Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(697)
- Faculty Publications (113)
- May 2008
- Article
When Winning Is Everything
By: Deepak Malhotra, Gillian Ku and J. Keith Murnighan
In the heat of competition, executives can easily become obsessed with beating their rivals. This adrenaline-fueled emotional state, which the authors call competitive arousal, often leads to bad decisions. Managers can minimize the potential for competitive arousal... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised September 2008)
- Supplement
Marketing the "$100 Laptop" (C)
By: John A. Quelch and David Chen
In October 2007, the OLPC reported production delays and missed its shipment date. In early November, the $100 PC finally went into production, with initial shipments planned for Uruguay and Mongolia, and mid-month launched the "Give One, Get One" program. It enabled... View Details
- December 2007 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
The American National Red Cross (A)
By: Jay W. Lorsch, Eliot Sherman and David Chen
Describes the governance issues facing the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross. After a series of issues--FDA consent decree on its blood operations; the response to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina--the Red Cross board was under pressure to fix its governance from... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Control Data Corporation and the Urban Crisis
By: Tom Nicholas and Laura Gaie Singleton
Control Data Corporation is considering its response to the assassination of renowned civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Four months prior, William Norris, president of the Minneapolis-based computer firm had already committed to building a plant in a low-income... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised May 2008)
- Case
Creativity under the Gun at Litmus Corporation
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Yana Litovsky
Teaches students to diagnose the circumstances under which time pressure can facilitate or hinder creativity. A team's creative "genius", Miles Grady, who previously conceptualized a revolutionary material for an important new product, must now significantly change... View Details
- Article
Reputation When Threats and Transfers Are Available
By: Ernesto Dal Bo, Pedro Dal Bo and Rafael Di Tella
We present a model where a long-run player is allowed to use both money transfers and threats to influence the decisions of a sequence of short-run players. We show that threats might be used credibly (even in arbitrarily short repeated games) by a long-lived player... View Details
- May 2007
- Article
Corporate Financing Decisions When Investors Take the Path of Least Resistance
By: Malcolm Baker, Joshua Coval and Jeremy Stein
We explore the consequences for corporate financial policy that arise when investors exhibit inertial behavior. One implication of investor inertia is that, all else equal, a firm pursuing a strategy of equity-financed growth will prefer a stock-for-stock merger to... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised December 2012)
- Background Note
Strategies Beyond the Market
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dennis Yao
Strategists are not alone in finding failing markets irresistible. Governments and social groups ranging from unions to the World Wildlife Fund also respond to market failures. Governments typically seek to fix failing markets, often with prescriptions of what... View Details
- 2005
- Other Unpublished Work
Corporate Financing Decisions When Investors Take the Path of Least Resistance
By: Malcolm Baker, Joshua Coval and Jeremy Stein
We explore the consequences for corporate financial policy that arise when investors exhibit inertial behavior. One implication of investor inertia is that, all else equal, a firm pursuing a strategy of equity-financed growth will prefer a stock-for-stock merger to... View Details
- March 2005 (Revised June 2006)
- Case
Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Web Services Strategy
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Fernando Suarez
Microsoft and IBM have excluded Sun Microsystems from the board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an industry consortium that will shape the evolution of Web services standards. Sun managers must decide whether to join WS-I as a contributing... View Details
- 2005
- Chapter
Social Pressures in Siting Conflicts: A Case Study of Siting a Radioactive Waste Repository in Pennsylvania
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Howard Kunreuther
- 2004
- Chapter
Institutional Pressure and Environmental Management Practices
By: Magali Delmas and Michael W. Toffel
- October 2003 (Revised January 2004)
- Exercise
Electric Maze Exercise, The
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar
This team-based exercise uses an educational tool called "The Electric Maze," developed by Interel Corp., to teach insights about the social and psychological challenges facing employees who must engage in collaborative learning. The tool is a grid-patterned rug with... View Details
- 1 Aug 2003 - 6 Aug 2003
- Conference Presentation
The Influence of Time Pressure on Creative Thinking in Organizations
By: Teresa M. Amabile, J. S. Mueller, W. B. Simpson, L. Fleming and C. N. Hadley
- June 2003 (Revised January 2006)
- Case
Xilinx, Inc. (A)
By: Thomas J. DeLong and Christina Darwall
Is it possible to create a great business and a company? Wim Roelandts sets out, in the context of Xilinx, to create a high-performance organization without sacrificing the human dimension. Roelandts experiences additional pressure when the company is affected by a... View Details
- February 2003 (Revised August 2004)
- Case
Flextronics: Deciding on a Shop Floor System for Producing the Microsoft Xbox
By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Jim McCusker must guide a group decision-making process aimed at getting input and buy-in from key people in California, Mexico, and Austria to choose a shop floor IT system for Flextronics. McCusker is Flextronics' account manager for the Microsoft Xbox project.... View Details
- December 2002
- Other Article
The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy
By: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer
When it comes to philanthropy, executives increasingly see themselves as caught between critics demanding ever higher levels of "corporate social responsibility" and investors applying pressure to maximize short-term profits. Increasingly, philanthropy is used as a... View Details
Keywords: Strategy
- October 2002 (Revised May 2004)
- Case
Starbucks and Conservation International
By: James E. Austin and Cate Reavis
Starbucks, the world's leading specialty coffee company, developed a strategic alliance with Conservation International, a major international environmental nonprofit organization. The purpose of the alliance was to promote coffee-growing practices of small farms that... View Details
- August 2002
- Article
Creativity Under the Gun
By: Teresa Amabile, Constance N. Hadley and Steven J. Kramer
If you're like most managers, you've worked with people who swear they do their most creative work under tight deadlines. You may use pressure as a management technique, believing it will spur people on to great leaps of insight. You may even manage yourself this way.... View Details
- March 2002 (Revised May 2003)
- Case
Supply Chain Close-Up: The Video Vault
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
The owners of the Video Vault struggle to determine the optimal stocking levels of home videos in an industry fraught with new technology, new pricing paradigms, and stiff competitive pressure from large national chains. Teaching Purpose: To demonstrate the role of... View Details