Publications

Career Coach

Phillip Andrews

Phillip (MPA, New Hampshire ’06; JD, Suffolk Law ’09) is formerly a Corporate Relations Director in HBS Career & Professional Development responsible for employer relations in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, as... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Education; Emerging Markets; Investment Management; Financial Services (All); Private Equity; Financial Services (All); Venture Capital; Financial Services (All); Government; Social Enterprise; Clean Technology; Energy; Telecommunications; Impact Investing; Financial Services (All); Manufacturing; Auto/Transportation/Logistics

Program

Competing in the Age of AI—Virtual

can provide wide-ranging insights into your business challenges and career decisions Who Should Attend Decision-makers, leaders, and individual contributors at both established companies and startups of any size, who are responsible for... View Details

September 1997
Case

Davis, Lloyd, Young, & Donovan

Tom Roberts, director of audit operations, is responsible for assigning individual accountants to projects. Describes the current scheduling and assignment system, and the specific concerns of two staff members. Are any changes required in the system? View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Accounting Audits

15 Aug 2017
News

CEOs have to take a stand, says former Medtronic CEO

Video

Instagram Takeover - MBA Oath

January 2021
Supplement

Barbara Krakow Gallery (B): Art and the Pandemic

By: José B. Alvarez and David Lane

Updates (A) case by describing the early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the art market, the renaming of the gallery as the Krakow Witkin Gallery, and the response of its partners and staff to the pandemic. View Details

Keywords: Art Market; COVID-19; Arts; Business Model; Change Management; Trends; Communication; Customer Focus and Relationships; Human Resources; Marketing; Distribution Channels; Outcome or Result; Health Pandemics; Fine Arts Industry

February 1998 (Revised April 2002)
Case

India in 1996

Five years after economic liberalization, reform in India was stalled. Palaniappan Chidambaram had been recently appointed finance minister and was responsible for developing an economic plan. This case examines the economic and political impact of liberalization... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Macroeconomics; India

05 Jan 2014
News

Managers learn to see the error of their ways

Video

Mostafa Terrab

Mostafa Terrab, Chairman and CEO of Morocco-based OCP Group, describes how the company has made targeted donations to smallholder famers in Africa, particularly in response to the decreased availability of fertilizer resulting from the war in Ukraine. View Details

January–February 2019
Article

Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance

By: Claudine Gartenberg, Andrea Prat and George Serafeim

We construct a measure of corporate purpose within a sample of U.S. companies based on approximately 500,000 survey responses of worker perceptions about their employers. We find that this measure of purpose is not related to financial performance. However, high... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Purpose; Purpose; Employee Motivation; Belief Systems; Corporate Performance; Human Capital; Middle Management; Culture; Corporate Culture; Meaning; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Employees; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Performance Effectiveness

SSRN

Find at Harvard

March–April 2023
Article

Market Segmentation Trees

By: Ali Aouad, Adam Elmachtoub, Kris J. Ferreira and Ryan McNellis

Problem definition: We seek to provide an interpretable framework for segmenting users in a population for personalized decision making. Methodology/results: We propose a general methodology, market segmentation trees (MSTs), for learning market... View Details

Keywords: Decision Trees; Computational Advertising; Market Segmentation; Analytics and Data Science; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Marketplace Matching; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing

Research Summary

Seeing Thought

By: Gerald Zaltman

This program of research combines the results from ZMET studies to create marketing stimuli such as advertising, retail store designs, product concepts, product design, and so forth, which are then presented to a sample of consumers whose reactions are observed using... View Details

Research Summary

Strength of Incentives

By: Jerry R. Green

When economists analyze the incentive properties of decision making systems they assume that all economic agents are capable of optimizing their decisions and that they respond without error to the incentives that the system creates. In this project, Jerry R. Green... View Details

2016
Working Paper

Patent Disclosures and Standard-Setting

By: Josh Lerner, Haris Tabakovic and Jean Tirole

A key role of standard setting organizations (SSOs) is to aggregate information on relevant intellectual property (IP) claims before deciding on a standard. This article explores the firms’ strategies in response to IP disclosure requirements—in particular, the choice... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Corporate Disclosure; Standards

Read Now

June 2011
Supplement

Arck Systems (F)

By: Ian Larkin

The Arck Systems series of cases describes the dilemmas faced by a senior sales manager in determining a sales compensation plan at an enterprise software company. The existing compensation plan is aggressive and highly rewards "star” performers. The cases track a... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits

Summer 2023
Article

(Un)principled Agents: Monitoring Loyalty after the End of the Royal African Company Monopoly

By: Anne Ruderman and Marlous van Waijenburg

The revocation of the Royal African Company's monopoly in 1698 inaugurated a transformation of the transatlantic slave trade. While the RAC’s exit from the slave trade has received scholarly attention, little is known about the company’s response to the loss of its... View Details

Keywords: Slavery; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business History; Monopoly; History; Business and Government Relations

Find at Harvard

November 2007 (Revised September 2010)
Background Note

The Rong Family: A Chinese Business History

By: Elisabeth Koll

Provides the complex historical background to understanding the development of family businesses in China from the late 19th century to the present. Using the example of the Rong family, China's most prominent industrialist family in pre-1949 China, analyzes the... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Business History; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Alliances; Business and Government Relations; Social and Collaborative Networks; China