Publications

December 2014 (Revised August 2015)
Case

Muñoz Group: Sustaining Global Vertical Integration Through Innovation

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Annelena Lobb

Muñoz Group, which supplied supermarket chains and food distribution chains around the world with fruit, flowers, juice and ice cream, was at a strategic crossroads in 2014. CEO Alvaro Muñoz had to choose the best way to achieve profit goals and provide his company... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Supply Chain; Retail; Agribusiness Industry; Globalized Firms and Management; Supply Chain Management; Competitive Advantage; Vertical Integration; Profit; Innovation and Invention; Retail Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; North and Central America

April 2008
Case

Campbell and Bailyn's Boston Office: Managing the Reorganization

By: Anne Donnellon and Dun Gifford Jr

Ken Winston, the regional sales manager at a securities brokerage firm, has reorganized his generalist salespeople into Key Account Teams (KAT) to increase sales of specialized, higher-margin fixed income products. Winston is also implementing a new corporate... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Modern Management: Good for the Environment or Just Hot Air?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Ralf Martin and Raffaella Sadun

We use an innovative methodology to measure management practices in over 300 manufacturing firms in the UK. We then match this management data to production and energy usage information for establishments owned by these firms. We find that establishments in better... View Details

Keywords: Energy Conservation; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Environmental Sustainability; Pollutants; Manufacturing Industry; United Kingdom

February 2001 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Ducati & Texas Pacific Group - A "Wild Ride" Leveraged Buyout

Describes the attempt of Texas Pacific Group (TPG), a buyout firm, to purchase a controlling stake in Ducati Motor, the world's leading high-performance motorcycle company, based in Bologna, Italy. Ducati is part of Cagiva Group, a family-controlled industrial group.... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Leveraged Buyouts; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Manufacturing Industry; Motorcycle Industry; Texas; Italy

spring 2006
Article

All's Fair in Love, War & Bankruptcy?: Corporate Governance Implications of CEO Turnover in Financial Distress

By: Ethan S Bernstein

Prior discussions of management turnover during financial distress have examined bankrupt and non-bankrupt firms as distinct groupings with little overlap. Separately investigating rates of turnover in-bankruptcy and out-of-bankruptcy, without a direct comparison... View Details

Keywords: Management Succession; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Corporate Governance

SSRN

April 2003
Article

The Role of Wages and Auditing during a Crackdown on Corruption in the City of Buenos Aires

By: Rafael Di Tella and Ernesto Schargrodsky

We study the prices paid for basic inputs during a crackdown on corruption in the public hospitals of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, during 1996 97. We find a well-defined, negative effect on the measures used to capture corruption. Prices paid by hospitals for... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Compensation and Benefits; Accounting Audits; Buenos Aires

Social influence cannot be identified from purely observational data on social networks, because such influence is generically confounded with latent homophily, that is, with a node’s network partners being informative about the node’s attributes and therefore... View Details

Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate... View Details

09 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Could Clean Hydrogen Become Affordable at Scale by 2030?

Hydrogen is poised to move from the sidelines of global clean energy as the industry learns to produce it more efficiently and at lower cost, according to newly published research led by Gunther Glenk, a climate fellow with Harvard Business School's Institute for the... View Details

Keywords: by Desmond Dodd; Energy; Green Technology

2023
Working Paper

Estimating Productivity in the Presence of Spillovers: Firm-Level Evidence from the U.S. Production Network

By: Ebehi Iyoha

This paper examines the extent to which productivity gains are transmitted across U.S. firms through buyer-supplier relationships. Many empirical studies measure firm-to-firm spillovers using firm-level productivity estimates derived from control function approaches.... View Details

Keywords: Supply and Industry; Partners and Partnerships; Production

August 2022
Case

One Tiger Per Mountain: The He Family Office

By: Lauren Cohen, Fei Wu and Grace Headinger

Roy He, founder and majority shareholder of his family construction material production company, was preparing to pass down the family business through its first generational handover to his children. His decision would establish his familial legacy and set a precedent... View Details

Keywords: Governance Structure; Family Business; Family Ownership; Strategic Planning; Family and Family Relationships; Leadership; Construction Industry; Canton (city, China); Canton (province, China); China

2020
Article

Worry at Work: How Organizational Culture Promotes Anxiety

By: Jeremy A. Yip, Emma E. Levine, Alison Wood Brooks and Maurice E. Schweitzer

Organizational culture profoundly influences how employees think and behave. Established research suggests that the content, intensity, consensus, and fit of cultural norms act as a social control system for attitudes and behavior. We adopt the norms model of... View Details

Keywords: Anxiety; Norms; Stress; Culture; Tightness-looseness; Curvilinear; Organizational Culture; Emotions; Performance

2011
Teaching Note

UFIDA (A) (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Bin Yang and E. Chen

The five-case UFIDA series is about China's largest supplier of management/ERP software, its 20-year evolution, and current strategic challenges. The (A) case is the cornerstone of the series. It introduces the company's history, strategic turning points, current... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Competition; Computer Software; Emerging Markets; Strategy; Applications and Software; China

March 2014 (Revised May 2014)
Teaching Note

The TELUS Share Conversion Proposal

By: Lucy White and Benjamin C. Esty

On February 21, 2013, TELUS announced a proposal to convert the firm's non-voting shares into voting shares on a one-to-one basis, thereby eliminating the firm's dual class structure. Shareholders were scheduled to vote on the proposal at the firm's annual general... View Details

2013
Chapter

Growth and the Quality of Foreign Direct Investment: Is All FDI Equal?

By: Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton

In this paper we distinguish different "qualities" of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. We use "quality" to mean the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth. However, this is difficult to establish because it is a function of many different... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Economic Growth; Foreign Direct Investment