Publications

21 Nov 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

The New Challenge of Leading Financial Firms

A worldwide economic crisis. Intense scrutiny from board members, customers, and government regulators. Expanding global markets. Public protests aimed squarely at your industry. Running a financial institution, never easy to begin with, has quickly become one of the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

13 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Managing the Family Business: Leadership Roles

leadership roles in action, I hardly ever see the decisiveness and unity that a family business system needs for long-term performance. How do you design, structure, and allocate all the leadership roles you need? That's what this article... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Davis

25 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire?

deny him the satisfaction of lording his knowledge over us. Everybody wants to work with the lovable star, and nobody wants to work with the incompetent jerk. But there are justifiable reasons to avoid the jerk. Sometimes it can be View Details

Keywords: by Tiziana Casciaro & Miguel Sousa Lobo

16 Jun 2015
First Look

First Look: June 16, 2015

over time and may be tempted to ape someone else's system, and so they will find it difficult to align different parts of the organization with shared priorities. As Corning, a leader in glass and materials science, has found, an... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2010 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Lincoln Financial Meets the Financial Crisis

By: Robert C. Pozen and Peter Goodspeed Spring

In March of 2009, Lincoln Financial Group's CEO Dennis Glass was facing a difficult decision as to how he would replenish his company's capital, which could quickly fall to dangerously low levels as a result of the financial crisis. Though the cost of raising capital... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Financial Crisis; Capital; Private Equity; Crisis Management; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Insurance Industry

January 2021 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Snapp: Scaling Under Sanctions in Iran (A)

By: Meg Rithmire and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in November 2019 as Eyad Alkassar and Mahmoud Fouz, co-founders of Iran’s first and leading ride-hailing platform, Snapp, find out about Apple’s and Google’s decisions to remove all Iranian apps from their respective application stores.
The case... View Details

Keywords: Sanctions; Change Management; Disruption; Volatility; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Government and Politics; International Relations; National Security; Risk Management; Crisis Management; Transportation Industry; Iran; Middle East

28 Mar 2012
Working Paper Summaries

When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint versus Separate Evaluation

Keywords: by Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen & Max H. Bazerman

September 2024
Case

Comun: Partners in Peril

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Alexis Lefort

In spring 2023, Abiel Gutierrez and Andres Santos, co-founders of Comun, faced a critical decision at their fintech startup serving Latino immigrants. Having launched their product the previous year, they experienced rapid growth but encountered rising fraud and... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Business Development; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Partners and Partnerships; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Latin America; United States

November 2010 (Revised February 2013)
Case

Cresud S.A., Farmer or Real Estate Developer?

By: Ray Goldberg, Arthur I Segel, Gustavo Herrero and Andrew Terris

Alejandro Elsztain, CEO of Cresud S.A., is faced with the difficult choice of whether to sell, develop, or continue to hold the 151,000 hectares of remaining undeveloped farmland at the company's Los Pozos farm in Argentina. Developing the land will further expose... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Risk Management; Ownership Stake; Property; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Real Estate Industry; Argentina

October 2017 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Coaching Makena Lane

By: Ethan Bernstein and Om Lala

Makena Lane has a gift for producing results, even in the challenging retail context of the 2010s, but she also has a knack for “ruffling some feathers” in the process. Recruited to a Fortune 500 grocery and pharmacy retailer after climbing to Associate Principal in... View Details

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Effects of Task Difficulty on Use of Advice

Keywords: by Francesca Gino & Don A. Moore; Consulting

23 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Psychology, Pathology, and the CEO

financial and strategic decision making. But along the way, I also noted another important aspect of this leadership task, a related line of effort that seemed to go largely unnoticed and unstudied by observers but that was just as vital... View Details

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

July 2020
Case

Super 30: Educating the Elite Poor

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Shreya Ramachandran

In the summer of 2019 in New Delhi, S K Shahi and his daughter, Meenakshi, faced a difficult problem. India had 19 centers of their non-profit, the Center for Social Responsibility and Leadership. Also called the 'Super 30' program, this offered free training for... View Details

Keywords: Non-profit; Inclusive Growth; Education; Higher Education; Diversity; Nonprofit Organizations; Operations; Expansion; Geographic Location; Strategy; Decision Making; India

10 Feb 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Investing in Improvement: Strategy and Resource Allocation in Public School Districts

Keywords: by Stacey Childress; Education

07 Mar 2022
Research & Ideas

Effective Leaders Share the Spotlight with Their Teams

between managers and team members that might be difficult to gauge any other way. Combing through data that included 10,673 managers and 2,316 firms from 2010 to 2019, the researchers examined the characteristics of managers who include... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

September 1996 (Revised July 1997)
Case

Grupo Sidek (A)

By: Kenneth A. Froot and Alberto Moel

A large Mexican conglomerate, active in tourism, real estate, and steel, is faced with difficult macroeconomic conditions beginning with the Peso crisis of December 1994. The conglomerate had extensive dollar-indexed liabilities and was caught in a crunch when the... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Exchange; Real Estate; Debt Policy; Tourism; Steel; Business Conglomerates; Macroeconomics; Currency Exchange Rate; Crisis Management; Valuation; Mexico

2010
Working Paper

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Decision Making; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Management Systems; Financial Services Industry