Publications

SSRN

Read Now

May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Teaching Note

Brand Activism: Nike and Colin Kaepernick

By: Jill Avery and Koen Pauwels

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-046. Nike’s selection of politically polarizing Colin Kaepernick as the spokesperson for the thirtieth anniversary of its iconic “Just Do It” campaign catapulted the brand into the media spotlight and made it a political flashpoint... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands and Branding; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Consumer Products Industry; Sports Industry; United States; North America

2022
Chapter

Interrogating Corporate Purpose: Values Based Firms and the Struggle to Build a Just and Sustainable World

By: Rebecca Henderson

Book Abstract: Defining a just economy in a tenuous social-political time. If we can agree that our current social-political moment is tenuous and unsustainable—and indeed, that may be the only thing we can agree on right now—then how do markets, governments, and... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Social Issues

Article

How to Tackle Your Toughest Decisions

By: Joseph L. Badaracco

The toughest calls managers have to make come in situations when they have worked hard to gather the facts and have done the best analysis they can, but they still don’t know what to do. Then judgment—a fusion of thinking, feelings, experience, imagination, and... View Details

Keywords: Management; Judgments

Register to Read

December 2012
Article

On the Efficiency-Fairness Trade-Off

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias and Nikolaos Trichakis

This paper deals with a basic issue: How does one approach the problem of designing the "right" objective for a given resource allocation problem? The notion of what is right can be fairly nebulous; we consider two issues that we see as key: efficiency and fairness. We... View Details

Keywords: Decision Support; Cost vs Benefits; Fairness; Resource Allocation; Performance Efficiency; Air Transportation Industry

Article

Laws versus Contracts: Legal Origins, Shareholder Protections, and Ownership Concentration in Brazil, 1890–1950

By: Aldo Musacchio

This article examines some of the institutional conditions that facilitated the development of equity markets in Brazil. A critical factor was the addition of protections for investors to corporate bylaws, which enabled relatively large corporations in Brazil to... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Equity; Financial Markets; Investment; Governance Controls; Business History; Ownership Stake; Brazil

Read Now

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

17 Jan 2024
HBS Case

Psychological Pricing Tactics to Fight the Inflation Blues

psychological pricing: How do we structure price offerings such that customers walk away feeling they made the right decision?” Ofek says. It’s all about enticing customers to make purchases at price points they find acceptable, says... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald; Consumer Products; Retail

14 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Reforming New Orleans Schools After Katrina

opportunity to start over, similar to our thought experiment. I wanted to follow their efforts, and specifically to see what entrepreneurial activity would spring up in the highly uncertain post-storm environment. I wrote a context case View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Education

02 Apr 2024
Research & Ideas

Employees Out Sick? Inside One Company's Creative Approach to Staying Productive

struggling with widespread absenteeism. The researchers advised the factory’s CEO that senior managers should do whatever they could to build relationships between managers working not only right next to each other, but also elsewhere on... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Fashion

06 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Socioeconomic Inclusion at HBS: Alexis Jackson (MBA 2021)

engineering role. At the back of her mind, though, was a nagging sense that engineering might not be right for her. Was she good at it? Yes. Did it offer a path for advancement, challenges, and secure income? All a resounding yes. But she... View Details

10 Jul 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Communicating Frames in Negotiations

Keywords: by Kathleen L. McGinn & Markus Nöth

25 Mar 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages

Keywords: by Juan Alcacer & Minyuan Zhao; Technology

August 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Influencer-Led Brand Building: Hairitage and the McKnights

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Longtime hairstyle influencer Mindy McKnight had been building her “Cute Girls Hairstyles” audience across numerous online platforms for nearly two decades. Brand incubator Maesa took an innovative approach to producing successful brands: identifying white space in the... View Details

Educators

October 2022
Supplement

The SAH Group: The Time is Right, Instructor Spreadsheet

By: Juan Alcacer and Alpana Thapar

In January 2021, Jalila Mezni, CEO of the SAH Group, was preparing to present the company’s future growth plans to its board of directors. The Tunisian company was a leading producer and distributor of personal care and packaged hygiene products. In 2019, it expanded... View Details

Keywords: Growth Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Investment Decisions; Growth Management; Vertical Integration; Distribution; Competition; Strategy; Supply Chain; Presentations; Product Positioning; Market Entry and Exit; Consumer Products Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Health Industry; Tunisia

2022
Chapter

Sustainability for People and the Planet: Placing Workers at the Center of Sustainability Research

By: Julie Yen, Julie Battilana and Emilie Aguirre

Though workers face a series of critical challenges in contemporary work organizations, they are often overlooked in conversations about sustainable business. In this chapter, we argue that prioritizing the rights and well-being of workers is a core dimension of... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Employees; Well-being; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Structure; Social Issues

Article

The Growing Problem of Patent Trolling

By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers

The last decade has seen a sharp rise in patent litigation in the U.S., with 2015 having one of the highest patent lawsuit counts on record. In theory, this could be a consequence of growth in the commercialization of technology and innovation—patent lawsuits increase... View Details

Keywords: Patent Aggregators; Patent Litigation; Patent Pools; Patent Trolls; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; United States

January 2015 (Revised August 2016)
Case

Chateau Pontet-Canet

By: Daniel Malter

This case discusses the situation of Chateau Pontet-Canet in early 2000. Alfred Tesseron was the director and son of the owner of Chateau Pontet-Canet, a red wine producing estate in Pauillac (Bordeaux, France) and member of the fifth class of the ancient grand cru... View Details

Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Alignment; Strategy; Competition; Food and Beverage Industry; France

Educators

November 2012
Case

Tracy Palandjian at Social Finance US (A)

By: Alnoor Ebrahim, Catherine Clark and Beth Bafford

It had been eighteen months since Tracy Palandjian had left her position as a managing director at The Parthenon Group to start an ambitious venture called Social Finance US. With a mission "to mobilize investment capital to drive social change," her new organization... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career

Educators

September 2009
Module Note

Leading Teams Note

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer

This note, which describes the architecture and processes that characterize effective teams, begins by detailing the steps involved in designing a team, from diagnosing the complexity, interdependence, and objectives of the task to harnessing the key resources teams... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Experience and Expertise; Decision Choices and Conditions; Knowledge Sharing; Leadership; Business Processes; Groups and Teams