Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (466)
- February 2018 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
Hikma Pharmaceuticals Governance Journey
By: Lynn Paine, Suraj Srinivasan and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens with Said Darwazah, chairman and CEO of Hikma Pharmaceuticals, the multinational generics company, anticipating the company’s 2017 AGM and reflecting on changes made over the previous year to address concerns expressed by proxy advisors and some... View Details
Keywords: Boards Of Directors; Pharmaceuticals; Remuneration; Shareholder Engagement; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business and Shareholder Relations; Executive Compensation; Business Growth and Maturation; Emerging Markets; Private Sector; For-Profit Firms; Pharmaceutical Industry; Jordan
- January 2018
- Case
PrimeStone Capital and dormakaba
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher
London-based activist hedge fund PrimeStone Capital identifies a potential investment in Swiss security company Kaba. PrimeStone believes that the company is undervalued because it has been pushing back various financial targets and thinks it can help by proposing a... View Details
- January 2018
- Article
The Effect of Cost Sharing on an Employee Weight Loss Program: A Randomized Trial
By: Leslie K. John, Andrea Troxel, William Yancy, Joelle Y. Friedman, Jingsan Zhu, Lin Yang, Robert Galvin, Karen Miller-Kovach, Scott Halpern, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp
Purpose: We tested the effects of employer subsidies on employee enrollment, attendance, and weight loss in a nationally-available weight management program.
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details
- Article
Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and George Serafeim
We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct, and they had left the organization... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Compensation Consultants and the Level, Composition, and Complexity of CEO Pay
By: Kevin J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino
We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this... View Details
- September 12, 2017
- Article
What's the Right Kind of Bonus to Motivate Your Sales Force?
By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas
Companies typically compensate their sales force by using some combination of salary, commission, and bonuses, but executives are often unsure which incentives provide the best motivation. Should bonuses be tied to quotas or should they be given unconditionally? Is it... View Details
- September 2017 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Chai Point: Disrupting Chai
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Ramana Nanda and Rachna Tahilyani
Chai Point is India’s largest organized chai retailer. It has missed its target for retail store openings by approximately 25%, goals that are very important to its investors who are also board members. However, it has developed an exciting new internet-based tea... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Venture Capital; Stock; Business Model; Mobile Technology; Technological Innovation; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Food; Selection and Staffing; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Resignation and Termination; Compensation and Benefits; Resource Allocation; Product Positioning; Distribution Channels; Product Design; Supply Chain; Governing and Advisory Boards; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry; Asia; India; Karnataka; Bangalore
- August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
VTS
By: Mark Roberge and Michael Roberts
The case raises issues around sales force deployment and management issues in the SaaS industry. Specifically, VTS sells a software product to the real estate industry and has designed a Go-to-Market strategy for what the founders perceive to be the unique... View Details
- November 2017
- Comment
Discussion: Do Common Inherited Beliefs and Values Influence CEO Pay?
By: Lauren Cohen
The origin of preferences is something we know strikingly little about in economics. Given the central importance of preferences, we have not invested nearly the time we should into this concept. And so, as an overarching research direction, I am heartened by the push... View Details
- August 2017
- Article
Incentives versus Reciprocity: Insights from a Field Experiment
By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas
We conduct a field experiment in which we vary the sales force compensation scheme at an Asian enterprise that sells consumer durable goods. With variation generated by the experimental treatments, we model sales force performance to identify the effectiveness of... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and its Relation to Firm Performance
By: Ethan Rouen
I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm accounting performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee... View Details
- June 2017 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Sales Misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank
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
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
- June 2017
- Article
The Social Trajectory of a Finance Professor and the Common Sense of Capital
By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana
This paper traces the career of Michael Jensen, a Chicago finance PhD turned Harvard Business School professor to reveal the intellectual and social conditions that enabled the emergence and institutionalization of what we call the “neoliberal common sense of capital,”... View Details
- May 2017
- Case
Buffer.com
By: Susanna Gallani, Tiffany Y. Chang, Brian J. Hall and Jee Eun Shin
Social media company Buffer wanted to establish clear company values early in its growth. One of these values was a commitment to transparency in its company practices. Buffer openly shared its business strategies and fundraising decks, among lots of other information.... View Details
- May 2017
- Supplement
Buffer.com (B)
By: Susanna Gallani, Tiffany Y. Chang, Brian J. Hall and Jee Eun Shin
Buffer decided to release its salaries and compensation calculation formula to the public, and the public reaction was greater and more positive than they would have imagined. The company experienced both an increase in volume and a change in the kinds of inbound... View Details
Keywords: Compensation; Compensation Design; Company Values; Culture; Transparency; Attraction; Selection; Performance Measurement; Performance Measures; Performance Metrics; Startup Management; Compensation and Benefits; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics
- May 2017
- Article
Distracted Shareholders and Corporate Actions
By: Elisabeth Kempf, Alberto Manconi and Oliver Spalt
Investor attention matters for corporate actions. Our new identification approach constructs firm-level shareholder "distraction" measures, by exploiting exogenous shocks to unrelated parts of institutional shareholders' portfolios. Firms with "distracted" shareholders... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Equality and Equity in Compensation
By: Jiayi Bao and Andy Wu
Equity compensation is widely used for incentivizing skilled employees, particularly in new technology businesses. Traditional theories explaining why firms offer equity suggest that workers with higher rank should receive compensation packages more heavily weighted in... View Details
- March 2017
- Teaching Note
Sales Compensation Vignettes
This Teaching Note supports the case study comprising two vignettes about startup companies considering whether and how to change their sales compensation plans. The case allows students to compare and contrast the objectives, structure, and process of sales incentives... View Details
- February 2017
- Article
Rethinking Sales Compensation
Compensation is probably the most discussed aspect of sales and the single biggest portion of the more than $900 billion that U.S. companies alone spend annually on sales efforts. But research indicates that less than 10% of companies believe that their sales incentive... View Details
- January 2017 (Revised April 2018)
- Background Note
Introduction to Incentive-based Sales Compensation Systems
By: Willy Shih
This background note explains the structure of incentive-based sales compensation systems. View Details