Publications

Find at Harvard

2013
Working Paper

The Appeal of the Appropriate: Accounting, Risk Management, and the Competition for the Supply of Control Systems

By: Anette Mikes

How do certain risk measurements in organizations come to be seen as more reliable and acceptable than others? Taking a multiple-control perspective, I investigate the aftermath of a control debacle at a financial services company (MultiBank), focusing on its insurance... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Multiple Control Systems; Interactive Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Risk Measurement; Financialization Of Accounting; Institutional Logics; Banking; Risk Management; Fair Value Accounting; Insurance; Financial Services Industry

Read Now

June 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Teaching Note

TripAdvisor (TN)

By: Sunil Gupta

By 2010, TripAdvisor (TA) was the largest travel site in the world operating in 24 countries and 16 languages, with listings for 455,000 hotels, 92,000 attractions and 564,000 restaurants in over 71,000 destinations worldwide. It had over 40 million reviews from 35... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Digital Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Travel Industry; Tourism Industry; China; United States

September 2022
Article

Health Externalities and Policy: The Role of Social Preferences

By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi

Social preferences facilitate the internalization of health externalities, for example by reducing mobility during a pandemic. We test this hypothesis using mobility data from 258 cities worldwide alongside experimentally validated measures of social preferences.... View Details

Keywords: Social Preferences; Pandemics; Mobility; Health Externalities; Mitigation Policies; Health Pandemics; Cooperation; Behavior; Policy

01 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 1

details how Emirates' chooses new routes, technology, and equipment and manages its human resources, marketing and branding, and government relationships-together forming an internally consistent strategy... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2019 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Mãe Terra and Unilever (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

The case concerns the sale of Mãe Terra, one of Brazil's leading brands for packaged organic foods, to the consumer goods giant Unilever in 2017. Working with Unilever management, Mãe Terra’s CEO Alexandre Borges must determine whether and how to keep Mãe Terra's B... View Details

Keywords: Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Brand Management; Sustainability; Mergers and Acquisitions; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Environmental Sustainability; Organizational Culture; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Brazil; Latin America

June 2022
Case

Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion

By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Emilie Billaud and Federica Gabrieli

Born in 2008 as a small startup selling flip flops, by mid-2021 Zalando had turned into an online fashion company with an assortment of more than 4,500 international brands, 45 million active customers, and a presence in 23 European markets. An essential component in... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Platforms; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Infrastructure; Logistics; Service Operations; Strategy; Business Strategy; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Distribution Industry; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Shipping Industry; Technology Industry; Europe

01 Dec 2023
News

Wide Horizon

There were three critical events that led John Rodakis (MBA 1997) to form the nonprofit N of One in 2014 and ultimately dedicate his life to surfacing breakthrough autism research. The first occurred on Thanksgiving of 2012. He had driven about four hours with his wife... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell; Photos by Sarah Wilson

14 Feb 2018
Blog Post

Meet HBS Leadership Fellows: Verdell Walker, Sesame Workshop

organization where every employee is truly united and motivated by a singular goal. SW combines fun media with enriching, meticulously crafted curriculum to address children’s critical developmental needs in the U.S. and across the world. My role for the Fellowship... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

27 Jul 2010
First Look

First Look: July 27

Using a large sample of publicly traded U.S. firms over 16 years, we investigate the impact of corporate socially responsible (CSR) strategies on security analysts' recommendations. Socially responsible firms received more favorable... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2009
Chapter

The Decline and Renewal of British Multinational Banking.

By: G. Jones and Lucy Newton

This chapter discusses the renaissance of British multinational banking from the 1990s. British commercial banks had pioneered multinational banking during the 19th century, but they were unable to build on this legacy during the new wave of global banking that began... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Commercial Banking; International Finance; Multinational Firms and Management; Strategy; Banking Industry; Great Britain

24 Feb 2021
Lessons from the Classroom

What History's Biggest Wars Teach Us About Leading in Peace

promising successes on the world’s battlefields as they pursue long-term success. “You don’t want to copy and paste the strategy and tactics” from one war to the next, says Malhotra, the Eli Goldston Professor of Business Administration.... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

December 2011 (Revised June 2013)
Supplement

Bananas (B)

By: Eric Van den Steen

As owner and CEO, Wim Van der Borght had grown Bananas in 8 years from a 4.5 million euro company into a 40 million euro group of companies with a range of field marketing activities in Belgium and the Netherlands. The core of the group consisted of two companies —... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Competitive Advantage; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy

March 2012
Case

Angry Birds

By: Sunil Gupta and Dharmishta Rood

Within months of its launch in December 2009, Angry Birds, a mobile game created by a small Finnish company, Rovio Entertainment Ltd., became an international hit. By late 2011, Rovio was not only making Angry Birds games for the iPhone, Android and other mobile... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Diversification; Expansion; Video Game Industry; Finland

Web

Business History - Faculty & Research

simplistic assumptions about business behavior also enabled business history to be highly creative and, at times, to exercise a huge impact on management studies more generally, especially strategy and the study of entrepreneurship.... View Details

April 2023
Article

Are Intermediary Constraints Priced?

By: Wenxin Du, Benjamin Hebert and Amy Wang Huber

Violations of no-arbitrage conditions measure the shadow cost of intermediary constraints. Intermediary asset pricing and intertemporal hedging together imply that the risk of these constraints tightening is priced. We describe a “forward CIP trading strategy” that... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Investment Return; Risk and Uncertainty; International Finance

Find at Harvard

Web

General Management - Faculty & Research

governance trends. About the Unit The General Management Unit is concerned with the leadership and management of the enterprise as a whole. This concern encompasses: the personal values and qualities of effective general managers and enterprise leaders; the... View Details

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Corporate Inversions: Stanley Works and the Lure of Tax Havens

By: Mihir A. Desai, James R. Hines, Jr and Mark Veblen

In response to Stanley Work's announcement that it is moving to Bermuda--and the associated jump in market value--a major competitor sets out to determine how the market is valuing the consequences of moving to a tax haven and whether his company should invert to a tax... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Taxation; Financial Strategy; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; International Finance; Valuation; Financial Markets; Financial Statements; United States

February 2025
Case

Hyperscaling Dreams: Ualá's Path from Startup to Fintech Champion

By: Juan Alcácer and Manuel Franck

Ualá, a fintech startup founded in Argentina in 2017 by Pierpaolo Barbieri, aimed to increase financial inclusion in Latin America through a digital platform linked to a prepaid card. After rapid success in Argentina, it expanded into Mexico and Colombia, acquiring... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Leadership; Venture Capital; Talent and Talent Management; Strategy; Credit; Business Startups; Profit; Growth and Development Strategy; Banking Industry; Argentina; Mexico; Colombia; Latin America