Publications

23 Jun 2015
News

Governance reforms add significance to being a public company

22 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity

of brilliance, raining down like manna from some deity of inspiration. Teaching people how to be creative, on the other hand, is like teaching them how to be tall—that is, impossible. These days, as global competition intensifies, it's more important than ever that... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

14 Dec 2010
Op-Ed

Tax US Companies to Spur Spending

holdings--estimates of the amount held by US public corporations easily exceed $1 trillion; several technology companies alone are sitting on cash balances in excess of $20 billion--are thought to result from the absence of investment... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

05 May 2022
HBS Case

College Degrees: The Job Requirement Companies Seek, but Don't Really Need

more emphasis on capabilities than formal education are called “new collar” jobs, as outlined in a forthcoming case study. Indeed, hundreds of private companies are now working with OneTen and other business... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

22 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted

Like: The Network Effect: Why Companies Should Care About Employees’ LinkedIn Connections How to Get Companies to Make Investments That Benefit Everyone How to Make AI 'Forget' All the View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Computer; Information Technology; Technology

20 Oct 2021
Blog Post

Mobilizing Private Sector Action For Racial Equity in Milwaukee: SE Summer Fellow Zach Komes (MBA 2022)

initiative, with over a hundred area corporations, from Fortune 500 companies to mid-sized businesses, pledging to expand Black and Brown talent in their management roles by 25% and overall staff by 15% by 2025. Over the course of the... View Details

24 May 2010
Research & Ideas

Stimulus Surprise: Companies Retrench When Government Spends

professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy discovered to their surprise that companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

January 2018 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Wenzhou Kangning Hospital: Changing Mental Healthcare in China

By: William C. Kirby, Wei Zhang, Yuanzhuo Wang and Nancy Hua Dai

The city of Wenzhou in the Province of Zhejiang, long known in China for entrepreneurship, now hosts the country’s largest privately owned mental health hospital group. This case traces the development of Wenzhou Kangning Hospital Co, Ltd. from founding to just before... View Details

Keywords: Mental Health; Hospital; IPO; China; Zhejiang; Wenzhou; Private Healthcare; Private Hospital; Health Care and Treatment; Private Ownership; Corporate Governance; Growth and Development; Entrepreneurship; Health Industry; China

June 2021
Technical Note

SPAC Space

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2020, over half of all initial public offerings (IPOs) in the United States were special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), blank-check companies that typically had two years to find a business to take public, usually through a reverse merger. Together, 248... View Details

Keywords: Special Purpose Acquisition Companies; SPACs; Mergers and Acquisitions; Going Public; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Strategy

July 2018
Case

LIXIL Group Corporation: Building a New Company in an Old Industry

By: Boris Groysberg and Akiko Kanno

In the spring of 2018, Kinya Seto, president and CEO of LIXIL Group Corporation, a major housing and building products and services company, called a meeting at the company’s head office in central Tokyo to discuss how to implement the new three-year strategic plan.... View Details

Keywords: Turnaround; Leadership And Change Management; Consolidation; Change Management; Leadership; Global Strategy; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Japan

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

year, a 49-year-old technician at the same company stabbed himself in front of his colleagues after learning he had been demoted. Between 2006 and 2009, at least 19 France Télécom employees took their own lives, 12 others attempted... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Fast Answer

How can I find socially responsible private equity or venture capital funds?

In Preqin: Click on the Search For tab in the menu bar. Click on Funds. Select ESG. In Capital IQ: Screen for Companies. Select Investment Type > PE/VC under Investment/Advisory Firms. Click on Add Criteria. Select Business Descriptions under View Details

March 2017 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Interline Brands: Don't Stop Believing

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Ricardo Andrade

Interline Brands, a leading distributor of residential housing maintenance and repair parts and equipment in the U.S., had just held its November 2014 board meeting. The meeting had been productive but not without some soul searching for both the company’s management... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Exit; Consumer Goods; IPO; Private Equity; Initial Public Offering; Decision Choices and Conditions

March 2020
Article

Voluntary, Self-Regulatory, and Mandatory Disclosure of Oil and Gas Company Payments to Foreign Governments

By: Paul M. Healy and George Serafeim

Concerns about high rates of government corruption in resource-rich countries have led transparency advocates to urge oil and gas firms to disclose payments to host governments for natural resources. Transparency, they argue, can increase government accountability and... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Corruption; Transparency; Self-regulation; Industry Self-regulation; Regulation; Disclosure; Disclosure Regulation; Energy Sources; Crime and Corruption; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Energy Industry

SSRN

Find at Harvard

2019
Working Paper

Voting Trusts and Antitrust: Rethinking the Role of Shareholder Rights and Private Litigation in Public Regulation, 1880s to 1930s

By: Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholars have long recognized that the states’ authority to charter corporations bolstered their antitrust powers in ways that were not available to the federal government. But they have also argued that the growth of large-scale enterprises operating in national and... View Details

Keywords: Voting Trusts; Antitrust; Business and Shareholder Relations; Lawsuits and Litigation; History; United States

Read Now

October 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

JCPenney: Back in Business

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Christine Snively

In 2016, JCPenney was in the midst of a multi-year turnaround after coming dangerously close to bankruptcy. Under CEO Marvin Ellison, the company had identified three strategic objectives—a focus on omnichannel, private label goods, and increasing revenue per... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Customer Management; Omnichannel; Turnarounds; Private Label; Promotions; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Competition; Retail Industry; United States