Publications

28 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

How Racial Bias Taints Customer Service: Evidence from 6,000 Hotels

Hotels, restaurants, and other businesses in the service industry often thrive or die depending on whether they provide exemplary customer service, but new research shows that the color of a customer’s skin can determine whether the person receives View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

May 2021
Case

Career at a Crossroads? (A)

By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green

A career professional at a major consumer goods company, Kym Lew Nelson is hoping to negotiate a promotion to vice president, which would make her one of the senior-most African American women in the organization. But when Nelson’s white German boss arrives in the... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Negotiation; Race; Gender; Organizational Culture; Prejudice and Bias; United States

May 2021
Supplement

Career at a Crossroads? (B)

By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green

A career professional at a major consumer goods company, Kym Lew Nelson is hoping to negotiate a promotion to vice president, which would make her one of the senior-most African American women in the organization. But when Nelson’s white German boss arrives in the... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Negotiation; Race; Gender; Organizational Culture; Prejudice and Bias

December 2014 (Revised January 2015)
Supplement

Vehbi Koç and the Making of Turkey's Largest Business Group (B)

By: Asli M. Colpan and Geoffrey Jones

The case builds on the earlier (A) case, which described the origins of the Turkish business group established by Vehbi Koç before 1988. This case takes the story forward to 2012 as the Koç group was led by Vehbi's son Rahmi followed by his grandson Mustafa. It... View Details

Keywords: Business Groups; Turkey; Entrepreneurship; Management; Manufacturing Industry; Transportation Industry; Auto Industry; Central Asia; Middle East

29 May 2001
Research & Ideas

Race Does Matter in Mentoring

reached the executive level at his organization. Why did he make it when so many other minorities plateaued in middle management? First, Williams had the good fortune to be hired by Nathan Barrett, a white... View Details

Keywords: by David A. Thomas

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

with formidable challenges. In addition to deciding how many employees should be laid off, management must decide which employees to target (e.g., white collar vs. factory workers, domestic vs. foreign employees, etc.) and set a timetable... View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

February 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Haier: Incubating Entrepreneurs in a Chinese Giant

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Nancy Hua Dai

CEO Zhang Ruimin must plan how to accelerate the growth of self-managed microenterprises. Platforms were Haier’s business platforms operating in five major sectors: white goods transformation, investment and incubation, financial holdings, real estate, and cultural... View Details

Keywords: China; Microenterprise; Appliances; Platform; Change; Innovation; Opportunities; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; China

August 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Influencer-Led Brand Building: Hairitage and the McKnights

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Longtime hairstyle influencer Mindy McKnight had been building her “Cute Girls Hairstyles” audience across numerous online platforms for nearly two decades. Brand incubator Maesa took an innovative approach to producing successful brands: identifying white space in the... View Details

30 Nov 2016
Blog Post

Why I Didn’t Think I’d Get in to HBS

Let’s face it, folks, when you’re an upper middle class white male from suburban New Jersey who worked at a bulge bracket bank following your college graduation, only speaks one language, has no patents to your name, and hasn’t even... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Racial Heterogeneity and Local Government Finances: Evidence from the Great Migration

By: Marco Tabellini

Between 1915 and 1930, during the First Great Migration, more than 1.5 million African Americans migrated from the South to the North of the United States, altering the racial profile of several northern cities for the first time in American history. I exploit this... View Details

Keywords: Migration; Race; City; Financial Condition; Government and Politics; History; United States

SSRN

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18 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 18, 2018

Ratcheting, Competition, and the Diffusion of Technological Change: The Case of Televisions Under an Energy Efficiency Program By: Amano, Tomomichi, and Hiroshi Ohashi Abstract—In differentiated goods markets with societal implications,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

20 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think

and actual behavior, according to the authors. The rapidly developing field of behavioral ethics has described a decision-making process whereby we recognize what we should do—give equal weight to job candidates of all races, for example—but in the end do what we want... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

November 2018 (Revised December 2020)
Technical Note

Initial Coin Offerings in 2018

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Ramana Nanda, Robert F. White and Nathaniel Schwalb

In 2018, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were an emerging fundraising method for blockchain-based projects. As the ecosystem grew, there were many open questions on regulation, pricing, and even which projects were a good fit for blockchain. However, there was already... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Initial Coin Offerings; ICO; Decentralization; Networks; Protocols; Entrepreneurship; Project Finance

Dr. Jill Avery is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration and C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School. She is a respected authority on branding and brand management, customer relationship... View Details

Keywords: consumer products; arts; advertising; automobiles; retailing; fashion; hotels ＆ motels; food; beverage

21 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

Excessive Executive Pay: What’s the Solution?

clubby groups that are widely criticized as the handpicked "captives" of self-serving management. With White House support, congressional leaders are intent on shifting the balance of power in the boardroom away from management.... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson

June 2009
Article

Level Playing Fields in International Financial Regulation

By: Lucy White and Alan Morrison

We analyze the desirability of level playing fields in international financial regulation. In general, level playing fields impose the standards of the weakest regulator upon the best-regulated economies. However, they may be desirable when capital is mobile because... View Details

Keywords: Economy; International Finance; Multinational Firms and Management; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Standards; Banking Industry