Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,999)
- Faculty Publications (322)
- February 2020
- Case
Klöckner & Co: Steeling for a Digital World
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Hoping to get ahead of potential digital disruption at Klöckner & Co.—one of the world’s largest steel and metal distributors—CEO Gisbert Rühl set up both kloeckner.i (KCI), an internal transformation arm, and XOM Materials (XOM), an independent industry platform. KCI... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
How Do Private Equity Fees Vary Across Public Pensions?
By: Juliane Begenau and Emil Siriwardane
We study how investment fees vary within private-capital funds. Net-of-fee return clustering suggests that most funds have two tiers of fees, and we decompose differences across tiers into both management and performance-based fees. Managers of venture capital funds... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
How ESG Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors
By: George Serafeim
Management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have received substantial interest over the last decade. In this paper, we outline a framework of how ESG issues become financially material, affecting corporate profitability and valuation.... View Details
Keywords: Materiality; ESG; Pharmaceutical Companies; Business Ethics; Sustainability; Environment; Disclosure; Disclosure And Access; Regulation; Social Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Resource Allocation; Finance; Accounting; Valuation
- November 2019 (Revised April 2020)
- Technical Note
The Life Sciences Revolution: A Technical Primer
By: Gary P. Pisano, William J. Anderson, Amitabh Chandra, Clarissa Ceruti and Stephanie Oestreich
For more than two decades, scientific advances have been driving profound changes in drug discovery and the drug industry itself. This case provides an overview and description of these technical and scientific advances. Written for the nonscientific reader, it may be... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
The Boss Has the Wrong Idea: Confidential Role Material for Julia Smith
By: Katherine Coffman, Kathleen McGinn, Judith A. Clair and Katherine Chen
“The Boss Has the Wrong Idea” is a two-person conversation exercise in which an MBA student seeks advice from a mentor in her field about how to handle an incident of workplace sexual harassment. The case consists of two confidential role materials: a role for the... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
The Boss Has the Wrong Idea: Confidential Role Material for Lee Clancy
By: Katherine Coffman, Kathleen McGinn, Judith A. Clair and Katherine Chen
“The Boss Has the Wrong Idea” is a two-person conversation exercise in which an MBA student seeks advice from a mentor in her field about how to handle an incident of workplace sexual harassment. The case consists of two confidential role materials: a role for the... View Details
- October 2019 (Revised February 2023)
- Supplement
Gupta Media Supplement: Governors Ball Overview and Promotional Materials
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Courtney Han
- 2019
- White Paper
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy
By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing
Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed... View Details
- 2019
- Book
The Economic Turn: Recasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe
By: Steven L. Kaplan and Sophus A. Reinert
The mid-eighteenth century witnessed what might be dubbed an “economic turn” that resolutely changed the trajectory of world history. From the birth of new agricultural practices and the foundation of private societies to the sustained and popular theorization of... View Details
- Article
Valuing Time Over Money Predicts Happiness After a Major Life Transition: A Preregistered Longitudinal Study of Graduating Students
By: A.V. Whillans, Lucia Macchia and Elizabeth Dunn
How does prioritizing time or money shape major life decisions and subsequent well-being? In a preregistered longitudinal study of approximately 1000 graduating university students, respondents who valued time over money chose more intrinsically rewarding activities... View Details
- July 2019
- Article
Market Reaction to Mandatory Nonfinancial Disclosure
By: Jody Grewal, Edward J. Riedl and George Serafeim
We examine the equity market reaction to events associated with the passage of a directive in the European Union (EU) mandating increased nonfinancial disclosure. These disclosures relate to firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and would be... View Details
Keywords: Nonfinancial Information; Nonfinancial Performance; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investor Behavior; Disclosure; Disclosure Regulation; Regulation; Sustainability; Corporate Performance; Information; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Outcome or Result
- Article
The Feeling of Not Knowing It All
By: Haiyang Yang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton
How do consumers assess their mastery of knowledge they have learned? We explore this question by investigating a common knowledge consumption situation: encountering opportunities for further learning. We argue and show that such opportunities can trigger a... View Details
- Article
'Matter Battles': Cognitive Representations, Boundary Objects, and the Failure of Collaboration in Two Smart Cities
By: Tiona Zuzul
In this paper, I present a longitudinal study of two smart city projects that brought together experts from diverse knowledge domains. Both projects structured collaboration around the development of boundary objects that could integrate actors’ expertise. In both... View Details
- February 2019
- Case
Showdown at Mountain Pass: Bidding for Neo Materials
By: Benjamin C. Esty and E. Scott Mayfield
- 2019
- Article
CEO Materialism and Corporate Social Responsibility
By: Robert Davidson, Aiyesha Dey and Abbie Smith
We study the role of individual CEOs in explaining corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores. We find that CEO fixed effects explain 59% of the variation in CSR scores, whereas firm fixed effects explain 2% of the variation in CSR scores. Specifically, firms led by... View Details
- December 2018 (Revised August 2022)
- Teaching Note
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Siko Sikochi and Paul Healy
In early 2014, Corporate Learning, one of three business units at Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), was in the process of revamping its flagship product, Harvard Manage-Mentor (HMM) from version 11.0 (HMM11) to version 12.0 (HMM12). The revamped software would be... View Details
- December 2018
- Case
Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Amy C. Edmondson, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Tonia Labruyere
When Stefan Oschmann became CEO and chairman of the executive board of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2016, the company had started its transformation from a mid-tier traditional German industry player to a global modern science and technology player. The... View Details
- Article
Populism and the Return of the 'Paranoid Style': Some Evidence and a Simple Model of Demand for Incompetence as Insurance against Elite Betrayal
By: Rafael Di Tella and Julio J. Rotemberg
We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice... View Details
- December 2018
- Article
Some Elements of Peronist Beliefs and Tastes
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We study the beliefs and values of Peronism. Instead of a comprehensive approach, we focus on three elements. First, we study beliefs and values about the economic system present in Peron’s speeches during the period 1943–1955. Second, given that these beliefs are... View Details
- 2018
- Article
What Can Managers Privately Disclose to Investors?
By: Eugene F. Soltes
Regulators have long been aware that differential access to information can undermine the efficiency and fairness of financial markets. In an effort to place investors on equal footing, the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2000 created Regulation Fair Disclosure... View Details