Publishing - Publications - Faculty & Research

November 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Kwame Spearman at Tattered Cover: Reinventing Brick-and-Mortar Retail

By: Ryan Raffaelli and Kerry Herman

The case spotlights Kwame Spearman’s career-shifting decision to leave a NYC-based consulting job to return to his hometown of Denver, Colorado, and take over an iconic independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover. The case lays out ways Spearman envisions a new approach... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Leadership; Leading Change; Competitive Strategy; Personal Development and Career; Publishing Industry; Publishing Industry; United States

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May 1997
Case

Mercer Management Consulting's "Grow to Be Great" (D): The Knowledge Management Framework

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Framework; Knowledge; Publishing Industry; Publishing Industry

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June 2010 (Revised October 2011)
Case

ProPublica

By: Michel Anteby, Philippe Bertreau and Charlotte Newman

Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica's managing editor, entered the organization's newsroom located in lower Manhattan on September 16, 2008. He knew a historical financial debacle was happening at his doorstep, yet none of his journalists were covering that beat. It would... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Leadership; Leading Change; Resource Allocation; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Publishing Industry; Publishing Industry; New York (city, NY)

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2013
Working Paper

Testing Coleman's Social-Norm Enforcement Mechanism: Evidence from Wikipedia

By: Mikolaj J. Piskorski and Andreea Gorbatai

Since Durkheim, sociologists have believed that dense network structures lead to fewer norm violations. Coleman (1990) proposed one mechanism generating this relationship and argued that dense networks provide an opportunity structure to reward those who punish norm... View Details

Keywords: Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Publishing; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Issues; Societal Protocols

Citation

SSRN

Read Now

29 Apr 2008
Research Event

Venture Capital

increasingly being run as businesses, with associated questions of strategy and tactics coming to the forefront. What will be published or will there be other output from the colloquium? View Details

Keywords: by Josh Lerner; Financial Services

13 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

The Inner Life of Leaders

assessments came from correspondents like Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam. McNamara published a book years after he retired to reassess the Vietnam War and his role in it as secretary of defense. His main theme was the failure to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

10 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Homers: Secrets on the Factory Floor

a Highly Elusive, Marginal, and Illegal Practice" will be published in a forthcoming issue of Sociologie du Travail. Sean Silverthorne: What are homers and how prevalent is the practice? Can you give some examples? Michel Anteby:... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Manufacturing

12 Oct 2016
Research & Ideas

Break the Rules of How Business is Done

an employer? What truly matters in the end is whether that transformational effort adds value. In 2012, the gaming company Valve published their novel Employee Handbook which outlined their organization structure (or lack thereof). Valve... View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

18 Nov 2009
HBS Case

Customer Feedback Not on elBulli’s Menu

"fixing" elBulli turns it into just another restaurant, says Norton: "The things that make it inefficient are part of what makes it so valuable to people." Adrià's other business ventures include publishing... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Food & Beverage

11 Aug 2014
HBS Case

The Business of Behavioral Economics

they put skin in the game, it rises to 80 percent. Those findings resonate with John and Norton's research, which demonstrates similarly powerful effects from applying behavioral economics principles to behavior change. In a study that John and several colleagues... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage; Health

17 Apr 2006
Research & Ideas

Resisting the Seductions of Success

In his novel I Come as a Thief, Louis Auchincloss introduces us to Tony Lowder, a lawyer in his early forties. Tony and his wife have two children. He works for the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but his job is just a resting spot. Tony has... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.; Publishing; Publishing; Publishing

August 1981 (Revised June 1986)
Case

McGraw-Hill Book Co.: Micro Computer Resource Center

By: James I. Cash Jr.

Keywords: Information Technology; Publishing Industry; Publishing Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

02 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

The Most Popular Stories and Research Papers of 2017

publishes summaries of working papers written by Harvard Business School faculty—along with links to the full text of those papers. Here are the five most downloaded working papers of 2017: Why and How Investors Use ESG Information:... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

21 Nov 2005
Research & Ideas

The Geography of Corporate Giving

profitability. But in a review of all of the studies that have been published on the topic over the past thirty years, HBS professor Joshua Margolis and Jim Walsh concluded that the connection between social and financial performance is... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2009
Other Unpublished Work

The Kindle: Igniting the Book Business

By: Peter Olson and Bharat Anand

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Publishing Industry; Publishing Industry

Citation

05 Jul 2022
Op-Ed

Hear Me Out: Introverts Can Be Loud and You Might Like Microsoft Teams

We've been encouraging readers to share feedback and observations about Working Knowledge articles by email, resulting in a slew of thoughtful responses. Here are a few comments from June, published with permission: Re: "Extroverts, Your... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

19 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

Codeacademy’s Delicate Work of Adding Monetization Without Crushing Mission

in the MBA program's elective curriculum. Bussgang recently published a case study on Codecademy's success to date, as well as the challenges it faces relative to future growth. He discusses that case and the startup space more broadly... View Details

Keywords: Re: Jeffrey J. Bussgang; Technology

06 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Expensing Options Doesn’t Solve the Problem

company to transfer assets and liabilities to certain so-called special purpose entities (SPEs). According to the Powers report, which was published by a special committee of Enron's board after the company entered bankruptcy protection... View Details

Keywords: by William Sahlman

30 Sep 2002
What Do You Think?

Are Business Schools Really Important “Crucibles of Leadership?”

who, in a series of lectures in 1902 published The Varieties of Religious Experience, first suggested important differences between the relatively well-adjusted "once-born" individual with a strong sense of belonging and the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

October 2021
Article

Shareholder Activism and Firms' Voluntary Disclosure of Climate Change Risks

By: Caroline Flammer, Michael W. Toffel and Kala Viswanathan

This paper examines whether—in the absence of mandated disclosure requirements—shareholder activism can elicit greater disclosure of firms’ exposure to climate change risks. We find that environmental shareholder activism increases the voluntary disclosure of climate... View Details