Publications

June 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Two Key Decisions for China's Sovereign Fund

By: Robert C. Pozen and Xiaoyu Gu

The China Investment Corporation (CIC) was China's sovereign wealth fund (SWF), established with $200 billion of registered capital in September 2007 to diversify China's foreign exchange holdings and increase risk-adjusted returns on those assets. CIC was unusual in... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Business Growth and Maturation; Decisions; Capital; Investment Banking; Investment Funds; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Wealth; Expansion; Financial Services Industry; China; United States

January 2015
Background Note

Note on Economic Inequality (2015)

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

For over half a century, most of the world's economies have enjoyed steady growth and prosperity. However, beginning in the 1980s, and continuing essentially unabated to the present, the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in developed countries has widened,... View Details

Keywords: Economic Inequalty; Income Inequality; Growth and Development; Economics; Equality and Inequality; Society; Problems and Challenges; United States

December 2014 (Revised March 2018)
Case

John D. Rockefeller: The Richest Man in the World

By: Tom Nicholas and Vasiliki Fouka

By the late nineteenth century scale and managerial hierarchies had extended to several major industrial sectors of the U.S. economy. Although the precise mechanisms often varied, this process mainly involved horizontal integration, some form of legal or administrative... View Details

Keywords: Horizontal Integration; Wealth; Business History; Vertical Integration; Consolidation; Personal Development and Career; Energy Industry; United States

10 Jan 2020
News

Competing in the Age of AI

October 2006 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Habitat for Humanity-Egypt

By: Jane Wei-Skillern and Kerry Herman

Habitat for Humanity--Egypt (HFHE), has grown in just seven years to become one of the most successful Habitat programs worldwide. The organization is at a crossroads as it attempts to reach the ambitious goal of serving 10% of the 20 million Egyptians living in... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Construction; Social Issues; Social and Collaborative Networks; Non-Governmental Organizations; Construction Industry; Egypt

Research Summary

Savings among microentrepreneurs

Poverty is often characterized not only by low average income, but also by highly variable income and expenditures, and by a lack of access to insurance services that can help smooth consumption. While commitment devices such as defaults and direct deposits from... View Details

July 1991 (Revised October 1995)
Case

KPMG Peat Marwick: The Shadow Partner

By: Robert G. Eccles Jr.

KPMG Peat Marwick executives needed to decide whether to fund full development of "The Shadow Partner," the name coined to describe a worldwide information network that would link all KPMG professionals to each other and to a wealth of data bases and information... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Data and Data Sets; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology

September 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Esas Group: Investing Together, Staying Together

By: Christina R. Wing and Alpana Thapar

This case opens in June 2022, after Esas Group, one of Turkey’s largest family-owned investment firms, implements a series of changes to professionalize the business and help transition family members from operators to responsible investors. In December 2019, the Group... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Transition; Business or Company Management; Organizational Structure; Governing and Advisory Boards; Governance; Financial Services Industry; Turkey

16 Mar 2021
News

The Management Case for Inclusionary Corporate Purpose

24 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 24, 2008

Working Papers Firm-Size Distribution and Cross-Country Income Differences Authors: Laura Alfaro, Andrew Charlton, and Fabio Kanczuk Abstract We investigate, using firm-level data for 79 developed View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

29 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 29, 2008

Working PapersNone this week Cases & Course MaterialsAvaya (A) Harvard Business School Case 508-048 Avaya's top management wants to improve demand generation. This requires an improvement in the relationship between Sales and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 2009 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Codevasf

By: David E. Bell, Marcos Fava Neves, Luciano Thome e Castro and Natalie Kindred

With many countries facing scarcity of freshwater and farmable land, Brazil decided to leverage its wealth of both resources to attract global agribusiness players to the historically poor Sao Francisco Valley (SFV) in the country's northeast. To do so, Brazil was... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Resource Allocation; Bids and Bidding; Infrastructure; Supply Chain; Business and Government Relations; Natural Environment; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Brazil

2019
Working Paper

Southern Responses to Gold Certification: Cooperate, Compete, Reject, Revise

By: Kristin Sippl

Artisanal gold mining is a Southern subsistence livelihood posing both challenges and opportunities for sustainable development. In 2011, Fairtrade International launched a certification program to address sustainability problems in the sector. Southern activists,... View Details

Keywords: Eco-labeling; Extractive Industries; Emerging Economies; Fair Trade; Environmental Sustainability; Standards; Programs; Governance Compliance; Competition; Adaptation; Mining Industry

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10 Sep 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior

Keywords: by Lalin Anik, Lara B. Aknin, Michael I. Norton & Elizabeth W. Dunn

National Customer Orientation: An Empirical Test across 112 Countries

Customer orientation is a central tenet of marketing. However, less is known about how customer orientation varies across countries and time. Mintz, Currim, and Deshpandé (Eur. J. Mark., 56: 1014–1041, 2022) propose a country-level construct, national customer... View Details

June 2023
Article

National Customer Orientation: An Empirical Test across 112 Countries

By: Ofer Mintz, Imran S. Currim and Rohit Deshpandé

Customer orientation is a central tenet of marketing. However, less is known about how customer orientation varies across countries and time. Mintz, Currim, and Deshpandé (Eur. J. Mark., 56: 1014–1041, 2022) propose a country-level construct, national customer... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Customer Focus and Relationships

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September 12, 2022
Article

Merit or Inherit: How to Approach Succession in a Family Business

By: Josh Baron

One of the most critical questions facing family businesses is how to treat the next generation. They are clearly different from other employees, as current or potential owners of the company, whose wealth and reputation are on the line. On the flip side, most parents... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; Management Succession

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20 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 20, 2008

economicus, model of human behavior that treats managers as selfish maximizers of personal wealth and power. The Homo economicus model implies that a firm's board of directors can best further stockholders'... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 2016 (Revised December 2018)
Case

From Start-Up to Grown-Up Nation: The Future of the Israeli Innovation Ecosystem

By: Elie Ofek and Margot Eiran

In June 2016, Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, wrestled with how to sustain Israel’s strong innovation track record and the country’s reputation as the “startup nation.” Despite the economic miracle the country had wrought since its founding, he... View Details