Publications

SSRN

December 1999
Article

Changes in the Work Environment for Creativity during Downsizing

By: T. M. Amabile and Regina Conti

This study examined the work environment for creativity at a large high-technology firm before, during, and after a major downsizing. Creativity and most creativity-supporting aspects of the perceived work environment declined significantly during the downsizing but... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Situation or Environment; Creativity; Resignation and Termination; Employees; Business or Company Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Crisis Management; Groups and Teams; Communication; Announcements; Interpersonal Communication

August 2006
Article

Predicting Returns with Managerial Decision Variables: Is There a Small-Sample Bias?

By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Jeffrey Wurgler

Many studies find that aggregate managerial decision variables, such as aggregate equity issuance, predict stock or bond market returns. Recent research argues that these findings may be driven by an aggregate time-series version of Schultz's (2003, Journal of Finance... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Fairness; Managerial Roles; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Equity; Bonds; Financial Markets; Investment; Capital Markets; Borrowing and Debt; Investment Return

July 2025
Article

Extraverts Reap Greater Social Rewards from Passion Because They Express Passion More Frequently and More Diversely

By: Kai Krautter, Anabel Büchner and Jon M. Jachimowicz

Passion is stereotypically expressed through animated facial expressions, energetic body movements, varied tone, and pitch—and met with interpersonal benefits. However, these capture only a subset of passion expressions that are more common for extraverts. Indeed, in... View Details

Keywords: Passion; Personality; Extraversion; Scale Development; Perception; Personal Characteristics

Purchase

23 Oct 2024
HBS Seminar

Rosa Ferrer, University of Pompeu Fabra and BSE

2023
Working Paper

Interest-Rate Risk and Household Portfolios

By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller, James Paron and Natasha Sarin

How are households exposed to interest-rate risk? When rates fall, households face lower future expected returns but those holding long-term assets—disproportionately the wealthy and middle-aged—experience capital gains. We study the hedging demand for long-term assets... View Details

Keywords: Portfolio Choice; Social Security; Interest Rates; Investment Portfolio; Equality and Inequality; Welfare

I study whether return migrants facilitate knowledge production by local employees working for them at geographically distant research and development (R&D) locations. Using unique personnel and patenting data for 1315 employees at the Indian R&D center of a... View Details

Research Summary

Seeing Thought

By: Gerald Zaltman

This program of research combines the results from ZMET studies to create marketing stimuli such as advertising, retail store designs, product concepts, product design, and so forth, which are then presented to a sample of consumers whose reactions are observed using... View Details

Research Summary

The Cross Section of Expected Firm (Not Equity) Returns

This paper provides the first comprehensive study of expected firm (unlevered equity) returns. After accounting for the debt component of the firm return, I find that many of the cross sectional determinants of expected equity returns, such as the book-to-market... View Details

July 2018
Article

Global Collaborative Patents

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Ethnic Networks; Migration; Technology Transfer; Mobility; Information Technology; Globalized Firms and Management; Diasporas; Patents; Ethnicity; Entrepreneurship; Research and Development; Foreign Direct Investment; Innovation and Invention; Globalization; United States

Laura Alfaro is the Warren Alpert Professor of Business Administration. At Harvard since 1999, she served as Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy in Costa Rica from 2010-2012, taking a leave from HBS. She is Co-Editor of the Journal of International... View Details

31 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Checking Your Ethics: Would You Speak Up in These 3 Sticky Situations?

day, you are an associate, and this is a partner-led relationship,” he says. “The partner is the one who has the core relationship with the client.” As difficult and distasteful as it may be to observe the behavior, in most cases you... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consulting

2016
Working Paper

Equal Opportunity? Gender Gaps in CEO Appointments and Executive Pay

By: Matti Keloharju, Samuli Knüpfer and Joacim Tåg

This paper uses exceptionally rich data on Swedish corporate executives and their personal characteristics to study gender gaps in CEO appointments and pay. Both gaps are sizeable: 18% for CEO appointments and 27% for pay. At most one-eighth of the gaps can be... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Executive Compensation; Gender; Sweden

SSRN

06 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

How Younger Immigrants Gain an Edge in American Business

try to broaden the applicant pool, the study holds clues for how immigrants can best contribute to their new economies. “This group was allowed to work in the United States legally upon arrival, which differs from settings where we see... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

July 2001 (Revised March 2003)
Background Note

Running and Growing the Small Company: Project-Paper Writing Recommendations

Students are required to do a team project. During the project, they are to do a benchmarking study of a business process to determine best practice or to study a single business process for the purposes of discovering improvement opportunities. The student teams are... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Business Processes; Management Skills

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

the road.” “That’s what I remember from growing up, this constant conflict and fight over hours,” recounts Stavros, a partner at private equity firm KKR, in a new series of Harvard Business School case studies that detail his radical... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

April 2008 (Revised July 2011)
Background Note

Strategic Decline

By: David J. Collis and Jan W. Rivkin

This note first documents the facts around the sustainability of competitive advantage. It then observes that the demise of a previously successful strategy, in the first instance, often comes from some change in the external environment. It, therefore, characterizes... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Strategy; Situation or Environment; Organizational Change and Adaptation

Educators

Purchase

Article

Corporate Culture and Analyst Catering

By: Joseph Pacelli

This study examines the relation between financial institutions’ corporate culture and the quality of analysts’ research services. Using data collected from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, I measure the weakness of financial institutions’ corporate culture... View Details

Keywords: Analysts; Corporate Culture; Global Settlement; Financial Institutions; Organizational Culture; Conflict of Interests; Performance; Quality

Article

Managing Perceptions of Distress at Work: Reframing Emotion as Passion

By: Elizabeth Baily Wolf, Jooa Julia Lee, Sunita Sah and Alison Wood Brooks

Expressing distress at work can have negative consequences for employees: observers perceive employees who express distress as less competent than employees who do not. Across five experiments, we explore how reframing a socially inappropriate emotional expression... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Emotions; Perception

January 2006 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Capitalism and Democracy in a New World

By: Bruce R. Scott, Sarah Potvin and Alison Adams

Focuses on the formulation of the Northwestern Ordinance as the core of a development strategy for capitalism and democracy in the United States. A precursor to the Constitution, the Northwestern Ordinance was based on the New England Model to achieve a broad and... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Economic Systems; Income; Laws and Statutes; Government and Politics; Growth and Development Strategy; Power and Influence; United States