Publications

2020
Book

Capitalism at Risk: How Business Can Lead

By: Joseph L. Bower, Dutch Leonard and Lynn S. Paine

Who should take the lead in fixing market capitalism? Business—not government alone. The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. Pandemics, income inequality, resource depletion, mass... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; Business And Society; Economic Systems; Economic Growth; Policy; Leading Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Community Relations; Corporate Strategy

May 2018 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Argentina Power—Don't Cry for Me Argentina

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree

In 2016, Bruce Wayne, Managing Director of Energy Finance Corporation (“EFC”), was refining the Investment/Credit Committee materials for the development of up to 10 power generating plants in Argentina. As a subsidiary of the much larger International Conglomerate... View Details

Keywords: Cross Border; Energy Markets; Infrastructure Finance; Infrastructure Development; Business Subsidiaries; Business Cycles; Macroeconomics; Energy Generation; International Finance; Project Finance; Government and Politics; Demand and Consumers; Infrastructure; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Argentina; Latin America

April 2018 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Tesla's CEO Compensation Plan

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Sarah Mehta

Tesla’s board of directors proposed an unusual compensation plan for the company’s CEO Elon Musk. The plan payouts were entirely contingent on achieving very ambitious market value, sales, and EBIT targets over the next ten years. If all the targets were achieved,... View Details

Keywords: CEO Compensation; Compensation Committee; Corporate Governance; Executive Compensation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business and Shareholder Relations; Auto Industry; United States

Archie Jones is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School, where he currently teaches Venture Capital and Private Equity, Field... View Details

30 Nov 2017
News

Law, Management, and Strategy: Collapsing Boundaries and Managing the Interstices

January 2023
Teaching Note

The Opioid Settlement and Executive Pay at AmerisourceBergen

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

Teaching Note for HBS Case No 122-014. In 2020, AmerisourceBergen Corporation, a Fortune 50 company in the drug distribution industry, agreed to settle thousands of lawsuits filed nationwide against the company for its opioid distribution practices that critics alleged... View Details

March 2024
Article

How Foes Become Allies: The Shifting Role of Business in Climate Politics

By: Irja Vormedal and Jonas Meckling

Firms often oppose costly public policy reforms—but under what conditions may they come to support such reforms? Previous scholarship has taken a predominantly static approach to the analysis of business positions. Here, we advance a dynamic theory of change in... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Environmental Regulation; Business and Government Relations

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2011
Working Paper

Leviathan as a Minority Shareholder: A Study of Equity Purchases by the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), 1995-2003

By: Sergio G. Lazzarini and Aldo Musacchio

There is a growing literature comparing the performance of private vs. state-owned companies. Yet, there is little work examining the effects of having the government as a minority shareholder of private companies. We conduct such a study using data for 296 publicly... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Ownership Stake; State Ownership; Private Ownership; Performance Evaluation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Banking Industry; Brazil

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12 Aug 2002
Op-Ed

Using Big Business to Fight Poverty

often-essential government support for new development projects. With backing and financial contributions from governments, multinational corporations have it in their power to become the world's most... View Details

Keywords: by George C. Lodge

October 2002 (Revised November 2002)
Case

The EU's 13th Directive on Takeover Bids: Unlucky for Some?

By: Huw Pill and Ingrid Vogel

In the late 1990s, the United States boomed in the context of the so-called New Economy. The countries of the European Union--despite their progress with integration in the form of the Single Market 1992 program and the adoption of a single currency in January... View Details

Keywords: Horizontal Integration; Corporate Governance; Germany; European Union

2022
Article

Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium

By: Nathan Wilmers and Letian Zhang

Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Equality and Inequality; Wages; Recruitment

October 2007 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Adelphia Communications Corp.'s Bankruptcy

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Belen Villalonga

In 2002, a massive accounting fraud and corporate looting scandal involving the founding Rigas family made Adelphia the 11th largest bankruptcy case in history, and the third-after WorldCom and Enron-among those triggered by fraud. Set in 2005, when Adelphia is... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Restructuring; Crime and Corruption; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Family Ownership

December 2019 (Revised June 2024)
Case

The Dutch East India Company in 1612 (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

The Dutch East India Company’s board of directors must decide what to do about an impending legal requirement to liquidate the company’s assets and return to shareholders their capital and any profits earned during a ten-year lock-up period. The charter granted to the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Structure; Laws and Statutes; Financial Markets; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Business History; Shipping Industry; Netherlands

Roberto Verganti (rverganti@hbs.edu) is in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Design Theory and Practice for the View Details

Keywords: automotive; computer; consumer products; electronics; fashion; food; furniture; high technology; home appliances; industrial goods; pharmaceuticals; semiconductor; software; telecommunications; textiles

June 2008
Journal Article

Strategic Alliances: Bridges Between 'Islands of Conscious Power'

By: George P. Baker, Robert Gibbons and Kevin J. Murphy

Strategic alliances range from unstructured collaborations, through consortia and joint ventures that superimpose new governance structures on existing firms, to transactions that restructure firm boundaries and asset ownership. In this paper, we draw on detailed... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Contracts; Agreements and Arrangements; Alliances; Strategy; Theory

December 2018 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Creating the French Behavioral Insights Team

By: Michael Luca, Ariella Kristal and Emilie Billaud

This case explores how neuroscientist Mariam Chammat helped set up the first behavioral insights team at the center of the French government, and encouraged French administrations to innovate and create policy initiatives based on psychological theories of influence... View Details

Keywords: Choice Architecture; Behavioral Economics; Experiments; Negotiation; Decision Making; Economics; Taxation; Entrepreneurship; Consumer Behavior; Public Administration Industry; Europe; France; Paris