Publications

October 1995 (Revised July 1996)
Case

Aspen Technology, Inc.: Currency Hedging Review

By: Peter Tufano

The chief financial officer of a rapidly growing U.S.-based software firm that sells its process-control software to industrial users around the globe must review the goals, strategies, and policies of the firm's currency hedging program. This review is prompted by... View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; Applications and Software; Investment; Business Startups; Business Strategy; Information Technology Industry; United Kingdom; United States

07 Oct 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Specific Knowledge and Divisional Performance Measurement

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling

February 2020 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Wellthy: The Economics of Caring

By: Brian L. Trelstad and Joseph B. Fuller

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 young professional providing care for her... View Details

Keywords: B2B Vs. B2C; Future Of Work; Health; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; United States

26 Feb 2019
Blog Post

Forget Cash. Here Are Better Ways to Motivate Employees

With unemployment at near historic lows in the United States, employers report that their single greatest challenge is recruiting and retaining talent. The answer for many companies is to throw money at the problem: Bonuses, incentive... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

October 1993 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Accounting for Productivity Growth

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Introduces students to the arithmetic of the accounting for national productivity growth. It defines labor productivity, capital productivity, and total factor productivity, describes the relationships among them, and discusses the phenomena that cause them to change... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Macroeconomics; Analytics and Data Science; Government and Politics; Mathematical Methods; United States; Singapore

05 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 5, 2018

2018 Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press High-Skilled Migration to the United States and Its Economic Consequences By: Hanson, Gordon H., William R. Kerr, and Sarah Turner, eds. Abstract—Immigration policy is one of the most... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Mar 2012
Report

A Jobs Compact for America's Future

What's good for individual U.S. companies is no longer automatically good for business nationwide, for U.S. workers, or for the economy. That, coupled with the failure of business, government, and other institutions to engage in... View Details

Caroline M. Elkins

Caroline Elkins is the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor of Business Administration in the Business, Government and International Economy unit at HBS. She is also Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, an... View Details

September 2006 (Revised February 2011)
Case

Empemex

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Regina Garcia-Cuellar

Studies an entrepreneurial venture in Mexico City. The protagonists, two MBAs from HBS, started a pawn shop chain funded from their private equity office after finishing business school. This is timed at a point where the protagonists have to decide how to grow the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Mexico City; United States

October 1997 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Asda (A)

By: Michael Beer and James Weber

In the mid-1980s, Asda was one of the most successful retail companies in the United Kingdom. By 1991, the chain of 200 grocery stores had a lack of direction, a demoralized workforce, declining profits, rising debt, collapsing stock price, and was facing bankruptcy.... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Crisis Management; Management Teams; Business Strategy; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United Kingdom

July 2014 (Revised August 2014)
Case

AmazonFresh: Rekindling the Online Grocery Market

By: Rory McDonald, Clayton Christensen, Robin Yang and Ty Hollingsworth

More than a decade after the high-profile failures of several early online grocers, grocery remains the largest single U.S. retail category and one of the few that has not yet migrated online. Amazon began testing its grocery-delivery service, AmazonFresh, in Seattle,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; New Markets; Grocery; Operations Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Strategy; Emerging Markets; Learning; Service Operations; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

Article

181 Top CEOs Have Realized Companies Need a Purpose Beyond Profit

By: Claudine Gartenberg and George Serafeim

On August 19, 2019, the Business Roundtable (BR) issued a memo entitled “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” The Business Roundtable, one of the most preeminent business lobbies in the United States, includes 192 CEOs of leading U.S. companies from Apple to... View Details

Keywords: Purpose; Corporate Purpose; Stakeholder Management; CEO; Mission and Purpose; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Strategy

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20 Feb 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, February 20, 2018

through the New Deal era. This history of American capitalism argues that business associations partnered with regulators to create codes of fair competition that reshaped both public and private regulatory power. Rather than viewing the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2001 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Deaconess-Glover Hospital (C)

For nearly three months, John Carter, a vascular surgeon by training, had been studying a variety of clinical processes at Deaconess-Glover Hospital in Needham, Mass. Carter was looking for an opportunity to test the applicability of Toyota Production System... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Health Care and Treatment; Business Processes; Health Industry

June 2007 (Revised April 2008)
Case

Say on Pay

By: Jay W. Lorsch, V.G. Narayanan and Alexis Chernak

Briefly describes the trend in 2006 and 2007 in the United States to give shareholders an advisory vote on executive compensation. Highlights a few examples where shareholders have successfully garnered a majority in support of an advisory vote measure on company proxy... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; United States

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2020
Working Paper

Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Raymond Kluender

We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates.... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Financial Distress; COVID-19; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Crisis; Health Pandemics; United States

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July 2001 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Gerdau (A)

By: Joseph L. Bower, Luiz Felipe Monteiro and Sonja Ellingson Hout

Gerdau Group is a family-controlled Brazilian manufacturer and distributor of long steel products. Describes the evolution of the company's strategy, organization, and smart management, making it the No. 2 steel producer in Brazil. The company must decide whether to... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Family Business; Decision Choices and Conditions; Developing Countries and Economies; Globalization; Competitive Strategy; Steel Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Brazil; United States

April 2009 (Revised May 2009)
Case

Oprah Winfrey

By: Nancy F. Koehn, Erica Helms, Katherine Miller and Rachel Wilcox

The case explores the entrepreneurial journey of Oprah Winfrey, examining how she built an audience for one of the most successful television shows in history; how she created the company, Harpo Productions, that produces that show as well as other media offerings; how... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Personal Development and Career; Strategy; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States