Publications

October 1996 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Cantuga Farmworkers Clinic (A)

By: James E. Austin and Catherine Overholt

The board of directors of a rural health clinic fires its executive director. The case elaborates the evolution and progress of the clinic under this director during a period of growth and a changing health care environment. Factors contributing to and questioning the... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Resignation and Termination; Managerial Roles; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Rank and Position; Social Enterprise; Health Industry

August 2017 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Managing Diversity and Inclusion at Yelp

By: Michael Luca, Joshua Schwartzstein and Gauri Subramani

This case explores the industry-wide lack of employee diversity in the technology sector and Yelp’s decision to take a leadership position in identifying strategies to increase diversity. The goal of the case is to provide an opportunity for students to develop a... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Employees; Leading Change; Strategy; Organizational Culture; Technology Industry

July 2020
Teaching Note

COVID-19: The Global Shutdown

By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong

In the first months of 2020, a pandemic overwhelmed the world. COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus, spread from China and created a severe public health emergency across countries. While an immediate fear of the disease’s impact on human life permeaacted... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Trade; Microeconomics; Macroeconomics; Financial Crisis; Economy; Policy; Governance; Economic Systems; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Economic Sectors

March 2009
Article

Trade-offs in Staying Close: Corporate Decision Making and Geographic Dispersion

By: Augustin Landier, Vinay Nair and Julie Wulf

We document the role of geographic dispersion on corporate decision-making. Our findings include: (i) geographically dispersed firms are less employee friendly; (ii) dismissals of divisional employees are less common in divisions located closer to corporate... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Business Headquarters; Decision Choices and Conditions; Geographic Location; Employees; Resignation and Termination; Retention

2011
Working Paper

Top Executive Background and Financial Reporting Choice

By: Francois Brochet and Kyle Travis Welch

We study the role of executive functional background in explaining management discretion in financial reporting. Taking goodwill impairment as our reporting setting, we focus on top executives (CEOs and CFOs) whose employment history includes experience in investment... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Goodwill Accounting; Experience and Expertise; Decision Choices and Conditions; Managerial Roles; Agency Theory

2010
Working Paper

Does Product Market Competition Lead Firms To Decentralize?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. Economists have developed a range of theories to account for delegation, but there is less empirical evidence,... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Employees; Managerial Roles; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Asia; Europe; North America

January 2021
Article

COVID-19 and the Workplace: Implications, Issues, and Insights for Future Research and Action

By: Kevin M. Kniffin, Jayanth Narayanan, Frederik Anseel, John Antonakis, Susan Ashford, Arnold B. Bakker, Peter Bamberger, Hari Bapuji, Devasheesh P. Bhave, Virginia K. Choi, Stephanie Creary, Evangelia Demerouti, Francis J. Flynn, Michele J. Gelfand, Lindred Greer, Gary Johns, Selin Kesebir, Peter G. Klein, Sun Young Lee, Hakan Ozcelik, Jennifer Louise Petriglieri, Nancy Rothbard, Cort W. Rudolph, Jason D. Shaw, Nina Sirola, Connie R. Wanberg, Ashley V. Whillans, Michael P. Wilmot and Mark van Vugt

The impacts of COVID-19 on workers and workplaces across the globe have been dramatic. This broad review of prior research rooted in work and organizational psychology, and related fields, is intended to make sense of the implications for employees, teams, and work... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Work; Work From Home (WFH); Pandemics; Health Pandemics; Employees; Working Conditions; Organizational Change and Adaptation

July 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

The Robin Hood Army

By: Susanna Gallani

In 2014, Neel Ghose and a handful of friends spent one evening distributing excess food they had collected from local restaurants to the less fortunate people living under the Hauz Khas flyover in South Delhi. Four years later, this initiative had developed into The... View Details

Keywords: Volunteer-based Organization; Food Redistribution; Nonprofit Organizations; Food; Human Needs; Expansion; Global Range; Growth and Development

2022
Book

Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire

By: Caroline M. Elkins

Sprawling across a quarter of the world’s land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain’s twentieth-century empire was the largest empire in human history. For many Britons, it epitomized their nation’s cultural superiority, but what legacy did... View Details

Keywords: Imperialism; Violence; Colonialism; History; Government and Politics; Power and Influence; Race; Policy; United Kingdom

George Serafeim is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he co-leads the Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab in the Digital, Data, and Design Institute. He teaches the course "Risks, Opportunities and... View Details

Keywords: asset management; insurance industry; automobiles; industrial goods; fashion; food; green technology

2010
Working Paper

Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus-Based Compensation Plans

By: Doug J. Chung, Thomas J. Steenburgh and K. Sudhir

We estimate a dynamic structural model of sales force response to a bonus based compensation plan. The paper has two main methodological innovations: First, we implement empirically the method proposed by Arcidiacono and Miller (2010) to accommodate unobserved latent... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives

SSRN

September 2024
Technical Note

How to Pay Family Employees in a Family Business

By: Christina R. Wing, Maryann G Bell and Kara A Perusse

Family businesses play a pivotal role in global economies, contributing significantly to employment and wealth creation. However, managing compensation for family members within these enterprises can be complex. Family employees frequently intertwine their roles as... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Fairness; Compensation and Benefits; Alignment

November 5, 2024
Article

The International Empirics of Management

By: Daniela Scur, Scott Ohlmacher, John Van Reenen, Morten Bennedsen, Nick Bloom, Ali Choudhary, Lucia Foster, Jesse Groenewegen, Arti Grover, Sjoerd Hardeman, Leonardo Iacovone, Ryo Kambayashi, Marie-Christine Laible, Renata Lemos, Hongbin Li, Andrea Linarello, Mika Maliranta, Denis Medvedev, Charlotte Meng, John Miles Touya, Natalia Mandirola, Roope Ohlsbom, Atsushi Ohyama, Megha Patnaik, Mariana Pereira-López, Raffaella Sadun, Tatsuro Senga, Franklin Qian and Florian Zimmermann

A country’s national income broadly depends on the quantity and quality of workers and capital. But how well these factors are managed within and between firms may be a key determinant of a country’s productivity and its GDP. Although social scientists have long... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Economy; Management Practices and Processes

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May–June 2023
Article

The High Cost of Neglecting Low-Wage Workers: Six Mistakes That Companies Make—and How They Can Do Better

By: Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman

Many companies blame outside factors for the trouble they’ve been having in finding and retaining frontline workers: the pandemic, the government’s stimulus checks, the intrinsic nature of low-wage work. The authors argue that in fact the real problem lies in six big... View Details

Keywords: Retention; Recruitment; Human Capital; Personal Development and Career; Compensation and Benefits; Performance Productivity