Publications

August 2004
Article

Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different?

By: Rafael Di Tella, Alberto Alesina and Robert MacCulloch

We study the effect of the level of inequality in society on individual well-being using a total of 123,668 answers to a survey question about “happiness”. We find that individuals have a lower tendency to report themselves happy when inequality is high, even after... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Happiness; Global Range; Local Range; United States; Europe

Successful leaders – at any level and in any arena – are inevitably presented with moral and ethical choices. This unique and innovative textbook is designed to encourage students and managers to confront those fundamental moral challenges, to develop skills in... View Details

11 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

Is Amazon a Retailer, a Tech Firm, or a Media Company? How AI Can Help Investors Decide

critical in terms of the way you manage notional risk. Kost: How might finance rethink other approaches to benchmarking? Awada: Well, is the S&P 500 really representative of the market? You know, why 500 stocks? Why can't we have... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consumer Products; Real Estate; Financial Services; Retail

02 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

What Makes a Good Leader?

sometimes guilty of using the dichotomy in an effort at simplification. "It's much better to think in terms of measuring people on a zero-to-ten scale for each quality." HBS professor Joe Badaracco agrees that the traditional... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg & Susan Young

18 Nov 2009
Working Paper Summaries

India Transformed? Insights from the Firm Level 1988-2005

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro & Anusha Chari

09 Nov 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Recognizing the New: A Multi-Agent Model of Analogy in Strategic Decision-Making

Keywords: by Giovanni M. Gavetti & Massimo Warglien

2020
Working Paper

On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout

By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers

Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for... View Details

Keywords: Voter Turnout; Paradox Of Voting; Pivotality; Elections; Model; Voting; Behavior; Theory

2019
Article

Go-Shops Revisited

By: Guhan Subramanian and Annie Zhao

A go-shop process turns the traditional M&A deal process on its head: rather than a pre-signing market canvass followed by a post-signing “no shop” period, a go-shop deal involves a limited pre-signing market check, followed by a post-signing “go shop” process to find... View Details

Keywords: Go-shop Process; Mergers and Acquisitions; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Deal; Performance Effectiveness; Technological Innovation

2012
Chapter

The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort

By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Applications and Software; Product Development; Organizations; Employees; Behavior; Competition; Cooperation; Creativity; Information Technology Industry

2019
Working Paper

Why Does Business Invest in Education in Emerging Markets? Why Does It Matter?

By: Valeria Giacomin, G. Jones and Erica Salvaj

This working paper examines why a significant number of businesses have made non-profit investments in education in emerging markets between the 1960s and the present day. Using a sample of 110 interviews with business leaders from an oral history database at the... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; CSR; Oral History; Emerging Markets; Education; Reputation; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business History

12 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 12, 2019

costly for both employees and employers, in terms of direct medical costs as well as costs stemming from lost productive time and missed days at work. Resilience training has been shown to improve workplace functioning for employees,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Web

Food & Agriculture - Business & Environment

part of the digestive process of ruminant animals such as cattle—produces methane, a gas about 20 times more damaging that CO 2 in terms of its global warming potential. [29] Modern farming techniques emit CO2 by releasing some of the... View Details

15 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Five Imperatives for Improving Health Care

improvement, "consumer incentives to encourage healthy behavior" ranked last among 11 possible innovations in terms of its ability to increase value in health care, according to survey respondents. The reason: Incentives aren't... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

21 Mar 2019
HBS Case

The Ferrari Way

and secretive companies in the world,” he says. “I wanted to lift the veil and see how they work.” The Ferrari Way What he found is something he termed "The Ferrari Way" after an offhand comment from the company’s chief test... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Auto

30 May 2024
News

How to Have Effective Conversations

getting the job done. But instead, he did the opposite and he said, look, this clearly is important to many people, and this is something that is causing some controversy. I want us to talk about how we see ourselves in terms of race or... View Details

14 Nov 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Accountability in Complex Organizations: World Bank Responses to Civil Society

Keywords: by Alnoor S. Ebrahim & Steve Herz

June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Cementos Argos in the U.S.: Go Big or Go Home?

By: Jorge Tamayo, Ruth Costas, Pedro Levindo and Karina Souza

In April 2011, Colombian group Cementos Argos had to decide on whether to double down its business in the U.S., amidst the U.S. cement industry’s lowest performance in 30 years. Argos— Colombia’s leading cement producer and one of the “jewels” of Grupo GEA, the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Organization; Business Subsidiaries; Talent and Talent Management; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Financial Crisis; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Strategy; Construction Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Latin America; South America; North and Central America; United States; Colombia

Educators

May 2020 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal

In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and... View Details

Educators

Purchase

Article

Offline Showrooms in Omni-channel Retail: Demand and Operational Benefits

By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

Omnichannel environments where customers shop online and offline at the same retailer are ubiquitous and are deployed by online-first and traditional retailers alike. We focus on the relatively understudied domain of online-first retailers and the engagement of a key... View Details

Keywords: Experience Attributes; Marketing–operations Interface; Omnichannel Retailing; Quasi-experimental Methods; Retail Operations; Showrooms; Marketing Channels; Demand and Consumers; Performance Efficiency; Retail Industry