Publications
Publications
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(2,263)
- Faculty Publications (539)
- 2021
- Working Paper
Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors
By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details
- June 10, 2021
- Article
Preparing Hospitals for the Next Pandemic
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
The COVID-19 epidemic response has shown that the U.S. is blessed with heroic physicians and other health care providers, researchers, and facilities. But it has also revealed a health care system that was woefully unprepared for the surge of pandemic patients. In the... View Details
- Article
Is ‘Not Guilty’ the Same as ‘Innocent’? Evidence from SEC Financial Fraud Investigations
By: Eugene F. Soltes and David H. Solomon
When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigates firms for financial fraud, investors learn about the investigation only if managers disclose it, or regulators sanction the firm. We investigate the effects of such disclosures using confidential records on... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Data Governance, Interoperability and Standardization: Organizational Adaptation to Privacy Regulation
By: Sam (Ruiqing) Cao and Marco Iansiti
The increasing availability of data can afford dynamic competitive advantages among data-intensive
corporations, but governance bottlenecks hinder data-driven value creation and increase regulatory risks.
We analyze the role of two technological features of data... View Details
- May 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Supplement
'GEnron'? Markopolos versus General Electric (B)
By: Jonas Heese and David Lane
Supplement to the (A) case that offers an assessment of the August 2019 Markopolos report on General Electric. View Details
- Article
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: A Paradigm Shift
By: Ethan Rouen and George Serafeim
The last decade has seen an exponential increase in corporate sustainability activities and efforts by investors to use these activities in their portfolio formation, valuation, and stewardship activities. This paper explains the need for a uniform strategy to measure... View Details
- April–May 2021
- Article
The Influence of Loan Officers on Loan Contract Design and Performance
By: Robert Bushman, Janet Gao, Xiumin Martin and Joseph Pacelli
We investigate the extent to which loan officers generate independent, individual effects on the design and performance of syndicated loans. We construct a large database containing the identities of loan officers involved in structuring syndicated loan deals, allowing... View Details
- March 2021
- Article
The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance
This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details
- Article
What Professional Service Firms Must Do to Thrive
By: Ashish Nanda and Das Narayandas
When the going gets tough, professional service firms (PSFs) often get desperate and chase all kinds of business just to keep the lights on. Consultancies, financial services firms, VC/PE firms, and the like offer services and sign up clients they should never have... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Barbarians at the Gate or Turnaround Gurus? Private Equity and the Rise of the LBO
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the private equity (PE) firms responsible for carrying them out revolutionized both investment and management in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1989, buyout activity in the U.S. surged from $1 billion per year to $60 billion.... View Details
Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Restructuring; Borrowing and Debt; Private Equity; Bonds; Investment Return; Institutional Investing; Profit Sharing; Business History; Management Style; Private Ownership; Performance Effectiveness; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry; United States
- February 2021
- Case
A Cultural Transformation at Southeastern Grocers
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Jonah S. Goldberg and Joseph A. Paul
When Anthony Hucker, the CEO of Southeastern Grocers (SEG), took over in that role in July 2017, the company was in dire financial and operational condition and was headed towards bankruptcy. SEG, the fifth largest grocery chain in the U.S. in early 2021, operated... View Details
- Article
Reimagining the Balanced Scorecard for the ESG Era
By: Robert S. Kaplan and David McMillan
Companies are increasingly aware that their customers and society in general expect businesses to adopt and work towards social and environmental objectives as well as the traditional financial ones. This involves not only re-evaluating firms’ models but re-imagining... View Details
- February 2021
- Article
Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession
By: S. Bernstein, T. McQuade and R. Townsend
We investigate how the deterioration of household balance sheets affects worker productivity, and, in turn, economic downturns. Specifically, we compare the output of innovative workers who experienced differential declines in housing wealth during the financial crisis... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
'GEnron'? Markopolos versus General Electric (A)
By: Jonas Heese and David Lane
In August 2019, Harry Markopolos—the forensic accountant known for uncovering Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme—alleged that General Electric had committed accounting fraud totaling $38 billion, coining the term “GEnron” for perceived similarities with the 2001 accounting... View Details
- January–February 2021
- Article
Compensation Packages That Actually Drive Performance
By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah Abbott, Michael R. Marino and Metin Aksoy
By aligning executives’ financial incentives with company strategy, a firm can inspire its management to deliver superior results. But it can be hard to get pay packages right. In this article four experts break down the key elements of compensation and explain how to... View Details
- Article
Credit and Punishment: Are Corporate Bankers Disciplined for Risk-Taking?
By: Janet Gao, Kristoph Kleiner and Joseph Pacelli
We examine whether bankers face disciplining consequences for structuring poorly performing corporate loans. We construct a novel data set containing the employment histories and loan portfolios of a large sample of corporate bankers and find that corporate credit... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer Finance Industry
By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor credit card providers within the consumer finance industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Social Corporate Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility; Social Impact; Consumer Finance; Financial Services; Financial Inclusion; Product; Product Design; Product Positioning; Society; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Personal Finance; Credit Cards; Financial Services Industry
- 2020
- Working Paper
Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
UCK Partners: Gong Cha
By: Victoria Ivashina and Sangyun Lee
In the Spring of 2017, Soomin Kim, Founding Partner of UCK Partners, and his team were debating the potential exit of UCK Partner’s investment in Gong Cha Korea, the sole local franchisor of the premium milk tea brand that they proprietarily sourced three years ago.... View Details
- September 2020
- Teaching Note
TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 720-422. TransDigm was a highly acquisitive company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial customers. Over the ten years ending in 2016, its stock price had increase ten times,... View Details
Keywords: Value Capturing; Pricing Strategy; Supplier Power; Buyer Power; Porter's Five Forces; Bargaining Power; Monopoly; Aerospace; Acquisition Strategy; Value Drivers; Ethical Behavior; Regulation; Growth Strategy; Business Ethics; Defense; Procurement; Sustainability; Value-Based Business Strategy; Acquisition; Ethics; Private Equity; Financial Strategy; Growth Management; Performance Evaluation; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Horizontal Integration; Value Creation; Competitive Advantage; Aerospace Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States