Publications

25 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Why Unqualified Candidates Get Hired Anyway

People make snap judgments all the time. That woman in the sharp business suit must be intelligent and successful; the driver who just cut me off is a rude jerk. These instant assessments, when we attribute a person's behavior to innate... View Details

Keywords: by Anna Secino; Education; Employment

September 1991 (Revised August 1994)
Background Note

Note on Pharmaceutical Industry Regulation

By: Willis M. Emmons III

Traces the evolution of U.S. regulatory policy towards the pharmaceutical industry over the course of the twentieth century. A major theme is the steady shift away from a policy of 'let the buyer beware' to the creation of a complex and time-consuming review process,... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Industry Growth; Marketing; Research and Development; Health Testing and Trials; Economics; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

July 1998 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Bank of Ireland (BOI): Internet Strategy

Conor O'Toole, Internet business executive, must consider how to take the Bank of Ireland on-line. The bank, and Ireland, and most of continental Europe, lagedlagged behind the United States in adopting Internet techologytechnology. O'Toole wondered how he should... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leading Change; Internet; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Republic of Ireland

11 Mar 2001
Research & Ideas

Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Geoffrey Jones A second major influence on the diversification strategies of the trading companies was the boom in commodity prices. Industrialization in Europe and the United States stimulated a worldwide search for new sources of supply... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones

14 Mar 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, March 14

QE announcements in the United States. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52332 March–April 2017 Harvard Business Review What's the Value of a Like? Social Media Endorsements... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Aug 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

Companies Love Big Data But Lack the Strategy To Use It Effectively

depth, and accessibility—it has become clear it is key to helping companies develop sustainable competitive advantage. “The new attention being given to data today is because suddenly, everywhere, it’s become much cheaper to measure,” says John A. Deighton, the Baker... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

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

26 Jun 2017
News

Finding Faith in Democracy at Moments of National Conflict

02 Mar 2021
HBS Case

The Tulsa Massacre: Is Racial Justice Possible 100 Years Later?

Early on the morning of June 1, 1921, more than 5,000 white residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, invaded the African-American neighborhood of Greenwood. They came armed with guns, sticks, and other weapons—some supplied by the city’s police department—and set fire to homes... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

October 2021
Case

Yildiz Holding's Corporate Strategy: Managing Diversification for Growth

By: Juan Alcácer and Esel Çekin

The case opens in May 2018 with Nurtaç Ziyal Afridi, chief strategy and growth officer of Yıldız Holding, a Turkish conglomerate, reflecting on the group’s diversification journey. In ten years, the group had achieved a remarkable growth through diversification: seven... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Diversification; Growth Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Global Strategy; Restructuring; Food and Beverage Industry; North America; United Kingdom; Turkey; Asia

Earl Sasser is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and has been a member of the faculty there since 1969. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from Duke University in 1965, an MBA from the University of North Carolina in 1967, and a Ph.D. in... View Details

27 Feb 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, February 27, 2018

occupational segregation on which most prior research has focused. We examine more than 40 years of longitudinal data on the racial employment composition of every large private-sector workplace in the United States to calculate... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

25 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Who Lives in the C-Suite? Organizational Structure and the Division of Labor in Top Management

Keywords: by Maria Guadalupe, Hongyi Li & Julie Wulf

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

29 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

A Manager’s Moral Obligation to Preserve Capitalism

through the writings of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek among other foundational thinkers. "Many economists think of it as a positivist system that does not impose morality upon society, but this is not the case," says Harvard View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

October 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Social Finance, Inc.

By: Shawn Cole and Fanele Mashwama

This case begins in February 2019 as Tracy Palandjian, co-founder and CEO of Social Finance Inc., prepares for a board meeting that will determine the future strategy of the social enterprise. Social Finance is a non-profit in the impact investment space founded in... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions

06 Nov 2016
News

A SEAL And A Harvard Professor Walk Into A Room...

19 Jan 2016
First Look

January 19, 2016

Markets By: Baker, Malcolm Abstract—The link between measures of risk and return within the equity market has been very weak over the past 47 years: in the United States, returns on high-risk stocks have cumulatively fallen short of the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

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