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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013 (Revised from original 2013 version)

  Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization

  Linda A. Hill, Anthony J. Mayo and Dana M. Teppert

  Iz-Lynn Chan, assistant director of retail business group and service quality and vice president of Far East retail consultancy for Far East Organization, a private real estate developer group in Singapore, raises service standards in the company's hospitality portfolio, Far East Hospitality. Chan and her small team in the Service Quality and Standards Department (SQSD) for Far East Organization apply to the Singapore government for the National Customer Centric Initiative (CCI) for Far East Hospitality. After being awarded the CCI, Chan must make some tough decisions about how to carry out the CCI. Despite Far East Hospitality's leading market share in mid-tier hotels and serviced residences, there had been a number of new entrants into the market and competition is fierce in Singapore's hospitality industry.

  Keywords: leadership; change management; hospitality; organizational change and transformation; Leadership; Leading Change; Change Management; Service Industry; Singapore;

  Citation:

  Hill, Linda A., Anthony J. Mayo, and Dana M. Teppert. "Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization." Harvard Business School Case 413-060, May 2013. (Revised from original February 2013 version.)

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2013

  Independent Directors' Dissent on Boards: Evidence from Listed Companies in China

  Juan Ma and Tarun Khanna

  In this paper, we examine the circumstances under which so-called "independent" directors voice their independent views on public boards in a sample of Chinese firms. First, we ask why independent directors dissent, i.e. how they justify such dissent to public investors. We find that when independent directors dissent, they tend to offer mild, subjective justifications. Overt criticism of the management team is rare. Next, we ask when an independent director is more likely to dissent and who is more likely to dissent. Controlling for firm and board characteristics, we find that independent directors' dissent is associated with breakdown of social ties between the independent director and the board chairperson, who is at the center of the board bureaucracy in China. Dissent is more likely to occur when the chairperson who appointed the independent director has left the board. Dissent also tends to occur at the end of board "games", defined as a 60-day window prior to departure of the board chairperson or departure of the independent director herself. The endgame effect is particularly strong, seeing 27% of the dissent issued at board "endgames" which represents only 4% of independent directors' average tenure. While directors with foreign experience are more likely to dissent, we do not find that academics, accountants and lawyers are significantly more active in dissenting. Lastly, we show that dissent is consequential to the director and the firm. For directors, we show that dissent is significantly associated with the likelihood of exiting the director labor market. For firms, we document an economically and statistically significant cumulative abnormal return of -0.97% around announcement of dissent. Although the literature has suggested that dissent might be reflective of diverse viewpoints, and perhaps beneficial in and of itself through reduction of firm variability, we do not find this offsetting beneficial effect to be strong.

  Keywords: corporate governance; independent directors; China; China; Asia;

  Citation:

  Ma, Juan, and Tarun Khanna. "Independent Directors' Dissent on Boards: Evidence from Listed Companies in China." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13–089, April 2013. (Revised May 2013.)

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013 (Revised from original 2009 version)

  Lawson: Becoming the Community Store of 9,000 Japanese Communities

  Linda A. Hill, Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, Masako Egawa, Emily Stecker and Mayuka Yamazaki

  Keywords: Retail Industry; Japan;

  Citation:

  Hill, Linda A., Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, Masako Egawa, Emily Stecker, and Mayuka Yamazaki. "Lawson: Becoming the Community Store of 9,000 Japanese Communities." Harvard Business School Case 409-112, March 2013. (Revised from original April 2009 version.)

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