Publications

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2017
Working Paper

The Effects of Media Slant on Firm Behavior

By: Vishal P. Baloria and Jonas Heese

The media can impose reputational costs on firms because of its important role as an information intermediary and its ability to negatively slant coverage. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment that holds constant the information event across firms, but varies the... View Details

Keywords: Media Slant; Reputational Capital; Strategic Corporate Decisions

SSRN

March 2009 (Revised July 2010)
Case

IBM: The Corporate Service Corps

By: Christopher Marquis and Rosabeth M. Kanter

Describes the conception, development, and implementation of the Corporate Services Corps (CSC), an international community service assignment for high-potential IBM employees. The year 2008 was the pilot year of the CSC program, and 100 of IBM's best global employees... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Global Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Structure; Partners and Partnerships; Non-Governmental Organizations

January 2007 (Revised October 2011)
Case

Roppongi Hills: City Within a City

By: Anita Elberse, Andrei Hagiu and Masako Egawa

Minoru Mori is the CEO of Mori Building, which has built Roppongi Hills, an ambitious large-scale, mixed-use development in Tokyo, Japan that includes high-end retail, restaurants, hotel, office, library, and art museum. A destination site for tourists and local... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Development Economics; Brands and Branding; Urban Development; Competition; Real Estate Industry; Tokyo

January 2002 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Chapter Enrichment Program Teams at the American Red Cross (A)

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Anita Williams Woolley

The American Red Cross has a system for structuring, staffing, and leading teams to review its local chapters. Mirroring professional services firms that use teams to serve clients, this system provides detailed guidelines to increase individual team member's... View Details

Keywords: Planning; Groups and Teams; Management Teams; Leadership; Organizational Structure

December 1999 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Avon Products China (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Jennifer Gui

In April 1998, when the Chinese central government bans all forms of direct selling in China in April 1998, executives at Avon China must decide how to respond. The first direct sales company to enter China after its opening to outsiders, Avon sparked widespread... View Details

Keywords: Crisis Management; Sales; Trade; Business and Government Relations; Government and Politics; Market Participation; China

August 1989 (Revised October 2003)
Case

Fan Pier

By: William J. Poorvu and Katherine Sweetman

The owner of the Fan Pier site in South Boston has been found legally responsible for blocking the efforts of his development partner in attaining the approval necessary to build the $800 million megaproject they had planned together. It was believed that the owner... View Details

Keywords: Partners and Partnerships; Law; Projects; Design; Organizational Design; Marketing Strategy; Government and Politics; Property; Real Estate Industry; Boston

March 2025
Case

GiveDirectly: Can Direct Cash Transfers End Extreme Poverty?

By: Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth, Sarah Mehta and John Schultz

Founded in 2008, GiveDirectly was a nonprofit organization that used direct cash transfers—giving people cash via mobile money—to combat poverty worldwide. By August 2024, the organization had transferred over $800 million to poor people in targeted communities and... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Ethics; Growth and Development; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Research; Social Enterprise; Society; Africa; Asia; Latin America; North and Central America; United States

2022
Working Paper

House Prices, Home Equity and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from U.S. Census Micro Data

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda

During 1992-2007, house price growth is strongly correlated with local entrepreneurship. We show with Census Bureau data that most of this entry is related to construction and real estate; these entrants tend to be small and short-lived. Using a 1998 Texas reform that... View Details

Keywords: House Prices; Collateral Channel; Entry; Demography; Mortgages; Entrepreneurship

SSRN

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February 2014
Case

Diageo: Innovating for Africa

By: David E. Bell, Damien P. McLoughlin and Mary L. Shelman

Diageo, the world's leading premium drinks business, had a long history in Africa starting from its beer brand, Guinness, first exported to Sierra Leone in 1827. By 2013, 13% of Diageo's global revenues were from Africa, up from 9% in 2007. Diageo Africa President Nick... View Details

Keywords: Africa; Emerging Market; Innovation; Agribusiness; Beverage Industry; Emerging Markets; Innovation Strategy; Marketing; Food and Beverage Industry; Africa

May 2001
Article

Competing at Home to Win Abroad: Evidence from Japanese History

By: Mariko Sakakibara and Michael E. Porter

The study explores the influence of domestic competition on international trade performance, using data from a broad sample of Japanese industries. Domestic rivalry is measured directly using market-share instability rather than employing structural variables such as... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Global Range; History; Japan

Find at Harvard

March 2010
Article

Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Growth? Exploring the Role of Financial Markets on Linkages

By: Laura Alfaro, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Areendam Chanda and Selin Sayek

Do multinational companies generate positive externalities for the host country? The evidence so far is mixed varying from beneficial to detrimental effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth, with many studies that find no effect. In order to provide an... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; Financial Markets; Value; Stock Shares; Development Economics

May 2000 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Health Development Corporation

By: Richard S. Ruback

Health Development Corp. (HDC) owns and operates health clubs in the Greater Boston area. HDC engaged a local investment banker to explore a sale of the company. The most likely buyer views HDC's prior purchase of real estate as a negative. HDC's management is... View Details

Keywords: Cash Flow; Property; Business Exit or Shutdown; Valuation; Value; Decisions; Health Industry; Boston

December 1998
Supplement

An Interview with Zhang Ruimin, CEO, Haier Group, Video

By: Lynn S. Paine and Jennifer Benqing

Zhang Ruimin, founder and CEO of China's Haier Group, must decide whether to acquire Red Star Electric Appliance Co., an insolvent local manufacturer of washing machines. Although Haier, slated to become one of China's first global brand names, has successfully turned... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Acquisition; Business or Company Management; Consumer Products Industry; China

27 Apr 2018
News

Books love the small: How indie stores and publishers fill the niches

30 May 2024
Video

BiGS Voices from Latin America: An interview with Fulvio Pagani of Grupo Arcor

Web

Employment | Harvard Business School

offers training for individual contributors and managers alike. Additionally, with generous tuition reimbursement programs at the University and local level, the cost of most undergraduate and graduate programs is covered by Harvard. By... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Capital Market Integration and Growth across the United States

By: Leonardo D'Amico and Maxim Alekseev

What drives the integration of national financial markets and what are its consequences for regional growth? We digitize and collect US state-level banking data from 1953 to 1983 and document a tight link between high nominal short rates and financial integration,... View Details

Keywords: Interest Rates; Financial Markets; Economic Growth; Banks and Banking; Analytics and Data Science

2022
Article

Which Explanation Should I Choose? A Function Approximation Perspective to Characterizing Post hoc Explanations

By: Tessa Han, Suraj Srinivas and Himabindu Lakkaraju

A critical problem in the field of post hoc explainability is the lack of a common foundational goal among methods. For example, some methods are motivated by function approximation, some by game theoretic notions, and some by obtaining clean visualizations. This... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Decision Choices and Conditions; Analytics and Data Science