Publications

October 2024 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Parexel: Scaling Up and Industry Dynamics

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo

Through the lens of biopharmaceutical contract research organization (CRO) PAREXEL, this case traces the evolution of the firm as it reinvents itself in response to the transformation of the CRO sector from a small, secondary cluster of firms into a major player with... View Details

Keywords: Research; Innovation and Invention; Business Model; Transformation; Globalization; Information Technology; Competitive Advantage; Pharmaceutical Industry

2008
Working Paper

Traveling Agents: Political Change and Bureaucratic Turnover in India

By: Lakshmi Iyer and Anandi Mani

We develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns as well as the consequences for bureaucrats' career investments. Unique micro-level data on Indian bureaucrats support our key predictions.... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Political Elections; Management Skills; Managerial Roles; Personal Development and Career; Societal Protocols; India

31 Oct 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 31, 2017

of the finance and insurance sector. We provide the first large-scale study that documents the economy-wide extent of misconduct among financial advisers and the associated labor market View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

April 2011
Case

Felipe Calderón: Leading with Light and Power (A)

By: J. Bruce Harreld and David Lane

This sequence of cases explores how leaders get their team focused on framing, analyzing, and ultimately acting upon complex decisions. The A case provides an inside look as President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, works with his cabinet ministers to decide how to... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decisions; Public Sector; Leadership; Conflict and Resolution; Power and Influence; Urban Development; Welfare or Wellbeing

2014
Working Paper

Private Equity's Diversification Illusion: Economic Comovement and Fair Value Reporting

By: Kyle Travis Welch

This study examines how accounting has informed private equity diversification claims and demand for private equity investments. Despite research showing private equity lacks portfolio diversification benefits, those marketing private equity assets continue to... View Details

SSRN

January 2014 (Revised May 2014)
Case

Tech Mahindra and the Acquisition of Satyam Computers (A)

By: Srikant M. Datar, Anjali Raina and Namrata Arora

Set in 2008, the case details Tech Mahindra, an information technology (IT) company within the Mahindra Group, an Indian multi-industry company with a diverse stable of businesses including automotives, farm equipment, and financial services, and its decision to... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Corporate Governance; Computer Industry; India

Purchase

Article

Price and Quality Decisions by Self-Serving Managers

By: Marco Bertini, Daniel Halbheer and Oded Koenigsberg

We present a theory of price and quality decisions by managers who are self-serving. In the theory, firms stress the price or quality of their products, but not both. Accounting for this, managers exploit any uncertainty about the cause of market outcomes to credit... View Details

Keywords: Causal Reasoning; Self-serving Bias; Strategic Orientation; Managerial Decision-making; Price; Quality; Decision Making; Theory

Research Summary

Bricks and Clicks: The Effect of Store Assortment on E-tail Format (with R. Lal and E. Ofek)

An often neglected aspect in existing studies of the Internet selling process is the high volume of product returns. Such returns reflect a major logistic expenditure on behalf of companies that sell over the net. The problem is reduced when consumers shop in physical... View Details

2021
Working Paper

How to Fix ESG Reporting

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

Investors, advocacy groups, academics, and the 200 CEOs of the US Business Roundtable have asked corporations to take on an added purpose beyond a narrow pursuit of shareholder value. In response, many companies now issue ESG (Environmental, Societal, and Governance)... View Details

Keywords: ESG Reporting; Sustainability; Corporate Purpose; Greenhouse Gas; Activity-Based Costing; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Goals and Objectives; Agreements and Arrangements; Corporate Accountability

SSRN

November 2012 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Companion Diagnostics: Uncertainties for Approval and Reimbursement

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Norman C. Selby and Phillip Andrews

The FDA approvals of novel therapeutics were seen as signs in the personalized medicine community of real progress in the growth of personalized medicine. The FDA's approval of such drugs, along with companion diagnostics, suggested a shift in thinking and regulatory... View Details

Keywords: Models Of Reimbursement; Personalized Medicine; Regulation; Healthcare Reform; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

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2024
Working Paper

Transitory and Permanent Cash Flow Shocks in Debt Contract Design

By: Le Ma, Anywhere Sikochi and Yajun Xiao

We examine how lenders design contracts to account for transitory and permanent cash flow shocks facing borrowers. We find that volatile transitory cash flow shocks are associated with fewer liquidity covenants, indicating financial flexibility that enables firms to... View Details

Keywords: Debt Covenants; Cash Flow Shocks; Debt Contracting; Likelihood Of Default; Cash Flow; System Shocks

SSRN

October 2012
Case

Romney vs. Obama and U.S. Energy Policy

By: Rawi Abdelal and Kaitlyn Tuthill

In 2012, the energy sector in the United States was demanding major reform. Prices of oil and gas had continued to cripple the middle and lower class as the U.S. economy slowly recovered. At the same time, the U.S. lagged behind developed economies in production of... View Details

Keywords: Mitt Romney; Barack Obama; Energy; Election Outcomes; Climate Change; Renewable Energy; Political Elections; Policy; Business and Government Relations; Public Administration Industry; United States

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Research Summary

Corporate Lobbying Strategy and Foreign MNEs

“U.S. Defense Contracts and the Lobbying Strategies of Foreign MNEs: The Liability of Foreignness and Make-or-Buy Decisions about Political Goods”

Many firms engage in lobbying with the expectation that their lobbying efforts will... View Details

Keywords: Non-market Strategy; Political Strategy; Lobbying; Make V. Buy; Multinational Enterprise; Global Strategy; United States

01 Mar 2010
Op-Ed

A Golden Opportunity for Ford and GM

missing this golden opportunity. The last and perhaps most important lesson for leaders going through a crisis is that they cannot just play defense by cutting costs and... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Auto

Research Summary

Asset Specificity and Vertical Integration: Williamson's Hypothesis Reconsidered

A point repeatedly stressed by transaction cost economics is that the more specific the asset, the more likely is vertical integration to be optimal. In spite of the profusion of empirical papers supporting this prediction, recent surveys and casual observation... View Details

10 Jun 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Governance and Internal Capital Markets

Keywords: by Zacharias Sautner & Belén Villalonga

January–February 2021
Article

Cross‐firm Return Predictability and Accounting Quality

By: Wen Chen, Mozaffar Khan, Leonid Kogan and George Serafeim

We test the hypothesis that if poor accounting quality (AQ) is associated with poor investor understanding of firms’ revenue and cost structures, then poor AQ stocks likely respond more slowly than good AQ stocks to new non‐idiosyncratic information that affects both... View Details

Keywords: Accounting Quality; Earnings Quality; Stock Returns; Investment Strategy; Accounting; Business Earnings; Quality; Investment Return; Investment; Strategy

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Article

Towards Robust and Reliable Algorithmic Recourse

By: Sohini Upadhyay, Shalmali Joshi and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As predictive models are increasingly being deployed in high-stakes decision making (e.g., loan approvals), there has been growing interest in post-hoc techniques which provide recourse to affected individuals. These techniques generate recourses under the assumption... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning Models; Algorithmic Recourse; Decision Making; Forecasting and Prediction