Publications

February 7, 2023
Editorial

Business Schools are Ignoring Students’ Changing Aspirations: They Must Focus on Management as a Calling

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Many management students today are concerned about the mounting threats of climate change, income inequality, health care, and more. They increasingly see business as a place to make a difference in the world. Andrew Hoffman writes that business schools are slow to... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Social Issues; Values and Beliefs; Mission and Purpose

Read Now

14 Dec 2021
Op-Ed

To Change Your Company's Culture, Don't Start by Trying to Change the Culture

intervention in meetings. Twitter is a perfect example. Concerned that Twitter’s “nice culture” held back innovation, Dantley Davis, the new vice-president of design, asked employees in a meeting to critique each other. The idea was that... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer

2023
Other Article

The Harvard USPTO Patent Dataset: A Large-Scale, Well-Structured, and Multi-Purpose Corpus of Patent Applications

By: Mirac Suzgun, Luke Melas-Kyriazi, Suproteem K. Sarkar, Scott Duke Kominers and Stuart Shieber

Innovation is a major driver of economic and social development, and information about many kinds of innovation is embedded in semi-structured data from patents and patent applications. Though the impact and novelty of innovations expressed in patent data are difficult... View Details

Keywords: USPTO; Natural Language Processing; Classification; Summarization; Patent Novelty; Patent Trolls; Patent Enforceability; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science

Read Now

September 2005
Case

Martha Goldberg Aronson: Leadership Decisions at Mid-Career

By: William W. George and Andrew N. McLean

In 2005, Martha Goldberg Aronson must decide whether to accept an overseas posting in a functional role with Medtronic Corp. The move would be a professional stretch, but would entail leaving a position with a plan half completed and moving her young family overseas.... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Work-Life Balance; Personal Development and Career; Motivation and Incentives; Opportunities; Leadership

31 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Checking Your Ethics: Would You Speak Up in These 3 Sticky Situations?

verbally confrontational when challenged. Several staff members confide their discomfort in their boss to you, but when you bring your concerns to the partner of your firm, he advises you to just let it go. Do you alert senior leadership... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consulting

December 2019
Case

The Business of Pain: Johnson & Johnson and the Promise of Opioids

By: Erik Snowberg, Trevor Fetter and Amy W. Schulman

This case is designed to provide an engrossing overview of stakeholder capitalism through a vigorous discussion of the conflicts that can arise when trying to serve multiple stakeholders. In 2007, Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) subsidiary Janssen has to decide whether or... View Details

Keywords: Opioids; Addiction; Stakeholder Capitalism; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Product Launch; Decision Making; Ethics; Social Issues; Pharmaceutical Industry

09 Nov 2023
HBS Case

What Will It Take to Confront the Invisible Mental Health Crisis in Business?

Cohen’s recent case studies spotlights Zak Pym Williams, the son of the late comedian Robin Williams, who is spreading awareness about mental illness after struggles following his dad’s suicide. Another case highlights the Staglins, a... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Health

April 2019
Case

Barber Cardiosystems

By: Ranjay Gulati and Paul S. Myers

Barber Cardiosystems, based in Melbourne, Australia, designs and manufactures therapeutic devices used for treatment of coronary conditions. Over four decades, it has grown to be among the top 200 medical device companies in the world. It competes against much larger... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Strategic Alignment; Cost Management; Performance Productivity; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Design; Strategy; Leadership; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Australia

18 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 18

"advanced leadership" in a complex social system such as a community or region. There was no central leader; instead there was a collection of coalitions and collaborative activities that contributed to the end result. Purchase... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Can Goodr Fight Food Insecurity at Scale?

By: Daniel Isenberg and William R. Kerr

Jasmine Crowe founded Goodr to redirect food waste to people in need. Now a profitable enterprise, she’s searching for Series A funding and encountering pushback. Scaling and contract concerns are also at the forefront of her mind, but so are her values. Feeding... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investor Demand; Food; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Values and Beliefs; Social Issues; Race; Opportunities; Contracts; Mission and Purpose; Financing and Loans

Research Summary

Overview

My focus is empirical financial accounting research, with particular interests in governance, valuation, M&A, and short-sellers. All three of my papers to date fall under the broad heading of “alternative governance mechanisms”—studies of how accounting information is... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Law

Research Summary

Overview

My focus is empirical financial accounting research, with particular interests in governance, valuation, M&A, and short-sellers. All three of my papers to date fall under the broad heading of “alternative governance mechanisms”—studies of how accounting information is... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Law

19 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

A Brand Manager’s Guide to Losing Control

charge of public discussions about the brands they use. And while marketers have tried to take part, they've had to face the fact that social media platforms are primarily meant for conversations among... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Advertising

2013
Chapter

Beyond Platinum: Making the Case for Titanium Buildings

By: Jock Herron, Amy C. Edmondson and Robert G. Eccles

Buildings are the nation's greatest energy consumers. Forty percent of all our energy is used for heating, cooling, lighting, and powering machines and devices in buildings. And despite decades of investment in green construction technologies, residential and... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Energy; Attitudes; Environmental Sustainability; Construction Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

2021
Article

To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law

By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on “personalized law.” Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate... View Details

Keywords: Personalized Law; Regulation; Regulatory Avoidance; Regulatory Arbitrage; Law And Economics; Law And Technology; Law And Artificial Intelligence; Futurism; Moral Hazard; Elicitation; Signaling; Privacy; Law; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Technology; AI and Machine Learning

SSRN

Read Now

March 2019 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Measuring Impact at JUST Capital

By: Ethan C. Rouen and Charles C.Y. Wang

JUST Capital is a nonprofit organization that seeks to make public companies more "just" by measuring and ranking their overall impact on society, based on the priorities most important to the average American. This case examines JUST’s strategy for influencing... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Performance Evaluation

November 2020
Case

Valuing Celgene's CVR

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

When Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) acquired Celgene Corporation in November 2019, Celgene shareholders received cash, BMS stock, and a contingent value right (CVRs) that would pay $9 if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved three of Celgene’s late stage... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Value; Valuation; Judgments; Decision Making; Cash Flow; Financial Instruments; Cognition and Thinking; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States

February 2021
Case

Measuring Impact at JUST Capital

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Ethan Rouen

JUST Capital is a nonprofit organization that seeks to make public companies more "just" by measuring and ranking their overall impact on society, based on the priorities most important to the average American. This case examines JUST's strategy for influencing... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Ethics; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Evaluation; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact