Publications

16 Mar 2021
News

Employers Must Ensure the Safety of Home Workspaces

November 1999 (Revised July 2001)
Case

New Profit Inc.: Governing the Nonprofit Enterprise

By: Robert S. Kaplan

New Profit, Inc. (NPI) is an innovative venture philanthropy fund. Founded by social entrepreneur Venessa Kirsch, NPI intends to raise large donations from individuals who wish to invest in nonprofit enterprises that could have a significant social impact and the... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Nonprofit Organizations; Venture Capital; Social Entrepreneurship; Corporate Governance; Performance Evaluation; Financial Statements; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Service Industry

April 2022
Teaching Note

Christie's and Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi: The Value of a Brand

By: Jill Avery

A sixteenth century Renaissance masterpiece, missing for 137 years, believed by many to have been destroyed, and then rediscovered less than a decade ago, becomes the most expensive painting ever sold, all the while surrounded by controversy. Did the buyer of Leonardo... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Brand Valuation; Art; Art Dealer; Auction House; Brand Storytelling; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Fine Arts Industry; United States; Italy

2016
Article

Do External Labor Market Job Switches Affect the Gender Compensation Gap?

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Eric Lin

This paper investigates how external mobility influences the gender compensation gap for job switching executives. Using proprietary data for 2,034 executive placements from a global search firm, we find job switching narrows the gender gap by 45%, from 11% to 6%. We... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Gender

Find at Harvard

26 Aug 2015
News

Five steps to a solid contract

August 1993
Case

Applichem (A) (Abridged)

By: Janice H. Hammond and Gary P. Pisano

Applichem manufactures the same chemical product in four plants, each of which is located in a different country. The company has completed a major study comparing the productivity and performance of these plants. Using the data from the study, students must decide... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Strategy; Judgments; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Business Exit or Shutdown; Chemical Industry

June 2007
Article

Which Levers Boost ROI?

By: Margeaux Cvar and John A. Quelch

The article refers to ROI, or return on investment, and focuses on a rational strategy for financial markets that uses outside industry comparisons. The first step is to identify parallel businesses that have similar characteristics such as growth, capital, and market... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Financial Markets; Investment Return

Find at Harvard

March 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Purolator Courier Ltd.

By: Rajiv Lal and Catherine Ross

On a fall day in September 2003, Robert Swanborough made his way down a thickly carpeted hallway in Purolator's headquarters in Toronto, Canada, toward a meeting with his two deputies. Several months earlier, Swanborough, then vice-president of Marketing, had been... View Details

Keywords: Conferences; Customer Focus and Relationships; Leading Change; Marketing Strategy; Performance Effectiveness; Strategic Planning; Research; Segmentation; Canada

Maria Roche is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches Strategy in the MBA required curriculum. Professor Roche studies the commercialization of specialized knowledge and the specific role of... View Details

Keywords: education industry; biotechnology; high technology

2023
Working Paper

Fintech to the (Worker) Rescue: Access to Earned Wages, Financial Health and Employee Turnover

By: Jose Murillo, Boris Vallée and Dolly Yu

Using novel data from a Mexican FinTech firm, we study the usage by workers of earned wages access, an innovative financial service offered by firms to their employees as a benefit. We find usage to be significant and concentrated towards the end of the pay cycle. We... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Present Bias; Earned Wage Access; Wages; Employees; Retention; Well-being; Mexico

Read Now

July 2010
Case

Mekong Capital: Building a Culture of Leadership in Vietnam

By: Christopher Marquis, Vinay Ganti, Kevin Smith and Doug Guthrie

Mekong Capital, a private equity firm specializing in investing in Vietnam, had grown dramatically since its inception in 2002 and faced numerous organizational issues in 2007. There was a shortage of qualified middle managers, an overall lack of leadership, and a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Performance Improvement; Groups and Teams; Alignment; Financial Services Industry

22 Oct 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Motivate Me, Please

SolStock Former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy was known to criticize staff for being "coin-operated" instead of mission-driven. Understanding what motivates good performance is crucial View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

June 1997
Supplement

MicroFridge: Robert Bennett, President and CEO, OPM Presentation

By: Norman A. Berg

Robert P. Bennett of MicroFridge discusses a number of topics including his philosophy, his company's market focus, the reorganization of the selling organization, reduction of overhead, the company's poor performance in the past year, its partnership with Sanyo, and... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Salesforce Management; Markets; Partners and Partnerships; Strategy; Performance

02 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

The Flattening Firm and Product Market Competition: The Effect of Trade Liberalization

Keywords: by Maria Guadalupe & Julie M. Wulf

Article

The CMS New Rule on Ambulatory Surgical Centers Earns Only Partial Credit

By: Junaid Nabi and Robert S. Kaplan

The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that it will be removing more... View Details

Keywords: Ambulatory Care; Payment Policy; Health Care and Treatment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

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14 Oct 2014
First Look

First Look: October 14

information for plants in over 100 countries, we construct a spatially continuous index of pairwise-industry agglomeration and investigate the patterns and determinants underlying the global economic geography of multinational firms. Our... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 May 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, May 1, 2018

combined this bold national goal with an accountability structure (incentive plan) built on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), as more typically done at a company level. A key case protagonist is Ohood Al Roumi: the UAE and the world's... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Jul 2021
News

Restless at Work? Don't Join the Throngs of Job Quitters Until You Read This

Article

Drive Innovation with Better Decision-Making

By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Taran Swan

Despite their embrace of agile methods, many firms striving to innovate are struggling to produce breakthrough ideas. A key culprit, according to the authors, is an outdated, inefficient approach to decision-making. Today’s discovery-driven innovation processes involve... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Change and Adaptation