Faculty & Research
Harvard Business School faculty members have made notable contributions to the history of business. Faculty research is diverse, based in several of the School’s units, and reflects disciplinary backgrounds in economics, history, sociology, strategy, and political science.
- 23 Feb 2021
- News
Managing Diversity, A Conversation about John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement
Re: Nancy Koehn
| Historian and Professor Nancy Koehn shared her latest thinking on a case study she and Research Associate Eugene B. Kogan are creating on Congressman John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Lewis' death in July 2020 brought to a...
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- February 2021
- Case
Barbarians at the Gate or Turnaround Gurus? Private Equity and the Rise of the LBO
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
| During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the private equity (PE) firms responsible for carrying them out revolutionized both investment and management in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1989, buyout activity in the U.S. surged from $1 billion per year to $60 billion....
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- 16 Feb 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
Bollywood, Skin Color, and Sexism: The Role of the Film Industry in Emboldening and Contesting Stereotypes in India after Independence
by Sudev Sheth, Geoffrey Jones, and Morgan Spencer
| Analysis of interviews with Bollywood producers and actors shows the extent of biases in the film industry during the decades after India’s independence in 1947. Gender stereotyping has remained a noteworthy feature of films, and bias towards light skin has only...
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- 25 Jan 2021
- Book
In a Nutshell, Why American Capitalism Succeeded
by Sean Silverthorne
| Walter Friedman encapsulates four centuries of economic progress—from European merchants to Steve Jobs—in his efficient book, American Business History: A Very Short Introduction.
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- 2021
- Book Chapter
International Business History and the Strategy of Multinational Enterprises: How History Matters
By: Geoffrey Jones and Teresa da Silva Lopes
| This chapter provides an overview of the evolution of international business over the long-run as well as the strategies of MNEs. It highlights how strategies became more complex over time with MNEs moving from being coordinators of resources and managers of...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Bollywood, Skin Color and Sexism: The Role of the Film Industry in Emboldening and Contesting Stereotypes in India after Independence
By: Sudev Sheth, Geoffrey Jones and Morgan Spencer
| This working paper examines the social impact of the film industry in India during the first four decades after Indian Independence in 1947. It shows that Bollywood, the mainstream cinema in India and the counterpart in scale to Hollywood in the United States, shared...
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- 13 Nov 2020
- News
Belgium’s reckoning with a brutal history in Congo
Re: Geoffrey Jones
| Few companies have ever atoned for their colonial pasts, let alone paid reparations. By contrast, in the late 1990s, Swiss banks and German companies including Siemens and BMW did both for their involvement in the Holocaust. “That’s fairly typical in the low degree of...
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- 2020
- Book
American Business History: A Very Short Introduction
By: Walter Friedman
| By the early twentieth century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization." President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's...
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- 2020
- Book Chapter
Luxury Tourism and Environmentalism
By: G. Jones
| This chapter examines the evolution of luxury tourism and its environmental impact. Whilst mass tourism is widely seen as environmentally damaging, the impact of luxury tourism is nuanced. During the first stage of the growth in the nineteenth century, the numbers of...
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- September 2020
- Case
Uber at a Crossroads (2017)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
| This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its...
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- 02 Sep 2020
- News
The 1920s and H1B visas
Re: Marco Tabellini
| Second, the aggregate effects of restrictions on the economy are either null or negative. This is confirmed by Harvard Business School's Marco Tabellini (2020), who shows that areas less impacted by the quotas saw better economic outcomes, as measured by incomes and...
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- 01 Sep 2020
- News
Comeback Trail
Re: Nancy Koehn, David Moss & Debora Spar
| To better understand how to approach an economic recovery of this scale, we asked three HBS professors—David Moss, Nancy Koehn, and Debora Spar—to weigh in on what advice history can offer as we navigate the current economic crisis.
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Initiative Leadership
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