Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(7,523)
- Faculty Publications (1,635)
- Article
Is Saving Lives Your Task or God's?: Religiosity, Belief in God, and Moral Judgment
By: Netta Barak-Corren and Max Bazerman
Should a Catholic hospital abort a life-threatening pregnancy or let a pregnant woman die? Should a religious employer allow his employees access to contraceptives or break with healthcare legislation? People and organizations of faith often face moral decisions that... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Opportunistic Returns and Dynamic Pricing: Empirical Evidence from Online Retailing in Emerging Markets
By: Chaithanya Bandi, Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe and Zhiji Xu
We investigate how dynamic pricing can lead to higher operational costs through more product returns in the online retail industry. Dynamic pricing has been widely applied by many online retailers. Research has shown that, in response to dynamic pricing, some customers... View Details
- Article
The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership
By: Joseph L. Bower and Lynn S. Paine
Agency theory, a new model of governance promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do. The theory regards shareholders as owners of... View Details
- April 14, 2017
- Article
Companies Like United Need to Cultivate Good Judgment, and Free Their Employees to Use It
By: John A. Deighton
United Airlines has pledged to improve its training programs and empower its employees to put customers first in the wake of a video showing a passenger being dragged from a plane. Of all the U.S. air carriers, United should have known the power of social media and... View Details
- April 2017 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Making Target the Target: Boycotts and Corporate Political Activity
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Victor Wu
Through the challenges facing Target, the case examines ways in which corporations can become involved in political and legislative debates and processes, ranging from campaign contributions to lobbying to political activism. In 2016, Target CEO Brian Cornell must... View Details
Keywords: Boycott; Corporate Political Activity; Lobbying; LGBTQ; Campaign Contributions; Campaign Finance; Retail; Shareholder Activism; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Problems and Challenges; Laws and Statutes; Rights; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Media; Political Elections; Taxation; Corporate Accountability; Values and Beliefs; Fairness; Diversity; Customers; Communication; Business and Government Relations; Retail Industry; United States
- April 2017
- Case
The Future of Patent Examination at the USPTO
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Sarah Mehta
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the federal government agency responsible for evaluating and granting patents and trademarks. In 2015, the USPTO employed approximately 8,000 patent examiners who granted nearly 300,000 patents to inventors. As of April... View Details
Keywords: Machine Learning; Telework; Collaborating With Unions; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Trademarks; Knowledge Sharing; Technology Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; District of Columbia
- 2017
- Book
Global Marketing Management: A Casebook
By: John A. Quelch
During the last quarter century, international business was shaken by a revolution in global competition unlike any previously experienced. As companies move through the twenty-first century, they need to be aware of the range of powerful, dynamic, and often... View Details
- Article
Normative Judgments and Individual Essence
By: Julian De Freitas, Kevin P. Tobia, George E. Newman and Joshua Knobe
A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over
time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the
next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types... View Details
Keywords: Concepts; Essentialism; Normative Factors; Persistence; True Self; Morality; Identity; Moral Sensibility; Perception
- April 2017
- Article
The New Look of Deal Protection
By: Guhan Subramanian and Fernán Restrepo
Deal protection in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) evolves in response to Delaware case law and the business goals of acquirers and targets. We construct a new sample of M&A deals from 2003 to 2015 to identify four such areas of evolution in current transactional... View Details
- April 2017
- Article
The Responsibilities and Role of Business in Relation to Society: Back to Basics?
By: Nien-he Hsieh
In this address, I outline a back-to-basics approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm,... View Details
- March 2017
- Case
SKS Microfinance (Abridged)
By: Shawn Cole and Theresa Chen
Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, seeks a venture capital investment to fund his firm. SKS, one of the largest and fastest growing microfinance institutions in India, is a profitable, for-profit institution with a social mission. In what is one of the first... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised December 2017)
- Case
The Ready-Made Garment Industry: A Bangladeshi Perspective (A)
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Saloni Chaturvedi
Responsibility for working conditions in contract factories within the supply chain presents an ongoing challenge for managers and an area of debate. Much of the debate approaches the challenge from the perspective of large global apparel brands. This case helps... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
CEO Activism (A)
By: Michael W. Toffel, Aaron K. Chatterji and Julia Kelley
This case introduces CEO activism, a phenomenon in which business leaders engage in political or social issues that do not relate directly to their companies. The case uses several examples to describe why business leaders are engaging in CEO activism and the potential... View Details
Keywords: Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Environment; Climate Change; Gender Equality; Communication Strategy; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Leadership; Law; Rights; Risk Management; Media; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Religion; Expansion; Strategy; Social Issues; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Indiana; North Carolina
- 2017
- Working Paper
Explaining the Vertical-to-Horizontal Transition in the Computer Industry
This paper seeks to explain the technological forces that led to the rise of vertically integrated corporations in the late 19th century and the opposing forces that led to a vertical-to-horizontal transition in the computer industry 100 years later. I first model the... View Details
- March 2017
- Supplement
eBay vs. Carl Icahn, 2014: Interview with John Donahoe, eBay CEO 2008-2015
By: David B. Yoffie, Eric Baldwin and Tom Ryder
This video, a supplement to HBS Case No. 717-417, features an interview with former eBay CEO John Donahoe, providing his perspective on eBay's response to activist investor Carl Icahn's attack on eBay, which began in January 2014. After giving some of his own... View Details
- Other Article
My Favorite Slide: The Entrepreneurial Gap Applied to Health Care
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Robert Simons
Value-based health care increases physicians’ accountability for patient outcomes. Many have resisted, claiming that patient outcomes are influenced by many forces outside their control, such as patient’s compliance with post-acute and rehab care. The difference... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
Walmart: Navigating a Changing Retail Landscape
By: Michael E. Porter and Jorge Ramirez-Vallejo
As the largest company, by revenue, in the world, Walmart has been a lightning rod for criticism. However, in an attempt to stay ahead of traditional and digital retailers, and keep customers satisfied with evolving demands, the company is strengthening its competitive... View Details
- March 2017
- Exercise
Designing Transformational Customer Experiences
By: Stefan Thomke
Anyone who has recently travelled, gone shopping, or tried to have a problem solved may have little recollection of the experience. Worse yet, some are frustrated by the lack of responsiveness or empathy that they encountered. The reality is that most customer... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised April 2021)
- Module Note
Responsibilities to Society
By: Nien-hê Hsieh
This module note for students outlines an approach to help managers deliver on their responsibilities in relation to society. The approach frames these responsibilities in terms of potential harms to third parties beyond investors, customers, and employees. The... View Details
- March 2017
- Article
Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others
By: Todd Rogers, Richard Zeckhauser, F. Gino, Michael I. Norton and Maurice E. Schweitzer
Paltering is the active use of truthful statements to convey a misleading impression. Across two pilot studies and six experiments, we identify paltering as a distinct form of deception. Paltering differs from lying by omission (the passive omission of relevant... View Details