Publications

Person Page

Course Development

By: Debora L. Spar

Managing International Trade and Investment

Despite the ease with which it is often conducted, doing business across borders is not the same as doing it at home. Rather, it entails a whole new set of managerial challenges: re-assessing competitive... View Details

30 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 30, 2019

Sneakers Game “Our goal is to be the kind of start-up that would terrify Nike—if Nike didn’t already own us.” Ron Faris, general manager of S23NYC, a Manhattan-based digital studio owned by sports apparel... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

12 Sep 2023
Blog Post

Harvard Climate Entrepreneurs Circle: Taking Climate Solutions from Idea to Action, Faster

Sustainability Manager at HBS, and Leah Ricci, Associate Director of Sustainability and Energy Management at HBS–who were members of Harvard’s Environmental and Sustainability Professionals Network,... View Details

01 Dec 2022
News

Future Vision

Illustration by PJ Loughron Illustration by PJ Loughron How has your experience as Dean of the School differed from your experience as a member of the faculty? Being on campus and engaging with faculty,... View Details

Keywords: Brian Kenny; Educational Support Services; Educational Services

2016
Article

The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence, and Exceptions

By: Lyra J. Colfer and Carliss Y. Baldwin

The mirroring hypothesis predicts that organizational ties within a project, firm, or group of firms (e.g., communication, collocation, employment) will correspond to the technical dependencies in the work being performed. This article presents a unified picture of... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Mirroring Hypothesis; Organization Design; Conway's Law; Knowledge Boundaries; Relational Contracts; Open Source Software; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Boundaries; Knowledge Management; Applications and Software

01 Jun 2013
News

Mind Your Manners

charges $16,000 for a three-month "hostess course" on manners, entertaining, and decorum. Including, but by no means limited to, how to use a knife and fork, the teachings of her institute, Ho explained, constitute "the first step in... View Details

Keywords: etiquette; Arts, Sports, Language, Driving, and Other Schools; Educational Services

April 1942 (Revised December 1982)
Case

Dashman Co.

The vice president in charge of purchasing sends a letter to each of the company's 20 purchasing executives requesting that contracts made in excess of $10,000 be cleared with him prior to signing. The branches promise to cooperate, but no notices of negotiations are... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Accounting; Business Processes

Educators

September 1992 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Exxon: Communications After Valdez

By: Stephen A. Greyser and Nancy Langford

Focuses on the communications in the period immediately following the March 24, 1989 Alaska oil spill caused by the Exxon Valdez. Includes the text of Exxon Chairman Rawl's "open letter" in an April 3 newspaper advertisment. Addresses the timing and content of... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Communication; Crisis Management; Marketing Communications

Educators

15 Aug 2019
Blog Post

Stan Chang: “A Guided Experience into the World of Entrepreneurship”

An engineer by training, Stan Chang, MS/MBA 2020 candidate in the SEAS/HBS joint degree program, came to Harvard to “balance a business curriculum with an advanced engineering education. When I saw the curriculum here and the focus on... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Entrepreneurship

November 1974
Case

Job Corps

Describes the efforts of the director of Job Corps to stave off the destruction of his agency by the Nixon administration. In this process, the director built extensive power bases which he mobilized in support of Job Corps. The end result was that Job Corps was not... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Nonprofit Organizations; Power and Influence; Business and Government Relations

Educators

24 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 24, 2009

Using Excel 2007: A Step-by-Step Approach Harvard Business School Note 109-052 The objective of this note is to provide a set of easy, step-by-step guides for some analytical techniques that are useful in the analysis of cases discussed... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Forthcoming
Article

Eliciting Advice Instead of Feedback Improves Developmental Input

By: Hayley Blunden, Ariella Kristal, Ashley Whillans, Jaewon Yoon, Hannah Burd, Georgina Bremner and Michael Yeomans

Most organizations encourage employees to provide feedback to one another to support learning, personal growth, and career advancement. However, employee feedback often fails to improve performance because it lacks concrete, specific guidance. We provide a temporal... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Personal Development and Career; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Evaluation

Article

What Do Nongovernmental Organizations Do?

By: Eric D. Werker and Faisal Z. Ahmand

Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers... View Details

Keywords: Non-Governmental Organizations; Growth and Development; Welfare or Wellbeing; Poverty; Service Delivery; Crime and Corruption; Social Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Resource Allocation; Product Development; Framework

2008
Working Paper

Bank Accounting Standards in Mexico. A Layman's Guide to Changes 10 Years after the 1995 Bank Crisis

By: Gustavo A. Del Angel, Stephen Haber and Aldo Musacchio

After the 1995 crisis, the Mexican banking system experienced significant changes in bank accounting standards. Most of these changes took place between 1996 and 2001, and had a significant impact in the structure and interpretation of financial information of banks.... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Accounting; Standards; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Mexico

Article

More-Experienced Entrepreneurs Have Bigger Deadline Problems

By: Andy Wu, Aticus Peterson and Amy Meeker

Professor Andy Wu and doctoral candidate Aticus Peterson of Harvard Business School tracked 314 entrepreneurs who launched multiple technology hardware products on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter from September 2010 to June 2019. The more projects the founders... View Details

Keywords: Deadlines; Entrepreneurship; Projects; Time Management

Register to Read

01 Dec 2019
News

Developing Leaders Who Bridge Business and Engineering

will provide financial aid for students in the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program, offered jointly by HBS and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The gift reflects the Boston-based donors’... View Details

11 Apr 2024
News

Mission Control

Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify More Skydeck episodes Hi, this is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck. By the time Peter Platzer (MBA 2002) was a teenager, he knew he wanted to be a physicist—and he was fascinated View Details

January – February 2011
Article

Benchmarks as Limits to Arbitrage: Understanding the Low-Volatility Anomaly

By: Malcolm Baker, Brendan Bradley and Jeffrey Wurgler

Contrary to basic finance principles, high-beta and high-volatility stocks have long underperformed low-beta and low-volatility stocks. This anomaly may be partly explained by the fact that the typical institutional investor's mandate to beat a fixed benchmark... View Details

Keywords: Volatility; Stocks; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Risk Management; Performance Expectations