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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,819)
- People (2)
- News (311)
- Research (2,288)
- Events (15)
- Multimedia (15)
- Faculty Publications (1,464)
- 2012
- Working Paper
Pay Dispersion and Work Performance
By: Alessandro Bucciol and Marco Piovesan
The effect of intra-firm pay dispersion on work performance is controversial and the empirical evidence is mixed. High pay dispersion may act as an extra incentive for employees' effort or it may reduce motivation and team cohesiveness. These effects can also coexist... View Details
Bucciol, Alessandro, and Marco Piovesan. "Pay Dispersion and Work Performance." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-075, February 2012.
- October 2009
- Article
Influence and Inefficiency in the Internal Capital Market
By: Julie Wulf
I model inefficient resource allocations in M-form organizations due to influence activities by division managers that skew capital budgets in their favor. Corporate headquarters receives two types of signals about investment opportunities: private signals that can be... View Details
Keywords: Capital Markets; Resource Allocation; Business Processes; Capital Budgeting; Business Headquarters; Investment; Opportunities; Cost; Value; Motivation and Incentives; Equity
Wulf, Julie. "Influence and Inefficiency in the Internal Capital Market." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 72, no. 1 (October 2009): 305–321.
- Research Summary
Information and Control in Modern Manufacturing
Ratna Sarkar's research in management accounting focuses on the effect of information and incentives on performance. She has investigated the role of worker empowerment, training and inventory in modern manufacturing settings and her findings suggest that these... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
The Invention of Corporate Governance
By: Yueran Ma and Andrei Shleifer
The analysis of corporate governance begins with a central feature of modern capitalism—the separation of ownership and control in large corporations—first empirically documented by Berle and Means (1932). Such separation entails several agency problems reflecting... View Details
Ma, Yueran, and Andrei Shleifer. "The Invention of Corporate Governance." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 33710, April 2025.
- April–May 2021
- Article
Labor Mobility and Antitakeover Provisions
By: Aiyesha Dey and Joshua White
How do firms protect their human capital? We test whether firms facing an increased threat of being acquired strengthen their antitakeover provisions (ATPs) in order to bond with their employees. We use the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S.... View Details
Keywords: Labor Mobility; Antitakeover Provisions; Trade Secrets; Implicit Contracting; Employee Bonding; Corporate Governance; Acquisition; Human Capital; Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Safety
Dey, Aiyesha, and Joshua White. "Labor Mobility and Antitakeover Provisions." Art. 101388. Journal of Accounting & Economics 71, nos. 2-3 (April–May 2021).
- 23 Jan 2024
- Research & Ideas
How to Keep Employees Productive: Support Caregivers
report guides organizations in supporting work-life balance for caregivers. Fuller finds that there are strong incentives to support these employees with benefits; payoffs include lower turnover and less absenteeism. Instead of urging... View Details
Keywords: by Kara Baskin
Raffaella Sadun
Raffaella Sadun is Charles E. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and is a Co-Chair of Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work and co-PI of the Digital Reskilling Lab. Sadun received her PhD in Economics... View Details
- 06 Jul 2010
- Research & Ideas
Renewable Energy: Winds at Our Back?
When American energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon envisioned the first offshore wind farm lining the horizon a few miles off the coast of the eastern United States, he perhaps did not factor in blowback from almost every angle. Gordon's nearly 10-year battle to gain... View Details
- December 2001 (Revised June 2002)
- Case
Compensation at Level 3 Communications
Level 3's unique compensation plan rewarded managers for the firm's performance only if the firm's stock price movement exceeded that of the market. This design was intended to maximize shareholder value by tying manager's performance more closely to that of the firm,... View Details
Meulbroek, Lisa K. "Compensation at Level 3 Communications." Harvard Business School Case 202-084, December 2001. (Revised June 2002.)
- fall 2010
- Article
Lawsuits and Empire: On the Enforcement of Sovereign Debt in Latin America
By: Faisal Z. Ahmed, Laura Alfaro and Noel Maurer
The re-occurring phenomenon of sovereign default has prompted an enormous theoretical and empirical literature. Most of this research has focused on why countries ever chose to pay their debts (or why private creditors ever expected repayment). The problem originates... View Details
Keywords: Lawsuits and Litigation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Sovereign Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Debt Securities; Motivation and Incentives; Markets; Equity; Banking Industry; Latin America
Ahmed, Faisal Z., Laura Alfaro, and Noel Maurer. "Lawsuits and Empire: On the Enforcement of Sovereign Debt in Latin America." Law and Contemporary Problems 73, no. 4 (fall 2010): 39–46.
- 2020
- Working Paper
Consumers Punish Firms That Cut Employee Pay in Response to COVID-19
By: Bhavya Mohan, Serena Hagerty and Michael Norton
Two experiments, including one incentive compatible study, examine the impact of cutting pay for executives versus employees in response to COVID-19 on consumer behavior. Study 1 explores the effect of announcing cuts or no cuts to CEO and employee pay, and shows that... View Details
Keywords: Employee Furloughs; CEO Pay Cuts; Pay Ratios; Purchase Intention; Health Pandemics; Employees; Wages; Executive Compensation; Consumer Behavior
Mohan, Bhavya, Serena Hagerty, and Michael Norton. "Consumers Punish Firms That Cut Employee Pay in Response to COVID-19." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-020, August 2020.
- April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
Virginia Mason Medical Center (VM) hired Owens & Minor (O&M) as its alpha vendor for medical/surgical supplies in 2004. By 2005, O&M was performing Just-in-Time and Low Unit of Measure services for VM, but they believed the pricing model in the industry was outdated.... View Details
Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Price; Distribution; Supply Chain Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
Narayanan, V.G., and Lisa Brem. "Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)." Harvard Business School Case 109-076, April 2009. (Revised June 2010.)
Trends and Predictors of Biomedical Research Quality, 1990-2015
This work leverages the strengths of expert human assessments of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) included in Cochrane reviews with data science techniques to build a comprehensive database on biomedical research quality. The data links the full-text and... View Details
- 28 Jan 2019
- Research & Ideas
Forget Cash. Here Are Better Ways to Motivate Employees
With unemployment at near historic lows in the United States, employers report that their single greatest challenge is recruiting and retaining talent. The answer for many companies is to throw money at the problem: Bonuses, incentive... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- October 1994 (Revised March 1997)
- Case
Privatization of Rhone-Poulenc 1993, The
In mid-1993, representatives of Rhone-Poulenc, a leading nationalized French firm, worked with the French government to plan the imminent privatization of the firm. One aspect of the privatization was to create incentives for employees to buy and hold shares in the... View Details
Collat, Donald S., and Peter Tufano. "Privatization of Rhone-Poulenc 1993, The ." Harvard Business School Case 295-049, October 1994. (Revised March 1997.)
- August 2017
- Article
Tort Reform and Innovation
By: Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo
Current academic and policy debates focus on the impact of tort reforms on physicians’ behavior and medical costs. This paper examines whether these reforms also affect incentives to develop new technologies. We develop a theoretical model that predicts that the impact... View Details
Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Legal Liability; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
Galasso, Alberto, and Hong Luo. "Tort Reform and Innovation." Journal of Law & Economics 60, no. 3 (August 2017): 385–412.
- winter 1988
- Article
Management Buyouts and Managerial Efforts
By: Robert F. Bruner and Lynn S. Paine
Management buyouts, which have played an important role in the recent wave of corporate restructurings, have been criticized from several directions. This article addresses the problems created by management's conflict of interest. As members of the buyout team,... View Details
Bruner, Robert F., and Lynn S. Paine. "Management Buyouts and Managerial Efforts." California Management Review 30, no. 2 (winter 1988): 89–106.
- Article
Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure
By: Sergey Chernenko, C. Fritz Foley and Robin Greenwood
Standard theories of corporate ownership assume that because markets are efficient, insiders ultimately bear all agency costs that they create and therefore have a strong incentive to minimize conflicts of interest with outside investors. We argue that if equity is... View Details
Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Ownership; Conflict of Interests; Investment; Valuation
Chernenko, Sergey, C. Fritz Foley, and Robin Greenwood. "Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure." Financial Management 41, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 885–914.
- September–October 2012
- Article
Relational Contracts and Organizational Capabilities
By: Robert Gibbons and Rebecca Henderson
A large literature identifies unique organizational capabilities as a potent source of competitive advantage, yet our knowledge of why capabilities fail to diffuse more rapidly—particularly in situations in which competitors apparently have strong incentives to adopt... View Details
Gibbons, Robert, and Rebecca Henderson. "Relational Contracts and Organizational Capabilities." Organization Science 23, no. 5 (September–October 2012): 1350–1364.