Publications

November 2007 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Haier Hefei Electronics Co. (A)

By: Lynn Sharp Paine

The Haier Group, the first mainland Chinese company to make the Financial Times list of Asia's "most admired companies," attributes its success in large measure to the new value system it has sought to instill throughout the organization. However, when Haier takes over... View Details

Keywords: Public Ownership; Business and Government Relations; Organizational Culture; Transformation; Ethics; Labor and Management Relations; Business or Company Management; Contracts; Electronics Industry; China

Program

Advanced Management Program

Summary Market volatility, digital transformation, and innovation are changing the way companies compete in every industry—and increasing the demand for business leaders who are global changemakers. Whether you are looking to move up to... View Details

January 2014
Case

In a Bind: Peak Sealing Technologies' Product Line Extension Dilemma

By: Robert J. Dolan and Heather Beckham

Peak Sealing Technologies (PST), a manufacturer of premium carton sealing tapes, stresses technological innovation as the company's core value. But when a new regional competitor introduces a less expensive and inferior product, PST is faced with a decision that could... View Details

20 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

How Partisan Politics Play Out in American Boardrooms

Republican—are 3.2 percent more likely to leave their companies when they are “politically misaligned” with their colleagues. Shareholders collectively lose $238 million, on average, after their departure is announced, the research shows.... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

June 2020
Teaching Note

Global Brand Management of Anheuser Busch InBev's Budweiser

By: Jill Avery

Brian Perkins, chief architect of the $6 billion Budweiser brand, was excited about 2018, in which the company would launch Budweiser into several new markets in Africa and Latin America. He was feeling the pressure to finalize a global brand strategy that would define... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Global Brands; Brand Equity; Brand Storytelling; Brand Communication; Brand Positioning; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Global Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; China; Africa; Latin America

January 2014 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Mittal Steel's Pursuit of Arcelor (A)

By: Paul M. Healy and Penelope Rossano

Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of Mittal Steel, a UK-based company with Indian roots, took advantage of a weakened Arcelor that had successfully won a bidding war for Canadian steel company Dofasco, with an unsolicited bid to buy the company. Mittal's plans for acquiring Arcelor... View Details

Keywords: Fiduciary Duty; Steel; India; Europe; Governance; Mergers; Board Decisions; White Knight; Strategy; Negotiation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Steel Industry; Canada; United Kingdom; Russia; India

February 2014 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Go Mobile: Aligning District Managers and Store Teams

By: Tatiana Sandino

Indian cell phone retailer Go Mobile had implemented high-powered incentives to motivate its store employees to behave as owners and provide exceptional service. As the company scaled up, it faced multiple challenges in building a layer of district managers that were... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Growth Management; Organizational Design; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Telecommunications Industry; India

November 2011
Article

Ownership Structure and Financial Constraints: Evidence from a Structural Estimation

By: Chen Lin, Yue Ma and Yuhai Xuan

This article examines the impact of the divergence between corporate insiders' control rights and cash-flow rights on firms' external finance constraints via generalized method of moments estimation of an investment Euler equation. Using a large sample of U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Ownership; Social Enterprise; Reputation; Cash Flow; Annuities; Investment; Investment Funds; Financial Reporting; Accounting Audits; Financial Services Industry; United States

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June 2007 (Revised July 2007)
Case

USG Corporation (A)

Deals with CEO Bill Foote's decision of how to deal with USG's exposure to asbestos liability. USG was the largest building materials company in the United States, with 14,000 employees and gross revenues of $3.8 billion. Although USG used asbestos in a small subset of... View Details

Keywords: Legal Liability; Construction Industry

Article

Models of Best Practice in Integrated Reporting 2015

By: Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus and Sydney Ribot

In March of 2015, the authors reviewed the integrated reports of 25 multinational companies that participated in the International Integrated Reporting Council's (IIRC's) Pilot Programme Business Network. Because it was not until December 2013 that companies had any... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Reporting; Integrated Corporate Reporting

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05 Jun 2007
First Look

First Look: June 5, 2007

accounts with no fees, no tiered interest rates, and no minimums. In industries where squeezing value from customers is commonplace, companies that dismantle these harmful practices and design a transparent,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

George Serafeim

George Serafeim is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He co-leads a Lab, within Harvard's Digital, Data, Design Institute, and serves on the faculty steering commitee of Harvard University's Salata Institute. He... View Details

Keywords: asset management; insurance industry; automobiles; industrial goods; fashion; food; green technology

Article

Elevate Employees, Don't Eliminate Them

By: Ryan W. Buell

The last major global shock—the 2008 recession—led to what economists call a “jobless recovery” as companies found they could get by with fewer employees. But post-pandemic, the author writes, managers should focus on changing employees’ roles instead. He has five key... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Customer Relationship Management; Interpersonal Communication; Value Creation

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September 2022
Background Note

On CUE: The Quest for Optimal Customer Unit Economics

By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller

Startups are often evaluated by how well they perform on unit economics, defined as the ratio of a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) to acquisition costs (CAC). A common target for unit economics, advocated by many VCs and analysts, is 3:1 (i.e., LTV/CAC=3). While there... View Details

Keywords: Unit Economics; Business Startups; Performance Evaluation; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Relationship Management; Analysis

19 Mar 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

8 Ways To Be An Environmentally Conscious Manager

iPhoto In an interview about his recent book Profits and Sustainability, which portrays the iconoclastic entrepreneurs who built green startups in the 19th century, Harvard Business School historian Geoffrey Jones notes that being a business-environmentalist can be... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Energy

January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
Case

LOLA: Do You Know What's in Your Tampon?

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia

LOLA is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. What started as a company to provide women with organic and transparent material-labeled tampons via a subscription model, had, by 2019 evolved to include additional menstrual and sexual wellness products.... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Channels; Disruption; Business Model; Brands and Branding; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Retail Industry; United States; Canada