Publications

Educators

09 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Unilever—A Case Study

1950s, Unilever manufactured convenience foods, such as frozen foods and soup, ice cream, meat products, and tea and other drinks. It manufactured personal care products, including toothpaste, shampoo, hairsprays, and deodorants. The oils... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation; Food & Beverage; Manufacturing; Retail

21 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Buy Now, Pay Later: How Retail's Hot Feature Hurts Low-Income Shoppers

Online shopping features that let consumers pay for goods in interest-free installments exploded during the pandemic, but new research questions the riskiness of such services: Are people getting in over their heads? Buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing has snowballed... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Retail; Financial Services; Technology

July 2022
Teaching Plan

Wellthy: The Economics of Caring

By: Brian Trelstad

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 320-028. In 2014, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner (MBA ’09) founded Wellthy, a B2C business that coordinates care for working professionals seeking help to support loved ones with chronic diseases or aging parents. With personal experience as a... View Details

Keywords: B2B Vs. B2C; Future Of Work; Health; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Recruitment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Health Industry; United States

2004
Other Teaching and Training Material

Great Negotiator 2002: Lakhdar Brahimi

By: James K. Sebenius and Kristin Schneeman

The Program on Negotiation honored Ambassador Brahimi in events on October 2, 2002. These began with an in-depth faculty-moderated discussion with a group of students, faculty, and guests at Harvard Business School. On the evening of the 2nd, Ambassador Brahimi... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Learning; Strategy; Afghanistan

2024
Chapter

Managing for Organisational Integrity: My Take After Three Decades

By: Lynn S. Paine

This chapter revisits core ideas from my 1994 article “Managing for Organizational Integrity” and explores a critical issue not discussed in the article: the role of corporate boards. In the chapter, I first re-examine the article’s ideas about the origins of... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Ethics; Corporate Governance

Article

Emotional Acknowledgment: How Verbalizing Others' Emotions Fosters Interpersonal Trust

By: Alisa Yu, Justin M. Berg and Julian Zlatev

People often respond to others’ emotions using verbal acknowledgment (e.g., “You seem upset”). Yet, little is known about the relational benefits and risks of acknowledging others’ emotions in the workplace. We draw upon Costly Signaling Theory to posit how emotional... View Details

Keywords: Emotion; Costly Signaling; Interpersonal Trust; Emotional Valence; Interpersonal Relationships; Empathic Accuracy; Emotions; Relationships; Trust; Interpersonal Communication

Register to Read

November 2017
Technical Note

21st Century Populism

By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg

While the first decade of the 21st century saw a massive financial crisis that led to significant economic downturn, the second decade saw the rise of political leaders, who built their support upon a political message that championed the common person against the... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Market Efficiency; Market Liberalization; Political Influence; Political Instability; Capital Controls; Partnerships; Coalition; Inequality; Role Of Business In Society; Government Intervention In The Markets; Labor Market; Equality and Inequality; Financial Markets; Social Issues; Immigration; Financial Crisis; Capital Markets; Business and Government Relations

Educators

2017
Article

Blunted Ambiguity Aversion During Cost-Benefit Decisions in Antisocial Individuals

By: Joshua W. Buckholtz, Uma R. Karmarkar, Shengxuan Ye, Grace M. Brennan and Arielle Baskin-Sommers

Antisocial behavior is often assumed to reflect aberrant risk processing. However, many of the most significant forms of antisocial behavior, including crime, reflect the outcomes of decisions made under conditions of ambiguity rather than risk. While risk and... View Details

Keywords: Ambiguity; Neuroscience; Neuroeconomics; Choice; Psychology; Decision Choice And Uncertainty; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cost vs Benefits; Health Disorders

July 2017
Article

What Do Measures of Real-Time Corporate Sales Tell Us About Earnings Surprises and Post-announcement Returns?

By: Kenneth A. Froot, Namho Kang, Gideon Ozik and Ronnie Sadka

We develop real-time proxies of retail corporate sales from multiple sources, including approximately 50 million mobile devices. These measures contain information from both the earnings quarter (within quarter) and the period between that quarter's end and the... View Details

Keywords: Announcements; Business Earnings; Sales; Retail Industry

December 2007
Article

Private Power in Indonesia

By: Louis T. Wells

The Asian Currency Crisis led to the collapse of agreements Indonesia had negotiated for private electric power only a few years earlier. The ensuing struggle meant bad publicity and several hundred million dollars in costs for Indonesia. As Indonesia in 2007 was... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Government Legislation; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Risk Management; Agreements and Arrangements; Business and Government Relations; Indonesia

autumn 1993
Article

Motivational Synergy: Toward New Conceptualizations of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in the Workplace

By: T. M. Amabile

The foundation for a model of motivational synergy is presented. Building upon but going beyond previous conceptualizations, the model outlines the ways in which intrinsic motivation (which arises from the intrinsic value of the work for the individual) might interact... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Theory; Creativity; Situation or Environment; Organizational Culture

20 Dec 2022
Video

MBA Students Explore Capitalism in Italy

07 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Digital Transformation: A New Roadmap for Success

or customers when we gathered their data?" "How would I personally feel if my data were used that way?" Digital transformation is more about people than technology While these seven principles might seem obvious to some, we’ve found that... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

20 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think

she could not access the social networking site. By doing so, the student constrained her "want" self from acting and allowed her "should" self to flourish. Such precommitment devices explain the popularity of personal... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

March 2021
Article

Deliberately Prejudiced Self-driving Vehicles Elicit the Most Outrage

By: Julian De Freitas and Mina Cikara

Should self-driving vehicles be prejudiced, e.g., deliberately harm the elderly over young children? When people make such forced-choices on the vehicle’s behalf, they exhibit systematic preferences (e.g., favor young children), yet when their options are unconstrained... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Autonomous Vehicles; Driverless Policy; Moral Outrage; Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Transportation; Policy

2008
Working Paper

Attitude-Dependent Altruism, Turnout and Voting

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a goal-oriented model of political participation based on two psychological assumptions. The first is that people are more altruistic towards individuals that agree with them and the second is that people's well-being rises when other people share... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Political Elections; Market Participation; Attitudes

March 2007 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Chiaphua Group Vietnam

By: Nicolas P. Retsinas and Michael Shih-ta Chen

As part of its expansion and diversification strategy, the Chiaphua Group explored real estate investments in emerging markets. The Group was one of the largest privately held company groups based in Hong Kong, with international investments in a variety of... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Laws and Statutes; Emerging Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Business and Government Relations; Diversification; Hong Kong

Educators