Publications
Publications
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(3,582)
- Faculty Publications (842)
- 2007
- Working Paper
Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm
This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager 'interpersonal authority' over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised January 2008)
- Case
The Vanguard Group, Inc. in 2006 and Target Retirement Funds
By: Luis M. Viceira
The Vanguard Group is one of the largest asset managers in the U.S., with over $1 trillion in assets, ninety percent of which are mutual fund assets, and more than 12,000 employees at year-end 2006. Vanguard has built a strong reputation as the manager of reference for... View Details
- June 2007
- Case
AARP Foundation (A)
By: Srikant M. Datar, Herman B. Leonard, Marc J. Epstein and Thomas Goodwin
AARP Foundation--a leading non-profit corporation--must create a new "Dashboard" performance measurement tool to track the effectiveness of its new strategic plan. View Details
- 2007
- Chapter
Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey
By: Malcolm Baker, Richard Ruback and Jeffrey Wurgler
Research in behavioral corporate finance takes two distinct approaches. The first emphasizes that investors are less than fully rational. It views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational responses to securities market mispricing. The second approach... View Details
- June 2007
- Article
Efficient Kidney Exchange: Coincidence of Wants in a Structured Market
By: A. E. Roth, Tayfun Sonmez and M. Utku Unver
Patients needing kidney transplants may have donors who cannot donate to them because of blood or tissue incompatibility. Incompatible patient-donor pairs can exchange donor kidneys with other pairs only when there is a "double coincidence of wants." Developing... View Details
- May 2007
- Article
Corporate Financing Decisions When Investors Take the Path of Least Resistance
By: Malcolm Baker, Joshua Coval and Jeremy Stein
We explore the consequences for corporate financial policy that arise when investors exhibit inertial behavior. One implication of investor inertia is that, all else equal, a firm pursuing a strategy of equity-financed growth will prefer a stock-for-stock merger to... View Details
- April 2007
- Article
Wintel: Cooperation and Conflict
We study competitive interactions between Intel and Microsoft, two producers of complementary products. In a system of complements, like the PC, the value of the final product depends on how well the different components work together. This, in turn, depends on the... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics
By: Anita Elberse, Catherine Anthony and Joshua Callahan
It is February 2007, exactly three years before Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics. Judy Rogers, City Manager for the City of Vancouver and a member of the Board of Directors for Vancouver's Organizing Committee (VANOC), is keen to ensure the Games will have a... View Details
- January 2007 (Revised December 2008)
- Case
Mercy Corps: Positioning the Organization to Reach New Heights
By: Allen S. Grossman and Caroline Joan King
Mercy Corps, the world's 5th largest international relief and development agency, is at a turning point. The nonprofit's opportunities to grow and serve a larger number of beneficiaries are unprecedented. By looking at the unique relationship between headquarters and... View Details
- January 2007 (Revised December 2007)
- Case
PSI: Social Marketing Clean Water
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Nava Ashraf and Marie Bell
Senior management at PSI, arguably the world's largest and most successful social marketer with impressive achievements in the field of family planning, HIV/AIDS, and malaria prevention must determine what to do about their slow-to-take-off clean water initiative.... View Details
- August 2006
- Background Note
Analyzing Work Groups
By: Linda A. Hill and Michel Anteby
Work groups are the building blocks of organizations. They are found in all areas of an organization, from research and development to customer service, and at all levels, from the executive suite to the factory floor. Some are incredibly successful, while others are... View Details
- 2006
- Book
Effective Management of Social Enterprises: Lessons from Businesses and Civil Society Organizations in Iberoamerica
By: James E. Austin, Roberto Gutierrez, Enrique Ogliastri and Ezequiel Reficco
- May 2006
- Module Note
Leading Culturally Diverse Teams
By: Robin J. Ely
Describes the Leading Culturally Diverse Teams module (eight class sessions), which teaches students the leadership perspectives and skills necessary to develop high-functioning, culturally diverse teams (teams diverse in, for example, race, ethnicity, gender,... View Details
- April 2006
- Case
Managing a Public Image: Cheri Mack
By: Robin J. Ely and Ingrid Vargas
Cheri Mack, an African-American woman, has just arrived at Harvard Business School after working for three years at a major consulting firm where she learned to adopt the demeanor of her male colleagues in order to fit in. Some of her male classmates are critical of... View Details
- April 2006
- Case
Medical Innovation Beyond MedStar: Mobilizing for National Impact
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Ryan Raffaelli and Michelle Heskett
Dr. Craig Feied, director of MedStar Health's Medical Informatics programs, wanted his innovations to influence national health care. Since joining Washington Hospital Center's Emergency Department in 1995 with Dr. Mark Smith, their information system had become the... View Details
- April 2006
- Background Note
Designing Sustainable Service Models
By: Frances X. Frei
Taught as the second module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations. Addresses the challenge of designing service models that effectively incorporate a customer operating role, as well as how to align operations to deliver value to both the... View Details
- 2006
- Working Paper
Too Motivated?
I show that an agent's motivation to do well (objectively) may be unambiguously bad in a world with differing priors, i.e., when people openly disagree on the optimal course of action. The reason is that an agent who is strongly motivated is more likely to follow... View Details
- January 2006 (Revised October 2007)
- Background Note
Managing Networked Businesses: Course Overview for Students
Provides an overview for students of the MBA elective course Managing Networked Businesses (MNB). MNB focuses on management challenges in businesses that exhibit network effects. The first section of the note explains that such businesses comprise a large and growing... View Details
- Article
Policy Implications of Weak Patent Rights
By: James J. Anton, Hillary Greene and Dennis Yao
Patents vary substantially in the degree of protection provided against unauthorized imitation. In this chapter we explore a range of work addressing the economic and policy implications of "weak" patents—patents that have a significant probability of being overturned... View Details
- 2006
- Working Paper
The Limits of Authority: Motivation versus Coordination
This paper studies the effects of open disagreement on motivation and coordination. It shows how, in the presence of differing priors, motivation and coordination impose conflicting demands on the allocation of authority, leading to a trade-off between the... View Details