Publications

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March 2003
Case

Insurer of Last Resort? The Federal Financial Response to September 11

By: David A. Moss and Sarah A. Brennan

Examines the federal financial response to September 11, 2001: the airline bailout, the victim compensation fund, emergency aid to New York and Washington, and terrorism reinsurance. Less than two weeks after the attacks, the government had committed almost $40 billion... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Insurance; Risk Management; United States

This study investigates the comprehensive and multidimensional effects of quota (goal) frequency on sales force performance. The study provides a theory of salespeople’s behavior—aggregate effort and the product type focus—in response to the temporal length of a... View Details

November 2019
Article

The Relevance of Broker Networks for Information Diffusion in the Stock Market

By: Marco Di Maggio, Francesco Franzoni, Amir Kermani and Carlo Sommavilla

This paper shows that the network of relationships between brokers and institutional investors shapes information diffusion in the stock market. We exploit trade-level data to show that central brokers gather information by executing informed trades, which is then... View Details

Keywords: Broker Networks; Institutional Investors; Asset Prices; Business and Shareholder Relations; Institutional Investing; Information; Knowledge Dissemination; Financial Markets; Asset Pricing

Find at Harvard

14 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: Dec. 14

and suggests that corporate diversification can serve an important insurance function for investors. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-101.pdf The Psychological Costs of Pay-for-Performance: Implications for Strategic View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2020 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Governing PG&E

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation’s out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company’s proposed new board. PG&E, which provided electricity and natural... View Details

14 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Process and Performance

Keywords: by Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim; Accounting

03 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Layoffs Can Be Bad Business: 5 Strategies to Consider Before Cutting Staff

The pattern has become painfully predictable in recent years: As the economy shows signs of a slowdown, companies hand out layoff notices to stabilize profitability and calm investor fears. That cycle seems to be in place in the post-pandemic business world, as... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Telecommunications; Technology; Financial Services; Manufacturing

June 2007 (Revised December 2007)
Case

AFL-CIO: Office of Investment and Home Depot

By: Rakesh Khurana and James Weber

Describes the AFL-CIO: Office of Investments activities in their campaign to improve governance at Home Depot by calling attention to Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli's compensation package and the company's poor performance. The AFL-CIO Office of Investments advocates... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Labor Unions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business and Shareholder Relations

March 2010 (Revised February 2014)
Case

Community Health Workers in Zambia: Incentive Design and Management

By: Nava Ashraf and Natalie Kindred

This case examines the various considerations relevant to selecting and compensating workers in a context where their work involves a pro-social component. This is relevant to not only health care in Zambia, but to NGO and public sector workers who are both motivated... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Training; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Mission and Purpose; Non-Governmental Organizations; Motivation and Incentives; Health Industry; Zambia

15 Mar 2024
HBS Case

Let's Talk: Why It's Time to Stop Avoiding Taboo Topics at Work

unease, but it’s still an important conversation to pursue, she says. In many cases, managers would prefer to hear why employees feel they deserve better compensation and attempt to respond, rather than lose those employees to... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

22 Aug 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 23

and equity details with no pushback, the company now contemplated sharing compensation information transparently with the general public. Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/917019-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Employers Favor Men

between one woman and one man. Each candidate’s score results on the easy questions were made available to the hiring official, but employers were not provided workers’ scores on the difficult questions--yet they were additionally told they would receive View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

02 Aug 2011
Working Paper Summaries

To Groupon or Not to Groupon: The Profitability of Deep Discounts

Keywords: by Benjamin Edelman, Sonia Jaffe & Scott Duke Kominers; Retail; Technology

13 Jul 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Economic Catastrophe Bonds

Keywords: by Joshua D. Coval, Jakub W. Jurek & Erik Stafford; Financial Services

March 2020
Article

Synergistic Value in Vertically Integrated Power-to-Gas Energy Systems

By: Gunther Glenk and Stefan Reichelstein

In vertically integrated energy systems, integration frequently entails operational gains that must be traded off against the requisite cost of capacity investments. In the context of the model analyzed in this study, the operational gains are subject to inherent... View Details

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2013
Case

Ningbo FOTILE Kitchen Ware Co., Ltd.

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Zheng Xiaoming, Yuren Fang and Hong Zhang

Since 2008, FOTILE has actively introduced philosophies of the traditional Chinese culture—such as benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and faith—into its management, which it believes to compensate for deficiencies in Western management concepts and creates a new... View Details

Keywords: Human Resource Management; China; Human Resources; Leadership; Management; Strategy; China