Publications

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30 Mar 2011
News

Zooming: How Effective Leaders Adjust Their Focus

December 1973 (Revised November 1993)
Case

Cooper Industries, Inc.

By: Thomas R. Piper

The executive president of a major industrial company must decide 1) whether to acquire a small hand tool company and, if so, 2) the value and form that the acquisition package should take. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Valuation; Acquisition; Management Teams; Consumer Products Industry

15 Jan 2020
News

Tabloid Edition: Fugitive Carlos Ghosn and Royal Family Drama

24 Jan 2024
Op-Ed

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

corporate executives from its engineering and product decisions and alienated its Seattle-based engineers. Leader turnover, ethical lapses, and buybacks After Condit resigned in 2003 following an ethics scandal, Boeing’s board convinced... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Air Transportation; Transportation; Aerospace

September 1990 (Revised March 1991)
Case

Mod IV Product Development Team

By: Anne Donnellon and Joshua D. Margolis

Focuses sharply on a crossfunctional product development team at Honeywell's Building Controls Division. Traces the history of teams at the division, which introduced them as a response to intensifying competition and the need for faster development. Reveals the... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Management Teams; Product Development; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Competitive Strategy

13 Jul 2022
News

A Banner Year for Reunions: Q+A with Mary Jane (MJ) Keough

25 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Who Lives in the C-Suite? Organizational Structure and the Division of Labor in Top Management

Keywords: by Maria Guadalupe, Hongyi Li & Julie Wulf

October 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Hulu: An Evil Plot to Destroy the World?

By: Anita Elberse and Sunil Gupta

In July 2009, Jason Kilar, the chief executive officer of Hulu, is debating whether the online video aggregator should move away from a purely advertising-supported model, and whether it should participate in an industry-wide initiative to develop and test... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Business Model; Television Entertainment; Distribution Channels; Service Operations; Internet and the Web; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

Bob White is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School where he teaches courses in the MBA program (Required and Elective curricula) and the Executive Education program. Courses taught include Entrepreneurial... View Details

21 Nov 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

The New Challenge of Leading Financial Firms

challenges that an executive can undertake, requiring mastery of talent management, change management, and ethics. “The business today is much more complex than ten or twenty years ago" —Paul M. Healy "The business today is much... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

July 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Tolaram: Innovating in Africa

By: Derek van Bever and Efosa Ojomo

Tolaram is a Singaporean company that began operations selling textiles in Nigeria in the 1970s. Executives and brothers, Haresh and Sajesh Aswani, however, saw an opportunity to create an instant noodle market in the country. In 1988, they began importing Indomie... View Details

Keywords: Fast Moving Consumer Goods; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Vertical Integration; Emerging Markets; Consumer Products Industry; Nigeria; Africa

April 10, 2017
Article

The Different Approaches Firms Use to Set Strategy

By: Kimberly Teti, Mu-Jeung Yang, Nicholas Bloom, Jan Rivkin and Raffaella Sadun

Many senior executives struggle to describe how they make strategic decisions. That’s a serious problem since the process for making strategic decisions can shape the strategy itself. To understand better how companies really make strategic choices, we interviewed 92... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Decision Making

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Michael Parzen is a Senior Lecturer in the Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School. He is an applied statistician with extensive experience in data science education and currently teaches Applied Business Analytics as an MBA elective... View Details

June 2007 (Revised April 2008)
Case

Say on Pay

By: Jay W. Lorsch, V.G. Narayanan and Alexis Chernak

Briefly describes the trend in 2006 and 2007 in the United States to give shareholders an advisory vote on executive compensation. Highlights a few examples where shareholders have successfully garnered a majority in support of an advisory vote measure on company proxy... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; United States

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October 2008
Article

Sociopolitical Dynamics in Relations Between Top Managers and Security Analysts: Favor Rendering, Reciprocity, and Analyst Stock Recommendations

By: James Westphal and Michael B. Clement

We examine how the disclosure of negative firm information may prompt top executives to render personal and professional favors for security analysts, who may reciprocate by rating firms relatively positively. We further examine how negative ratings may prompt... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Relationships; Power and Influence; Ethics

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27 Jun 2007
Lessons from the Classroom

Learning to Make the Move to CEO

You're a successful senior executive with 20, 25 years of experience under your belt. You've made your mark and stand just 1 or 2 rungs from the position of CEO. Now what? As faculty chair of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

26 Apr 2018
Cold Call Podcast

Why JPMorgan Chase Is Investing Millions in Detroit

Keywords: Re: Joseph L. Bower; Financial Services

August 2001
Supplement

Teradyne-Managing Discontinuous Change

By: Joseph L. Bower and Sonja Ellingson Hout

Presents the top executives of Teradyne. Alex d'Arbeloff, the CEO who drove the project, Jim Prestridge, the vice chairman (and top engineer), Owen Robbins, vice chairman and CFO, and Ed Rogus, the division head who wouldn't fund Aurora. View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Change Management; Projects; Management Teams