Publications

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March 2008
Course Overview Note

Dynamic Markets

By: Joshua D. Coval and Erik Stafford

The Dynamic Markets course at Harvard Business School is organized around the hands-on application of financial decision making in a wide variety of capital market settings. The course relies heavily on in-class simulations of a range of market settings where students... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Decision Making; Capital Markets; Competitive Strategy; Profit; Applications and Software; Information; Strategy; Price; Outcome or Result; Curriculum and Courses; Theory

2025
Working Paper

Bank Capital and the Growth of Private Credit

By: Sergey Chernenko, Robert Ialenti and David Scharfstein

We show that business development companies (BDCs), a significant source of private credit, are very well capitalized according to bank capital frameworks. These types of private credit funds have median risk-based capital ratios of about 36%, which is 26 percentage... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Capital; Credit; Financial Institutions

SSRN

Web

Employment Data

3% Entertainment / Media 3% Health Care 6% Investment Banking 5% Investment Management / Hedge Fund 6% Manufacturing 5% Nonprofit / Government 5% Other Financial Services 4% Private Equity 19% Retail 2% Services 3% Technology 16% Venture... View Details

Joseph L. Bower

JOSEPH L. BOWER, Donald K. David Professor Emeritus, has been a leader in general management at Harvard Business School for 51 years. He also served on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School during its first decade. He has served in many administrative roles... View Details

Keywords: financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services

August 2019 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Family Matters: Governance at the Zamil Group

By: Christina R. Wing, Suraj Srinivasan and Esel Çekin

This case focuses on a large Saudi Arabian industrial conglomerate and family business Zamil Group’s corporate and family governance journey. The 12 sons of the founder led and grew the group successfully after taking over from their father in 1961. The secret to their... View Details

Keywords: Middle East; Family Ownership; Family-owned Business; Saudi Arabia; Family Business; Governance; Organizational Structure; Values and Beliefs; Steel Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia; Bahrain

03 Feb 2018
Op-Ed

How to Heed BlackRock's Call for Corporate Social Responsibility

Larry Fink recently created a shockwave. As cofounder, chairman, and CEO of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest global asset management firms, in an open letter to CEOs he caught the attention of financial markets and beyond by insisting on the importance of... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Battilana

May 2010 (Revised September 2013)
Case

Friend Bank: The Time for Hope

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

In 2010, Friend Bank was entering the fifth year of Hope Harris Johnson's ambitious 20-year growth plan to transform her family's one branch community bank into an institution with a substantial presence in southeastern Alabama. Harris Johnson was pleased, so far, with... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Growth and Development Strategy; Risk Management; Family Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Banking Industry; Alabama

July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Case

Rosalind Fox at John Deere

By: Anthony Mayo and Olivia Hull

Rosalind Fox, the factory manager at John Deere’s Des Moines, Iowa plant, has improved the financial standing of the factory in the three years she’s been at its helm. But employee engagement scores—which measured employees’ satisfaction with working conditions and... View Details

March 2008 (Revised November 2008)
Case

Databank in Africa

By: Jordan Siegel and Yi Kwan Chu

This case tackles issues of regional strategy and strategic institutional arbitrage. Databank is a financial services firm designing its regional strategy for Africa and seeking to benefit from institutional arbitrage. View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Local Range; Emerging Markets; Service Operations; Business Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Africa

21 Aug 2023
Book

You’re More Than Your Job: 3 Tips for a Healthier Work-Life Balance

Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card, which explains how to treat work-life calibration as you would a financial portfolio, through concepts like diversification. “There’s a calculus of:... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

June 2017
Case

Obesity Management at Kaiser Permanente: A New Mindset for Healthcare Delivery?

By: Kevin Schulman, Gregory Leya and Christina Beveridge

Kaiser Permanente (KP) is the largest managed care organization in the United States with over 10 million members. KP evolved from a prepayment or capitation model that focuses the organization around the efficiency of care and the health of the population it serves.... View Details

Keywords: Operations; Health Care and Treatment; Business Model; Strategy; Health Industry; United States

2014
Article

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in China: Symbol or Substance?

By: Christopher Marquis and Cuili Qian

This study focuses on how and why firms strategically respond to government signals regarding appropriate corporate activity. We integrate institutional theory and research on corporate political strategy to develop a political dependence model that explains (a) how... View Details

Keywords: Institutional Theory; Political Strategy; Non-market Strategy; China; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Emerging Markets; Government and Politics; China

16 Jun 2021
Blog Post

Seeing Everyday as a New Adventure: Reflections for Father's Day

Chad Losee, HBS MBA 2013 graduate and current HBS Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, shares his experience being a dad to his four boys. Tell us about your family. My wife and I have four growing boys. Lots of energy... View Details

January – February 2011
Article

Creating Shared Value

By: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer

The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business has been criticized as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely thought to be prospering at the expense of their communities. Trust in business has fallen to new... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Economic Growth; Economic Systems; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Trust; Human Needs; Welfare; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

10 Nov 2009
First Look

First Look: Nov. 10

in a multi-platform bundle. Dominant firms otherwise sheltered from entry by standalone rivals can be vulnerable to an adjacent platform provider's envelopment attack. We develop a taxonomy of envelopment attacks and analyze conditions... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2022
Working Paper

Why Do Index Funds Have Market Power? Quantifying Frictions in the Index Fund Market

By: Zach Y. Brown, Mark Egan, Jihye Jeon, Chuqing Jin and Alex A. Wu

Index funds are one of the most common ways investors access financial markets and are perceived to be a transparent and low-cost alternative to active investment management. Despite these purported virtues of index fund investing and the introduction of new products... View Details

Keywords: Mutual Funds; Passive Investing; Asset Management; Financial Markets; Investment Funds; Financial Management; Financial Services Industry; United States

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June 2010 (Revised January 2019)
Case

The Guggenheims and Chilean Nitrates

By: Geoffrey Jones and Felipe Tamega Fernandes

The case describes the growth of Guggenheim Brothers as one of the largest mining companies in the world in the early twentieth century. Global expansion led the firm to Chile, first in copper and later in natural nitrates. Chile's economic growth was driven by the... View Details

Keywords: History; Venture Capital; Business History; Entrepreneurship; Globalization; Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Crisis; Mining Industry; Chile