Publications

October 1987 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Boston Fights Drugs (A): Designing Communications Research

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Describes in detail the research mounted by five individuals with a $20,000 budget to combat drug abuse among Boston's school-going population. Using the focus group methodology they discover that most of the current anti-drug advertising is useless. They create their... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Communication Intention and Meaning; Brands and Branding; Performance Evaluation; Research and Development; Segmentation; Pharmaceutical Industry; Boston

01 Mar 2009
News

Where Are They Now?

in management control systems through research focused on the various issues related to the design and effects of performance measurement, evaluation and incentive systems, and, more recently, corporate... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

10 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

Professors Introduce Valuation Software

performance based on historical data that should help users to avoid a common mistake of overestimating the sustainability of strong (or poor) current performance. Finally, the model shows the direct linkage between variables that are... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

01 Jun 2005
News

When No News Isn’t Good News

If you’ve been waiting for your annual performance review to receive feedback from your boss, you may be doing yourself — and your company — a big disservice. Christine McKay (MBA ’98), a career coach who works with students through MBA... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; career consulting; career advice

2012
Working Paper

Earnings Management from the Bottom Up: An Analysis of Managerial Incentives Below the CEO

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Julie Wulf

Performance-based pay is an important instrument to align the interests of managers with the interests of shareholders. However, recent evidence suggests that high-powered incentives also provide managers with incentives to manipulate the firm's reported earnings. The... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Interests; Business and Shareholder Relations; Motivation and Incentives; Earnings Management; Performance Evaluation; Stock Options

Read Now

August 2009
Case

Bank of America Sports Sponsorship

By: Stephen A. Greyser and John L. Teopaco

A major sports sponsor must decide on new, renewal, or withdrawal from significant relations with teams/leagues/events, using a distinctive approach to assessment. View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Partners and Partnerships; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Evaluation; Financing and Loans; Marketing Strategy; Sports Industry

17 Feb 2022
News

A Big Bet

person’s social capital,” Chertavian told the New York Times. Palandjian’s Social Finance hopes to add more training partners this year; an independent research firm, MDRC, will evaluate the performance of... View Details

Keywords: jobs training; social enterprise; upskilling; Technical and Trade Schools; Educational Services

09 Dec 2014
First Look

First Look: December 9

and then prepared and delivered a speech to two evaluators as part of a mock job interview. All interview speeches were videotaped and coded for overall performance and hireability, and for two potential... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2022
Case

VidyaGyan: Bridging the Rural Urban Divide

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Rachna Chawla, Kairavi Dey and Anjali Raina

Set up in 2008, VidyaGyan was a residential school for children in grades 6-12 from low-income rural families in Uttar Pradesh in northern India. It was the brainchild of Shiv Nadar and Cabinet Secretary T.S.R. Subramanian, who recognized the enormous potential hidden... View Details

Keywords: Non-profit; Education; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Nonprofit Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Wealth and Poverty; Demographics; Equality and Inequality; Performance Evaluation; Opportunities; Education Industry; South Asia; India

August 2013
Teaching Note

Nutricia Middle East: Measuring Sales Force Effectiveness

By: F. Asis Martinez-Jerez

Nutricia's Middle East and African region is transitioning from a trading to a customer focus. CEO Ernest Vandenbussche must decide how to market infant milk formula most effectively in a region where the information environment is much less rich than in other... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Customer Relationship Management; Commercialization; Management Practices and Processes; Salesforce Management; Nutrition; Performance Evaluation; Information Management; Health Industry; Africa; Middle East

June 1991 (Revised December 1997)
Case

Takeover of the Norton Co., The

By: Thomas R. Piper

After a decade of mediocre performance, the Norton Co. enters 1990 with the prospect of increased sales in the next few years. Yet Norton is pursuing slow growth industries, and a lower than expected earnings announcement at the beginning of 1990 has depressed earnings... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Goals and Objectives; Forecasting and Prediction; Performance Evaluation; Revenue; Bids and Bidding; Business Processes; Ownership Stake

June 1997 (Revised May 1998)
Case

Mobil USM&R (A2)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Second of a two-part case on the development and use of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) at Mobil's US Marketing and Refining Division. This case describes the completed BSC, and how this was linked to the BSCs of the independent business units and the internal service... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Performance Evaluation; Management Teams; Management Practices and Processes; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Strategy; Energy Industry; Mining Industry; United States

01 Sep 2010
News

Faculty Research Online

nature of the investors, the structure of the investments, and the performance of the firms. Their findings suggest that there are risks in combining banking and private equity investing. The results are consistent with many of the... View Details

Keywords: Securities, Commodities, and Other Financial Investments; Finance

01 Dec 2008
News

Lesson from the Fall

The awarding of “up-front” bonuses — before cash and profits from commercial endeavors — invites employees to maximize their short-term interests while compromising the company’s long-term interests. Systems of reward that ignore comparative measures of business View Details

Keywords: Malcolm S. Salter; Oil and Gas Extraction; Mining; Electric Power Generation, Transmission, Distribution; Utilities

21 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 21, 2010

Conflict: The Effects of Contract Structure Authors:Deepak Malhotra and Fabrice Lumineau Publication:Academy of Management Journal (in press) Abstract Leveraging a longitudinal dataset concerning 102 inter-firm disputes, we evaluate the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Lincoln Financial Group (A)

Lincoln Financial Group (LFG) reorganizes its business in order to improve customer intimacy. However, to implement the strategy, they need to effect significant changes in the skills of their salespeople. This case series straddles human resource management, corporate... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Customer Relationship Management; Training; Selection and Staffing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Evaluation; Sales; Corporate Strategy

01 Dec 1997
News

Merton's Economics Research Wins Nobel Prize

In a predawn phone call on October 14, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences informed HBS professor Robert C. Merton that he had won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics. Merton's work evaluating risk has changed the nature of financial... View Details

28 Apr 2021
Blog Post

Alumni Spotlight: Cissy Chen (MBA 2019)

Integration on Stock Valuations. One example of this was when I was asked to evaluate a large OEM company based in Asia. I evaluated the company’s ESG performance by applying... View Details

April 2020 (Revised April 2023)
Supplement

TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

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, and both EBITDA and revenues had grown... View Details

Keywords: 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