Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,475)
- Faculty Publications (1,146)
- October 2007
- Article
The Power of Stars: Do Star Actors Drive the Success of Movies?
By: Anita Elberse
Is the involvement of star actors critical to the success of motion pictures? Film studios, which they regularly pay multimillion-dollar fees to star actors, seem driven by that belief. I shed light on the returns on this investment using an event study that considers... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Baker & McKenzie (A): A New Framework for Talent Management
By: Boris Groysberg and Eliot Sherman
Describes the process by which the largest law firm in the world developed a unique framework for personnel management. In 2004, John Conroy is about to take the reigns as the leader of Baker and McKenzie, the largest law firm in the world by employees, with offices in... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised July 2008)
- Case
HCL Technologies (A)
When Vineet Nayar became president of HCL Technologies, a global IT services business, in April 2005, he knew the company needed drastic change. Since its founding as a hardware company in the 1970s, HCL had grown into an enterprise with $3.7 billion in revenues and a... View Details
- 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 March 2008)
- Case
Lazard LLC
By: Guhan Subramanian and Eliot Sherman
Describes Lazard's situation in 2001, and supplies context for the subsequent negotiation between its Chairman and his hand-picked successor. In 2001 Lazard, the last of the great investment houses to remain both private and in the control of its founding family, is in... View Details
- May 2007 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Biocon Limited
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Ananth Chepuri
Biocon Limited was facing significant pricing pressure in their cash cow business, that primarily consisted of manufacturing Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). To combat this commoditization, Biocon's leadership had chosen an innovation-led strategy. This new... View Details
- May 2007
- Article
Inner Work Life: Understanding the Subtext of Business Performance
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer
Anyone in management knows that employees have their good days and their bad days and that, for the most part, the reasons for their ups and downs are unknown. Most managers simply shrug their shoulders at this fact of work life. But does it matter, in terms of... View Details
- 2007
- Chapter
Expanding Ethical Standards of HRM: Necessary Evils and the Multiple Dimensions of Impact
By: Joshua D. Margolis, Adam M. Grant and Andrew Molinsky
- March 2007 (Revised June 2007)
- Case
Wal-Mart, 2007
By: David B. Yoffie and Michael Slind
In 2007, Wal-Mart faced challenges to its historically high growth rate. Lagging same-store sales and setbacks overseas led the company to consider strategic shifts. Wal-Mart was the world's largest retailer, but competition had become particularly acute as the company... View Details
- February 2007
- Case
South African Airways (A)
By: Joshua D. Margolis, Laura Morgan Roberts and Laura Winig
Amid efforts to engineer a turnaround at South African Airways (SAA), the CEO confronts an impending strike at the struggling company. How should the company address questions of distributive and procedural justice in post-Apartheid South Africa, and how should the CEO... View Details
- January 2007
- Article
Acquisitions and Firm Growth: Creating Unilever's Ice Cream and Tea Business
By: G. Jones and Peter Miskell
This article provides a longitudinal case study of the use of acquisitions by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever to build the world's largest ice cream and tea businesses. The study supports recent resource-based theory which argues that complementary rather than... View Details
- winter 2006
- Article
Allocating Shareholder Capital to Pension Plans
By: Robert C. Merton
- November 2006 (Revised August 2008)
- Supplement
China Resources Corporation (B): China Resources Microelectronics
By: Dennis Campbell and David Lane
Supplements the (A) case. Late in October 2006, China Resources (Holdings) Co., Ltd. (CRC) CEO Charlie Song Lin, CFO Jiang Wel, and Information Center GM Derek Cheng were traveling from Hong Kong to Wuxi, China to attend the first ever meeting of China Resources... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised May 2007)
- Case
Hewlett-Packard Company: The War Within
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Jay W. Lorsch, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Eliot Sherman
In September 2006 it was revealed that the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) had been carrying out an extended investigation of its own employees, board members, and journalists outside the company. The investigation was launched in response to a series of leaks to the... View Details
Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Employee Relationship Management; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Communication Technology; Conflict and Resolution; Newspapers; Computer Industry; Information Technology Industry
- October 2006 (Revised May 2007)
- Case
King Arthur Flour
By: Thomas J. DeLong, James Holian and Joshua Weiss
Steve Voigt, the CEO of King Arthur Flour, must determine how the company can continue to grow, whilst preserving its unique culture. In 1996, the company was sold to employees in as ESOP transaction. The following decade saw significant growth, despite declining sales... View Details
- October 2006 (Revised July 2007)
- Case
China Resources Corporation (A): 6S Management
By: Dennis Campbell and David Lane
In 2006, Jiang Wei, CFO of China Resources Corporation, was seeking to implement a variety of new management control systems in a complex diversified corporation during a period of rapid economic expansion in mainland China. Instilling efficiency, productivity,... View Details
- September 2006 (Revised May 2007)
- Case
GE's Jeff Immelt: The Voyage from MBA to CEO
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Andrew N. McLean
GE believes its ability to develop management talent is a core competency that represents a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Traces the development of a 25-year-old MBA named Jeff Immelt, who 18 years later is named as CEO of GE, arguably the biggest and... View Details
- September 2006 (Revised November 2008)
- Case
Supergrid
Supergrid is a mammoth wind-power development scheme for Europe, recently proposed by Airtricity. This firm, founded in 1997, is a fast-growing power-development company focused on wind. Already having built about 600 megawatts of wind turbines in Scotland and Ireland,... View Details
- September 2006 (Revised May 2008)
- Supplement
Corporate Responsibility & Community Engagement at the Tintaya Copper Mine (B)
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Brooke Barton and Ezequiel Reficco
Engaging local stakeholders and building strong relations has become a strategic imperative for multinational firms in the often politically charged mining, oil, and gas sectors. For BHP Billiton, the world's second largest mining company, its Tintaya copper mine in... View Details