Corporate Profits - Publications - Faculty & Research

17 Nov 2011
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Organizational Design

the tools they create. How Can Managers Get The Best Thinking Out Of Support Staff? Managing the Support Staff Identity Crisis Employees not connected directly to profit and loss can suffer from a collective "I-am-not-strategic" identity... View Details

Keywords: Re: Ranjay Gulati & Raffaella Sadun

01 Feb 2008
What Do You Think?

How Sustainable Is Sustainability in a For-Profit Organization?

profitability in the name of sustainability? It remains to be seen whether this initiative is overblown, representing little more than solar panels on the roof of corporate headquarters. This topic comes at... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

30 Sep 2002
Research & Ideas

Use the Psychology of Pricing To Keep Customers Returning

decrease, allowing the club to increase the number of memberships it offers. Q: What do you think of price-optimization software? Can software effectively gauge the market and maximize profit margins? What would you recommend to business... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

18 Jun 2007
Op-Ed

Leveling the Executive Options Playing Field

Harvard Business School professor Mihir A. Desai argues that investors and regulators are served poorly by the U.S. corporate financial reporting system, which allows companies to declare different profit... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai

01 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

Keeping Track: Performance Measurement, Control & Strategy

materials into the classroom and refined the concepts and models through discussions with students in my MBA course, Achieving Profit Goals and Strategies. The result is the fourteen chapters of this book, which includes contributions by... View Details

Keywords: Re: Robert Simons

02 May 2008
What Do You Think?

What is the Future of State Capitalism?

transparency." The question remains as to whether states make very good capitalists. As investors, Michael points out that they are "systematically inefficient—from a profit maximization standpoint." As Paulo Wilson... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

15 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

Deconstructing the Price Tag

production could affect consumer purchase behavior. The researchers found: When a firm voluntarily discloses its costs, the consumer is more attracted to the brand, which increases willingness to buy. "There's this lay intuition that when customers find out that a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail

05 Aug 2015
What Do You Think?

What Happened to the ‘Innovation, Disruption, Technology’ Dividend?

in the field of analytics are focused on improved utilization of productive equipment and materials It is hard to get much GDP growth or wage growth this way, but corporate profits are certainly going up. ... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Computer; Technology

17 Jan 2007
Op-Ed

Learning from Private-Equity Boards

for corporate boards. The yes answer reflects the fact that many productive aspects of corporate governance and control that have proven effective in the private-equity industry were noticeably absent at... View Details

Keywords: by Malcolm Salter; Financial Services

10 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Become a Value Creator

asked how he could pay back the favor. Cash put his arm around his colleague's shoulder and said, "You don't owe me anything, Brian. This is the way we do things here. Just pay it forward." “Shareholder value or profits are... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

30 Jun 2020
Book

Capitalism Is More at Risk Than Ever

The book Capitalism at Risk first appeared in 2011. The problems it identified with social inequality, global trade strife, and environmental degradation have only accelerated by 2020. The new edition of Capitalism at Risk, subtitled How Business Can Lead, is expanded... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

October 1999
Case

Argentina's YFP Sociedad Anonima (E): A New Era

By: Michael Y. Yoshino, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

In June 1999, Spain's former state-owned oil giant Repsol, acquired 97% of YPF, despite opposition from YPF management. The case describes the status of the two companies at the time of the acquisition and highlights concerns expressed by industry analysts on the deal. View Details

Keywords: Non-Renewable Energy; State Ownership; Acquisition; Decisions; Profit; Privatization; Corporate Strategy; Mining Industry; Energy Industry; Argentina; Spain

Citation

Educators

Purchase

19 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Funding Innovation: Is Your Firm Doing it Wrong?

$22 billion on R&D, while Apple spent a relatively paltry $2.5 billion. And yet, since that launch, Apple has far outperformed Nokia in terms of both its profit margins and its reputation for innovation. So what gives? “This was a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

15 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Calderón: Economic Arguments Needed to Fight Climate Change

What do Chinese coal plants and the American legislative branch have in common? They are both major adversaries in the fight against climate change, according to former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón. "The most serious problem is in the United States... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Manufacturing

24 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 24

George Serafeim, and David Wood Abstract—A new generation of corporate reporting-integrated reporting-is emerging that will help investors and other key stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, and NGOs develop a deeper and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

When Do Alliances Make Sense?

thousands of public documents from the Department of the Interior that detailed bid price and profits from 1954 to 1975. He reported his findings in a paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics last year, The Performance of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy; Utilities

03 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 3

Government Efficiency, and Profitability Around the World By: Healy, Paul M., George Serafeim, Suraj Srinivasan, and Gwen Yu Abstract—We examine how cross-country differences in product, capital, and labor market competition, and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

05 Dec 2007
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Marketing

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions to be answered: How can marketing better align with corporate strategy? Can you place a... View Details

04 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Start to Measure Your E-commerce Success

of treating the topic of e-commerce with awe and confusion, we can now discuss the subject more objectively." What follows is an excerpt from his new book, Implementing E-commerce Strategies: A Guide to Corporate Success after the... View Details

Keywords: by Marc J. Epstein

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Three Steps for Crisis Prevention

companies feared that the precedent set by the South African move would undermine their control over valuable intellectual property in the developing world. But the suit sparked international outrage against the industry, prompting a very public and unflattering look... View Details

Keywords: by Michael D. Watkins & Max H. Bazerman

Publications