Publications

2008
Other Unpublished Work

The Paranoid Style in the Study of American Politics

By: David Moss and Mary Oey

The conventional view is that political actors, like economic actors, pursue their self interest, and that special interest groups dominate the policy making process by satisfying policy makers' need for money and other forms of political support. Indeed, many... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Government Legislation; Media; Interests; Power and Influence; Public Opinion; United States

08 Dec 2020
Research & Ideas

Why Companies Hunt for Talent on Digital Platforms, Not in Resume Piles

apply, firms can now hop on a platform and pick out talent they think would be an especially good fit for their needs. When Koning and his colleagues set out to learn how many workers were being recruited versus applying for jobs... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Employment

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

What’s Law Got to Do with It: A Systems Approach to Management

Keywords: by Constance E. Bagley; Legal Services

September 2003 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Best Buy Co., Inc. (A): An Innovator's Journey

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Brian DeLacey

The CEO of Best Buy, a hugely successful retailing company, has hired consulting firm Strategos to imbue the company with an improved innovative capability. The six-month program of experimental learning yields new business ideas and also trains Best Buy employees as... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Management Teams; Creativity; Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employees; Learning; Training; Programs; Retail Industry; United States

Educators

January 2014
Case

CleanSpritz

By: John A. Quelch and Alisa Zalosh

Sales of CleanSpritz all-purpose cleaning spray have been steadily declining for the past five years, and management believes the decline correlates to a growing environmental concern among U.S. consumers. CleanSpritz's management is considering several options to... View Details

Keywords: Product Positioning; Competition; Marketing Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Improvement; Environmental Sustainability; Product Launch; Product Development; Consumer Products Industry

Educators

03 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 3

and labor markets but find no evidence that product market efficiency affects the relative value of diversification. These results provide support for the theory of internal capital markets that argues that internal capital allocation... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2012
Working Paper

~Why Do We Redistribute so Much but Tag so Little? Normative Diversity, Equal Sacrifice and Optimal Taxation

By: Matthew Weinzierl

Tagging is a free lunch in conventional optimal tax theory because it eases the classic tradeoff between efficiency and equality. But tagging is used in only limited ways in tax policy. I propose one explanation: conventional optimal tax theory has yet to capture the... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cost; Framework; Policy; Taxation; Analytics and Data Science; Performance Efficiency; United States

SSRN

Profile

Katie Laidlaw

Why was getting a degree from HBS important to you? HBS attracts people similar to me, yet different from me in every way. I was particularly drawn to challenging myself in this learning environment and meeting new people from around the... View Details

Keywords: Consulting

Article

Maimonides' Ladder: States of Mutual Knowledge and the Perception of Charitability

By: Julian De Freitas, Peter DiScioli, Kyle A. Thomas and Steven Pinker

Why do people esteem anonymous charitable giving? We connect normative theories of charitability (captured in Maimonides’ Ladder of Charity) with evolutionary theories of partner choice to test predictions on how attributions of charitability are affected by states of... View Details

Keywords: Charity; Reciprocity; Partner Choice; Common Knowledge; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Knowledge; Perception

Read Now

2011
Book

Do More Than Give: The Six Practices of Donors Who Change the World

By: Leslie Crutchfield, John Kania and Mark R. Kramer

Do More Than Give provides a blueprint for individuals, philanthropists, and foundation leaders to increase their impact. Based on Forces for Good, this groundbreaking book demonstrates how the six practices of high-impact nonprofits apply to donors... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

25 Aug 2015
First Look

First Look Tuesday

mitigates information costs for buyers and sellers and thus facilitates transactions in the market for ideas. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=45527 Coactive Vicarious Learning: Towards a Relational View Details

February 2015
Article

Location Choices under Strategic Interactions

By: Juan Alcacer, Cristian Dezso and Minyuan Zhao

The literature on location choices has mostly emphasized the impact of location and firm characteristics. However, most industries with a significant presence of multi-location firms are oligopolistic in nature, which suggests that strategic interaction among firms... View Details

Keywords: Location Strategies; Multinational Strategy; Oligopolistic Competition; Firm Heterogeneity; Geographic Location; Multinational Firms and Management; Balance and Stability; Decision Choices and Conditions; Game Theory

2018
Working Paper

Hot or Not? What Makes Product Categories Attractive to Fair Trade and Eco-labeling Organizations

By: Kristin Sippl

This paper probes extant theory on product diversification in the empirical realm of fair trade and eco-labeling organizations (i.e., certification organizations). While much is known about diversification in for-profit firms, less is known about the more complex... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Fair Trade; Eco-labeling; Goods and Commodities; Diversification; Strategy

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September 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Sawiris Foundation: Elevating Education in Egypt

By: Brian Trelstad and Alpana Thapar

Founded in 2001 by the Sawiris family, one of the wealthiest families in Egypt, the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD) invested in human capital and provision of basic social services for the most marginalized Egyptians. In 2015, Noura Selim’s (MBA 2013)... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Development; Social Enterprise; Education; Social Issues; Partners and Partnerships; Growth and Development Strategy; Education Industry; Egypt

Educators

Monique Burns Thompson is an accomplished social entrepreneur who returns to HBS (class of 1993) and brings her twenty years of successful start-up and organizational leadership experience to her research and teaching at HBS. She has led as a co-founder, President,... View Details

November–December 2020
Article

Getting Serious About Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case

By: Robin Ely and David A. Thomas

Leaders may mean well when they tout the economic payoffs of hiring more women and people of color, but there is no research support for the notion that diversifying the workforce automatically improves a company’s performance. This article critiques the popular... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Change; Trust

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2009
Working Paper

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture—in the sense of shared beliefs and values—in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Cost vs Benefits; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Theory