Publications

Find at Harvard

June 2014 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Focus Financial Partners and the U.S. RIA Industry in 2014

By: Luis Viceira and Emily A. Chien

In the Spring of 2014, Rudy Adolf, CEO and founder of Focus Financial, and the two other co-founders of the firm are considering alternative growth strategies to solidify Focus Financial's position as a leading aggregator of independent wealth management firms in the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry

Educators

28 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

Keep or Cut Workers? How Companies Reacted to the COVID-19 Crisis

governance,” Rouen says, others with similar levels of cash did not share these characteristics. Firms with strong financial positions that weren’t committed to their workforces were just as likely to lay off staff as companies with... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

26 Apr 2022
Book

What Does Your Business Stand For? Why Building Trust Starts with Purpose

“A lot of team members have really similar experiences,” Sneath said. “They feel connected, engaged, and proud of what we’re building.” They come to trust the company, its leadership, and the moral community of which they are a part, for... View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati

24 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Yelp Factor: Are Consumer Reviews Good for Business?

restaurant's success, Luca took advantage of the fact that Yelp rounds its ratings to the nearest half-star-so, for example, a 3.26 rating would be rounded up to 3.5 stars, and a 3.24 rating would be rounded down to 3 stars. Hence restaurants with View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

09 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Industry Self-Regulation: What’s Working (and What’s Not)?

accusations that it claimed to do something but then failed to deliver on it. This charge is called greenwashing when the claims are related to the environment, but similar charges are also being levied at firms that adopt codes of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restaurant Revolution: How the Industry Is Fighting to Stay Alive

we were busy applying for loans. Then, we did consider delivery and take out but not every menu item in our restaurant is designed to be delivery-friendly. And, delivery is not that profitable given that apps like Uber Eats take 30 percent of your revenue in fees.”... View Details

Keywords: by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery; Food & Beverage

14 Aug 2006
HBS Case

On Managing with Bobby Knight and “Coach K”

about the heart, it's about family, it's about seeing the good in people and bringing the most out of them," says Snook. Different styles, yes, but the results are similar: After long careers, both have similar win-loss records for... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Sports

October 2019
Case

Agility Africa

By: Juan Alcacer, Caroline M. Elkins and Esel Çekin

This case illustrates the challenge and opportunities that firms face when developing and executing new business models in high-risk, low-infrastructure, low-trust countries. It features a global logistics group, Agility, that aimed to become the leader in supplying... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Expansion; Emerging Markets; Decision Choices and Conditions; Real Estate Industry; Distribution Industry; Africa

Educators

2019
Article

Reflections on 25 Years of Building Social Enterprise Education

By: James E. Austin and V. Kasturi Rangan

Purpose—This paper aims to reflect on 25 years of the Social Enterprise Initiative at the Harvard Business School, examining the processes and thinking involved at key stages of this pioneering Initiative’s implementation and... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise Initiative; Harvard Business School; Social Enterprise; Education; Programs

Find at Harvard

October 2016
Article

Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity

By: Alan MacCormack and Daniel J. Sturtevant

Technical debt is created when design decisions that are expedient in the short-term increase the costs of maintaining and adapting this system in future. An important component of technical debt relates to decisions about system architecture. As systems grow and... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Performance Efficiency; Applications and Software; Infrastructure

2020
Working Paper

Should Firms Move Talent from the Geographic Periphery to Hubs? A Strategic Human Capital Perspective

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Victoria Sevcenko and Tarun Khanna

A longstanding literature holds that firms should hire and move talent from the geographic periphery to hubs as a means to create value from human capital. They do so, however, at the risk of losing the worker to rivals located in the same geographic hub,... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Selection and Staffing; Employment; Residency; Technology Industry; India

28 Mar 2016
Research & Ideas

What's a Boss Worth?

worker performance. A good boss improves a team’s performance, but researchers aren’t sure why. ©iStockPhoto/Michaeljung “There was tremendous variety in the productivity of workers doing the same task compared to other workers who looked View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Service

18 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

Hazard Warning: The Unacceptable Cost of Toxic Workers

data to decipher traits belonging to toxic workers. The result was anonymized personal data of almost 60,000 workers from 11 firms, about 70 percent of which were based in the United States. The positions were similar front-line, customer... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

21 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

Did Pandemic Stimulus Funds Spur the Rise of 'Meme Stocks'?

While it’s not clear why the third payment didn’t show a similar bump, Greenwood notes markets tend to anticipate behavior ahead of an event. The stocks’ climb may have already been priced in. Several surveys of retail investors... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

2020
Working Paper

Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Raymond Kluender

We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates.... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Financial Distress; COVID-19; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Crisis; Health Pandemics; United States

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