Publications

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September 2000 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Netflix (2000)

By: E. Scott Mayfield

The CEO of a successful Internet start-up must decide whether to delay the company's initial public offering following a significant decline in the NASDAQ market during the spring of 2000. The company's CFO is asked to reevaluate the company's projected cash flow needs... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Contracts; Initial Public Offering; Cash Flow; Service Delivery; Financial Strategy; Web Services Industry

02 Feb 2017
HBS Seminar

Lamar Pierce, Washington University in St Louis

Research Summary

Overview

By: Nien-he Hsieh

Professor Hsieh’s research concerns ethical issues in business and the responsibilities of global business leaders. His work centers on the question of whether and how managers ought to be guided not only by considerations of economic efficiency, but also by values... View Details

January 1989 (Revised July 1991)
Case

Bank for International Development, Software Case

By: W. Carl Kester and Timothy A. Luehrman

A hypothetical case in which an assistant treasurer of a supranational bank is asked to determine in which currencies it has been cheaper ex post to borrow. An integral part of the case is a Lotus 1-2-3 worksheet containing monthly data on yen and dollar interest... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Interest Rates; International Finance; Relationships; Currency; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Analytics and Data Science; Inflation and Deflation

Program

Driving Corporate Performance

objectives Enhance competitiveness by better aligning all types of resources to customer needs Strengthen employee relationships and build a strong and enduring culture of helping others to succeed Expand your personal and professional... View Details

October 2015
Article

How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Companies

By: Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann

The evolution of products into intelligent, connected devices is revolutionizing business. In a November 2014 article, "How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition," Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter and PTC president and CEO James... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Operations; Business Strategy

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04 Mar 2024
What Do You Think?

Do People Want to Work Anymore?

(AdobeStock/Halfpoint) Sometimes we experience what Yogi Berra described as “déjà vu all over again.” It happened to me several weeks ago and left me wondering whether it’s déjà vu or whether things really have changed. Years ago, my colleague at Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

June 2016
Case

Augustine Heard & Co.: Building a Family Business in the China Trade (A)

By: William C. Kirby, Joycelyn W. Eby and John S. Ji

Augustine Heard Sr. founded Augustine Heard & Company, a commission house focused on trade between China and the United States, in 1840. He welcomed his four nephews into the family business as it expanded in the increasingly complex economic and political environment... View Details

Keywords: Exports; China; Commissions; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; China; Boston

Web

Program Requirements - Doctoral

requirements. It is expected that students will establish relationships with other faculty members, and it is possible that the major academic advisory role may be assumed by different faculty members in the dissertation stage of a... View Details

July–August 2012
Article

What Good Are Shareholders?

By: Justin Fox and Jay W. Lorsch

The article looks at the role outside shareholders play in corporate governance in the U.S., and the relationship between companies' shareholders and managers, as of 2012. It recounts the shift beginning in the 1970s toward shareholders claiming an increasing amount of... View Details

Keywords: Shareholder Activism; Business and Shareholder Relations; Investment Activism; Corporate Governance; Decision Making; Managerial Roles; United States

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Article

Creating Value Together

By: Maxim Sytch and Ranjay Gulati

Conventional wisdom suggests that companies should avoid growing dependent on their business partners. If one company, the thinking goes, grows too dependent on a counterpart by getting the entire input for a particular activity from it and is not able to switch... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Performance Improvement; Partners and Partnerships; Power and Influence; Value Creation

2008
Case

Thomas Green:Power, Office Politics and a Career in Crisis

By: W. Earl Sasser

The case describes the dilemma of a marketing manager, Thomas Green, who, after being rapidly promoted, is harshly criticized by his boss, Frank Davis. Green and Davis disagree on work styles and market projections. Green believes the sales goals set by Davis are based... View Details

Keywords: Relationships; Personal Development and Career; Conflict and Resolution; Failure; Accounting; Creativity

Research Summary

Buyers, Sellers, Manufacturers in China’s Emerging Market around 1900

Ever since the economic reforms in the post-Mao period China’s economy as an emerging market has attracted much interest. However, we tend to forget that China was already an emerging market at the turn of the 19^th century, if not earlier. This... View Details

November 5, 2024
Article

The International Empirics of Management

By: Daniela Scur, Scott Ohlmacher, John Van Reenen, Morten Bennedsen, Nick Bloom, Ali Choudhary, Lucia Foster, Jesse Groenewegen, Arti Grover, Sjoerd Hardeman, Leonardo Iacovone, Ryo Kambayashi, Marie-Christine Laible, Renata Lemos, Hongbin Li, Andrea Linarello, Mika Maliranta, Denis Medvedev, Charlotte Meng, John Miles Touya, Natalia Mandirola, Roope Ohlsbom, Atsushi Ohyama, Megha Patnaik, Mariana Pereira-López, Raffaella Sadun, Tatsuro Senga, Franklin Qian and Florian Zimmermann

A country’s national income broadly depends on the quantity and quality of workers and capital. But how well these factors are managed within and between firms may be a key determinant of a country’s productivity and its GDP. Although social scientists have long... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Economy; Management Practices and Processes

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Article

Real Effects of Relational Contracts

By: Steven Blader, Claudine Gartenberg, Rebecca Henderson and Andrea Pratt

How important are factors such as "firm culture" and "employee engagement" in driving firm performance? Increasing evidence from a wide range of fields suggests that productivity differs widely across firms, even after the inclusion of careful controls for factors such... View Details

October 2020
Case

Israelis, Palestinians and the Technology Bridge Between Them: A Work in Progress

By: Elie Ofek and Lia Weiner

In Israel of 2020 the demand for software engineers was endless. Meanwhile just miles away, Palestinian universities were graduating 3,000 engineers a year, and many of them could not find jobs in the still nascent Palestinian tech sector. Could these dots be... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitics; Technology Ecosystem; Software Engineers; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Business Startups; International Relations; Cooperation; Opportunities; Problems and Challenges; Technology Industry; Israel; Palestinian state