Publications

January 2001 (Revised June 2004)
Case

PetroChina

By: Alexander Dyck, Yasheng Huang and David Lane

In March 2000, plans for the initial public offering of shares in PetroChina were proceeding on schedule, and institutional investors were evaluating the deal. PetroChina was China's largest oil and gas company and an attractive play on China's continued economic... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Corporate Governance; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; China

July 2004 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Opium and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century

By: Geoffrey Jones, Elisabeth Koll and Alexis Gendron

This case examines the role of Jardine Matheson, a trading company founded by two Scottish merchants, in the opium trade between India and China during the nineteenth century. The two Opium Wars fought between Western powers and China, which sought to stop opium... View Details

Keywords: History; Globalized Economies and Regions; Ethnicity; Multinational Firms and Management; Groups and Teams; Trade; Social and Collaborative Networks; China; United Kingdom

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Lawsuits and Litigation; Crisis Management; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Design; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Crime and Corruption; Business Organization; Business Model; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Governance Compliance; Policy; Compensation and Benefits; Resignation and Termination; Laws and Statutes; Legal Liability; Business or Company Management; Risk Management; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Failure; Agency Theory; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Salesforce Management; Public Opinion; Banking Industry; North and Central America

Yoonjae Shin is a PhD student in the Organizational Behavior Unit at the Harvard Business School. His primary interests are labor market, corporate governance, and social inequality. Prior to beginning his PhD, Yoonjae worked in the project team at Seoul National... View Details

June 2017 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Sales Misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Dennis W. Campbell, Susanna Gallani and Amram Migdal

Set in early 2017, this case examines widespread sales misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank. Wells Fargo's governance and controls are described in the lead up to the September 2016 announcement that Wells Fargo had settled with regulators for $185 million in... View Details

For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has towered over the field of competitive strategy. On Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition brings together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are new... View Details

Article

Ownership Dilemmas: The Case of Finders Versus Landowners

By: Peter DiScioli, Rachel Karpoff and Julian De Freitas

People sometimes disagree about who owns which objects, and these ownership dilemmas can lead to costly disputes. We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying people’s judgments about finder versus landowner cases, in which a person finds an object on someone... View Details

Keywords: Ownership Dilemma; Finders; Psychology And Law; Ownership; Property; Law; Social Psychology

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Herman B. ("Dutch") Leonard is Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Sector Management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In... View Details

Keywords: federal government; federal government; federal government; federal government; federal government

April 2013
Article

The International Politics of IFRS Harmonization

By: Karthik Ramanna

The globalization of accounting standards as seen through the proliferation of IFRS worldwide is one of the most important developments in corporate governance over the last decade. I offer an analysis of some international political dynamics of countries' IFRS... View Details

Keywords: Accounting Standards; IASB; IFRS; Politics; International Accounting; Globalization; Standards; Corporate Governance; Canada; China; India

SSRN

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24 Jul 2014
Op-Ed

Reform Tax Law to Keep US Firms at Home

Editor's Note. Given a veritable flood over the last year of corporate "inversions"—US companies that reincoporate in other countries to take advantage of favorable tax rates and business regulations—lawmakers in Washington D.C.... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai; Pharmaceutical

2007
Working Paper

Hedge Fund Investor Activism and Takeovers

By: Robin Greenwood and Michael Schor

We examine long-horizon stock returns around hedge fund activism in a comprehensive sample of 13D filings by portfolio investors between 1993 and 2006. Abnormal returns surrounding investor activism are high for the subset of targets that are... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Private Equity; Investment Return; Investment Activism; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Governance

July 1993 (Revised September 1995)
Supplement

Block 16: Ecuadorian Government's Perspective

By: Malcolm S. Salter and Susan E.A. Hall

Supplements Block 16: Conoco's Green Oil Strategy (A). Provides the government perspective on Conoco's Ecuadorian strategy. Designed to be distributed to students who will be playing the role of Ecuadorian government officials. View Details

Keywords: Policy; Business or Company Management; Resource Allocation; Marketing Strategy; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Perspective; Corporate Strategy

28 Apr 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Payout Policy

Keywords: by Joan Farre-Mensa, Roni Michaely & Martin C. Schmalz

Other Article

Introduction

By: Stefano Brusoni, Joachim Henkel, Michael G Jacobides, Samina Karim, Alan MacCormack, Phanish Puranam and Melissa Schilling

In 2000, Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark published Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, a book that introduced new ways of understanding and explaining the architecture of complex systems. This Special Issue of Industrial and Corporate Change celebrates... View Details

Keywords: Complex Systems; Industry Structure; Systems Design; Complexity; Organizational Design; Competitive Strategy; Innovation and Management

July 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Hidrovias do Brasil: Navigating Unchartered Waters

By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott

Since its founding eight years earlier, Hidrovias do Brasil (“Hidrovias”), an integrated logistics provider serving corporate customers exporting products from South America via the Atlantic Ocean, had grown to 900 employees and $253 million in annual revenues.... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Private Equity; Brazil; Entrepreneurial Organizations; Operation Management; General Management; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Growth and Development; Leadership; Operations; Problems and Challenges; Transportation; Human Capital; Strategy; Emerging Markets; Brazil

June 2007 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Thomas J. Watson, IBM and Nazi Germany

By: Geoffrey Jones, Grace Ballor and Adrian Brown

Considers the strategy of U.S.-owned IBM, then a manufacturer of punch cards, in Nazi Germany before 1937. Opens with IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson meeting Adolf Hitler in his capacity as President of the International Chamber of Commerce. IBM had acquired a German company... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Values and Beliefs; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Investment; Business and Government Relations; Germany; United States

26 Dec 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Reinforcing Regulatory Regimes: How States, Civil Society, and Codes of Conduct Promote Adherence to Global Labor Standards

Keywords: by Michael W. Toffel, Jodi L. Short & Melissa Ouellet

Working Paper

Diversification as an Adaptive Learning Process: An Empirical Study of General-Purpose and Market-Specific Technological Know-How in New Market Entry

By: Dominika Kinga Randle and Gary P. Pisano

An enduring trait of modern corporations is their propensity to diversify into multiple lines of business. Penrosian theories conceptualize diversification as a strategy to exploit a firm’s fungible, yet “untradeable,” resources and point to redeployment of... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Adoption; Diversification; Market Entry and Exit; Transformation