History By Inference - Publications - Faculty & Research

June 2013 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Goldfinger: Charles W. Engelhard Jr. and Apartheid-era South Africa

By: Geoffrey Jones and Elliot R. Benton

This case considers the strategies of Charles W. Engelhard, an American mining magnate who made large investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Engelhard was widely believed to have been the model for the James Bond villan Auric Goldfinger. During the 1950s and 1960s... View Details

Keywords: Political Economy; Business History; FDI; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; South Africa; Mining; Ethics; Globalization; Government and Politics; History; Mining Industry; Africa; South Africa

Citation

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09 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

The Entrepreneurs Who Invented Economic Forecasting

As part of this project, I have been studying the history of Junior Achievement, which was a group founded in 1919 by AT&T president Theodore Vail, Strathmore Paper Co. president Horace Moses, and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

Overview

Hisano’s research addresses the social and cultural implications of technological development and economic changes mainly in the twentieth-century United States. By analyzing the regulation, manipulation, and presentation of food color, her current book project links... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Consumer Behavior; Agribusiness; Food And Environment; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Business And Government; Advertising; Goods and Commodities; Food; History; Government and Politics; Marketing; Business and Government Relations; Advertising Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Chemical Industry; United States

06 Apr 2020
Working Paper Summaries

A General Theory of Identification

Keywords: by Iavor Bojinov and Guillaume Basse

13 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

Breaking Through the Self-Doubt That Keeps Talented Women from Leading

applying for job opportunities, particularly more advanced, higher-paying positions, because they’re concerned they aren’t qualified enough, whereas men don’t seem to worry about their skills matching the specific job requirements as much, according to research View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

23 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Setting the Stage: A Young Scholar at HBS

Rohit Daniel Wadhwani's research and teaching interests lie in business and financial history and public policy. He received his B.A. with honors from Yale College in 1991. From 1991 to 1995 he worked as a management consultant with APM... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard; Banking; Financial Services

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Connecting With Nonprofits

collaborations are characterized by clear purpose, mission congruency, high and mutually balanced value creation, effective communication, and deep reciprocal commitment." —James Austin It is important to note that progression along... View Details

Keywords: by James Austin

09 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

How to Speed Up Energy Innovation

Is there a special sauce for stimulating innovation in the energy sector, a concoction to spur cost-effective developments toward solving the climate change problem? HBS professor Rebecca Henderson doesn't claim to know all the ingredients for that special sauce. But... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Energy; Utilities

21 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Bio-Piracy: When Western Firms Usurp Eastern Medicine

art." Choudhury recently teamed up with colleague Tarun Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at HBS, to examine and highlight the history of herbal patent applications. From a policy perspective, they wanted to challenge a common... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Legal Services; Biotechnology

25 Apr 2005
Research & Ideas

New Learning at American Home Products

pharmaceutical companies in 1984, American Home Products ranked first in sales and twenty-eighth in R&D expenditures as a percentage of sales.23 As the historian Williams Haynes noted, by the end of the 1930s, American Home Products... View Details

Keywords: by Alfred D. Chandler Jr.; Chemical; Health; Manufacturing; Pharmaceutical

22 Apr 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Is No News (Perceived as) Bad News? An Experimental Investigation of Information Disclosure

Keywords: by Ginger Jin, Michael Luca & Daniel Martin

01 Dec 2006
What Do You Think?

How Important Is Quality of Labor? And How Is It Achieved?

mind in the face of the debate over immigration and outsourcing, essentially trade in labor. And it is prompted by a new book, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, View Details

Keywords: by by Jim Heskett

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

in production and economies of scope in distribution. In some industries, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" was gradually tamed by what the historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr. has termed the "visible hand" of professional... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

26 Sep 2023
Book

Digital Strategy: A Handbook for Managing a Moving Target

While most companies have embarked on some sort of digital transformation, many leaders still feel overwhelmed by the challenges of doing digital right. The new Research Handbook on Digital Strategy not only takes stock of current digital... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Information Technology; Technology

15 Apr 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Big History, Global Corporations, Virtual Capitalism

Keywords: by Richard L. Nolan

04 Jan 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Historical Change and the Competitive Advantage of Firms: Explicating the 'Dynamics' in the Dynamic Capabilities Framework

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones and R. Daniel Wadhwani

08 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

The Return of the Salesman

began to appear in the 1990s, with French historian Laurence Fontaine's Histoire du colportage en Europe: XVe-XIXe siècle, a work translated into English and published by Duke University Press as History of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

31 Oct 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 31, 2017

after misconduct. The labor market partially undoes firm-level discipline by rehiring such advisers. Firms that hire these advisers also have higher rates of prior misconduct themselves, suggesting "matching on misconduct." These firms... View Details