Publications

14 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Working Moms Are Mostly Thriving Again. Can We Finally Achieve Gender Parity?

expectations of instant responses to all requests—undermine both women’s and men’s ability to balance their personal and professional lives. “Because everything’s online, you’re on 24/7. That’s... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Arcos Dorados: A QSR Recovery Plan

By: Forest Reinhardt, José B. Alvarez, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Mariana Cal

Arcos Dorados—McDonald’s largest independent franchisee, covering Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)—faced a pandemic that was disrupting the entire consumer foodservice business in 2020. With the exclusive right to own, operate, and sub-franchise McDonald’s... View Details

16 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Mentoring—Using the Voice of Experience

transmit knowledge for a lot of reasons, both in the types of knowledge and the types of ways that they try to do it, and also the degree to which the entrepreneurs have receptors for it. Brian DeLacey: One statistic that still sticks out in my mind is the View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

14 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 14, 2010

activity. We examine the responses of U.S.-based MNEs and domestic industrial production to a set of IPR reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Following reform, MNEs expand the scale of their activities. MNEs that make extensive use of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Jun 2009
First Look

First Look: June 30

short-term volatility of inflation-indexed bond returns do not invalidate the basic case for these bonds, that they provide a safe asset for long-term investors. Governments should expect inflation-indexed bonds to be a relatively cheap... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

October 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

JSW Steel: Balancing Growth While Decarbonizing

By: Vikram S Gandhi and Radhika Kak

Sajjan Jindal, Chairman & Managing Director of JSW Steel, India's largest steel producer by market capitalization, was facing a dilemma. Steel demand in India was expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. However, given its traditional reliance on carbon,... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Environmental Sustainability; Investment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Growth and Development; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Pollutants; Pollution; Production; Steel Industry; India

Article

A Prescriptive Analytics Framework for Optimal Policy Deployment Using Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

By: Edward McFowland III, Sandeep Gangarapu, Ravi Bapna and Tianshu Sun

We define a prescriptive analytics framework that addresses the needs of a constrained decision-maker facing, ex ante, unknown costs and benefits of multiple policy levers. The framework is general in nature and can be deployed in any utility maximizing context, public... View Details

Keywords: Prescriptive Analytics; Heterogeneous Treatment Effects; Optimization; Observed Rank Utility Condition (OUR); Between-treatment Heterogeneity; Machine Learning; Decision Making; Analysis; Mathematical Methods

Find at Harvard

14 Jun 2023
Research & Ideas

Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need

environments where candor is expected and where employees can speak up without fear of retribution. When employees feel psychologically safe, they’re empowered to iterate and take risks—leading to better team performance. “You no longer... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

April 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Market Dynamics and Moral Dilemmas: Novo Nordisk’s Weight-Loss Drugs

By: Joseph L. Badaracco, Tom Quinn and John Schultz

Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk was owned by a charitable foundation, and since its founding in the 1920s had focused on producing insulin to treat diabetes. In 2017, however, it released Ozempic, a diabetes treatment with the revolutionary side effect of... View Details

January 2014
Case

Anglo American: Implementing a 'Social Way' for Global Mining

By: Christopher Marquis, David Plumb, Tom Blathwayt and Zoe Yang

The mining giant Anglo American attempts to differentiate itself through its social performance, yet public expectations are still growing. Maintaining a "social license" to operate was increasingly challenging and critical to business success.

The case... View Details

Keywords: Global Mining; Localization; Socioeconomic Issues; Procurement; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Supply Chain Management; Globalization; Reputation; Emerging Markets; Mining Industry; South Africa

13 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: Dec. 13

donate. In some equilibria of the model, poor people give little because they expect donations to come mainly from richer individuals. In others, donations by poor individuals constitute a large fraction of donations, and this raises the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Management’s Role in Reforming Health Care

and fail-safe it is, and how responsive and convenient it is. Employers expect better outcomes, and of course they and patients want fewer errors and fewer patients harmed by care that was intended to cure... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

November 2008 (Revised February 2009)
Case

Omron: Sensing Society

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Ethan S Bernstein

"Leading profitable growth is only part of the goal. We cannot live without breathing, but we do not live in order to take a breath,” said Omron's President and CEO, Hisao Sakuta, in 2008. Omron, a $7B global supplier of sensors, control system components, advanced... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Competitive Advantage; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Globalized Firms and Management; Innovation and Invention; Values and Beliefs; Mission and Purpose; Electronics Industry

07 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Giving Back: Consumers Care More About How Companies Donate Than How Much

Harvard Business School finds. For example, in 2015, Walmart donated $301 million, or 2 percent of its profits, compared with Target’s $111.5 million, or 5 percent. Which firm would consumers consider more generous? Given that Walmart donated more dollars to charity,... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

28 Nov 2011
Research & Ideas

Rethinking the Fairness of Organ Transplants

A proposal out of Harvard and MIT to rethink how kidney transplants are allocated could result in a fairer system giving patients longer lives. The new empirical model, which is intensely data driven, would provide a flexible framework to policymakers View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Health

12 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 12

monitoring efforts as well as the syndication process. Working Papers The Consequences of Mandatory Corporate Sustainability Reporting Authors: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim Abstract : We examine the effect of mandatory sustainability reporting on several... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Technical Note

Rechargeable Batteries, 2017: Gigafactory Wars in the Offing?

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2017, the global market for rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries was 126 gigawatt-hours (GWh) valued at $37 billion, growing by $10 billion in two years. Once confined largely to consumer electronics and appliances, the rapid increase in demand was spurred by... View Details