economist'

marketplaces. The way marketplaces and intermediaries rank offers from sellers or service-providers can be thought of as an incentive system. Economists are well positioned to analyze issues such as short-term user behavior and the... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Technology; Education

22 Mar 2017
Research & Ideas

What's the Ideal Frequency for a Sales Quota?

study: A company’s quota structure should be tied directly to its sales strategy. “If you want to increase revenue, just purely increase revenue, especially on a short-term basis, then maybe it makes sense to go to a frequent quota,”... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

18 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Leading Innovation is the Art of Creating ‘Collective Genius’

miles from Burbank, California, to Emeryville, near San Francisco, setting the systems up over a weekend. The move worked and the studio hit both deadlines. The book cites short-term innovation, in the decision to borrow the computers,... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

23 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Businesses Need a 'Catalyst' to Make CSR Practices Stick

modernization of the ecosystem, not just one enterprise. This often requires structuring a special purpose vehicle that can manage shared risks and returns. Buy-in. The company must obtain buy-in of regional managers by adjusting performance goals to account for... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Publications