Publications

March 2015
Case

Statoil: Transparency on Payments to Governments

By: George Serafeim

The Statoil case describes the challenge of increasing transparency, in extractive industries, around host county government payments. The case describes Statoil's reasoning behind voluntarily disclosing host country government payments, and the events that led to this... View Details

Keywords: Corruption; Disclosure; Disclosure Strategy; Regulation; Industry Self-regulation; Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Bribery; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Government Legislation; Cost vs Benefits; Corporate Disclosure; Mining; Mining Industry; United States

Educators

29 May 2019
News

Bloomberg: Restoring Our Faith in Business and Government

In his address to HBS graduates at this year’s Class Day, Michael Bloomberg (MBA 1966) spoke about the degeneration of American political culture and the challenge it poses. “Now, the good news is: There is a solution,” he told the crowd,... View Details

Web

Building Iconic Brands and Brighter Futures: Interview with Glossier CEO, Kyle Leahy - Recruiting

didn’t plan out a career in beauty. Instead, she tested out different hypotheses and followed her curiosity. Some early stops in her career included internships at Merrill Lynch and Putnam, consideration of... View Details

08 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The Civic Benefits of Google Street View and Yelp

if city regulators wanted to see the impact of licensing three new businesses on a particular block, they could monitor changes in Google Street Views, cross-referencing that data with online reviews in the neighborhood View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

31 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

State and Local Governments Peer Into the Pandemic Abyss

state and local governments, balanced budget requirements force them to save up in advance or beg Congress for federal support.” Most states are required by law to carry balanced budgets View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

March 2014
Teaching Note

E-Cigarettes: Marketing Versus Public Health

By: John A. Quelch

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) were heralded by some as a healthcare game changer, enabling smokers to switch to a new product which carried lower risk of cancer. However, there were concerns about the public health risk of e-cigarettes, particularly the chance... View Details

30 Jan 2013
Working Paper Summaries

These Are the Good Old Days: Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System

Keywords: by Stephen Haber & Aldo Musacchio; Banking

2023
Case

Christiana Figueres and the Collaborative Approach to Negotiating Climate Action

By: James K. Sebenius, Laurence A. Green, Hannah Riley-Bowles, Lara SanPietro and Mina Subramanian

This case study centers on Harvard’s Program on Negotiation 2022 Great Negotiator, Christiana Figueres, and her efforts as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to build momentum for, and ultimately pass, the 2015... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Negotiation; Environmental Regulation; International Relations; Leadership

Register to Read

November 2015 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Uber: Changing the Way the World Moves

By: Youngme Moon

In 2015, Uber is building what may be the largest point-to-point transportation network of its kind; it is literally changing the way the world moves. But unlike traditional transportation logistics companies like FedEx, Uber has an incredibly lightweight... View Details

Keywords: Service; Innovation; Pricing; Customer Loyalty; Uber; Taxi; Sharing Economy; On-demand Economy; Marketing; Operations; Strategy; Disruption; Customer Satisfaction; Transportation; Consumer Behavior

Educators

24 Apr 2014
News

Connecting people and policymakers in a conversation online

After taking an active role in Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, in which she discovered how much she enjoyed canvassing voters and talking to people, Elsa Sze (MBA/MPP 2014) wanted to extend the intensity of political engagement beyond... View Details

18 Apr 2014
News

Strengthening the bond between the U.S. and China

Former US Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. (MBA 1970) talks about his current work in US-China relations as CEO of the Paulson Institute. (Published April 2014) View Details

January–February 2024
Article

The Challenge of Maintaining Passion for Work over Time: A Daily Perspective on Passion and Emotional Exhaustion

By: Joy Bredehorst, Kai Krautter, Jirs Meuris and Jon M. Jachimowicz

Passion for work is highly coveted, but many employees report struggling to maintain their passion over time. In the current research, we explain the challenge of pursuing passion by conceptualizing passion as an attribute with temporal variation. Viewed through a... View Details

Keywords: Passion; Work-Life Balance; Employees; Emotions

13 Dec 2018
Blog Post

Working at the Intersection of Business and Environment

likely to be affected by climate change or related regulation and recommend steps it should take to address related risks while simultaneously seizing emerging opportunities for investment or innovation. ... View Details

Who Sways the USDA on GMO Approvals?

Economists use the term "regulatory capture" to describe the phenomenon whereby regulatory agencies serving the public instead end up advancing the interests of the companies they regulate. Once those laws are passed, however, it's less clear how companies sway the... View Details

Article

Czech Mate: Expropriation and Investor Protection in a Converging World

By: Mihir A. Desai and Alberto Moel

This paper examines the expropriation of a foreign investor by a local partner and the subsequent resolution of that case through international arbitration in favor of the investor. Despite the investor's 99% interest in joint venture, the local partner managed to... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Capital Markets; Foreign Direct Investment; Geographic Location; Multinational Firms and Management; Governance Controls; Courts and Trials; Rights; Czech Republic; United States

SSRN

February 2016
Case

Debt and Democracy: The New York Constitutional Convention of 1846

By: David Moss and Dean Grodzins

On September 23, 1846, delegates to New York State's constitutional convention prepared to vote on a proposal that its principal proponent, Michael Hoffman, conceded would be “a serious change in our form of government.” The proposal would place tight restrictions on... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Governance; Laws and Statutes; Government and Politics; History; New York (state, US)

Educators

01 Feb 1997
News

Made, Not Born: HBS Courses and Entrepreneurial Management

need to cut the cost of a building by 10 percent in order to make the numbers work, they need to understand what has been given up. I'd like them to be better at visualizing the impact of what is being created and its effect on the user... View Details

July 2002
Article

The Sale of Ideas: Strategic Disclosure, Property Rights, and Contracting

By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao

Ideas are difficult to sell when buyers cannot assess an idea's value before it is revealed and sellers cannot protect a revealed idea. These problems exist in a variety of intellectual property sales ranging from pure ideas to poorly protected inventions and reflect... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property; Contracts; Strategy; Valuation

March 2023
Article

Attracting the Sharks: Corporate Innovation and Securities Class Action Lawsuits

By: Elisabeth Kempf and Oliver Spalt

This paper provides novel evidence suggesting that securities class action lawsuits, a central pillar of the U.S. litigation and corporate governance system, can constitute an obstacle to valuable corporate innovation. We first establish that valuable innovation output... View Details

Keywords: Class-action Litigation; Turnover; Lawsuits and Litigation; Innovation and Invention; Risk and Uncertainty