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• Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2020

  What IKEA Do We Want?

  Cynthia A. Montgomery, Juan Alcacer, Emilie Billaud and Vincent Marie Dessain

  In 2018, Swedish furniture maker IKEA was undergoing a significant transformation. Challenged by the rise of online shopping and changing consumer behavior, and mourning the death of its founder, the Company's top executives knew they had to step out of their comfort zones and embrace new strategic initiatives to stay relevant. But which initiatives, executed where, when and how, would enable IKEA to achieve its goals in a way that was profitable while creating an IKEA they would want to pass on to the next generation of co-workers and customers?

  Keywords: Business Strategy; Transformation; Leading Change; Mission and Purpose; Business Model; Emerging Markets; Customer Focus and Relationships; Organizational Culture; Disruption; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Europe; Netherlands; Sweden; China; India; United States;

  Citation:

  Montgomery, Cynthia A., Juan Alcacer, Emilie Billaud, and Vincent Marie Dessain. "What IKEA Do We Want?" Harvard Business School Case 720-429, June 2020.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2019 (Revised June 2020)

  Pantheon Ventures in 2019

  Victoria Ivashina and Tonia Labruyere

  The case discusses the strategy of Pantheon, a UK-based fund of funds investing in private equity. Client demands and preferences had changed in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis and Pantheon had to adapt its business model to accommodate requests for new asset classes and customized portfolios. The challenge was to keep an eye on the fee structure, as clients also put pressure on the costs. Pantheon had extended its offer into infrastructure, real assets, and private debt, and had found a way to offer customized portfolio solutions at an acceptable cost level, but the very long-term nature of private asset classes was making it difficult to assess the success of this strategic turnaround.

  Keywords: Financial Management; Private Equity; Corporate Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United Kingdom;

  Citation:

  Ivashina, Victoria, and Tonia Labruyere. "Pantheon Ventures in 2019." Harvard Business School Case 220-001, October 2019. (Revised June 2020.)  View Details

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• Article | Journal of Financial Economics | March 2020

  Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior

  Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer and Charles C.Y. Wang

  After decades of deprioritizing shareholders' economic interests and low corporate profitability, Japan introduced the JPX-Nikkei400 in 2014. The index highlighted the country's "best-run" companies by annually selecting the 400 most profitable of its large and liquid firms. We find that managers competed for inclusion in the index by significantly increasing ROE, and they did so at least in part due to their reputational or status concerns. The ROE increase was predominantly driven by improvements in margins, which were in turn partially driven by cutting R&D intensity. Our findings suggest that indexes can affect managerial behavior through reputational or status incentives.

  Keywords: JPX-Nikkei 400 index; Status incentives; return on equity; capital efficiency; Social Norms; Index inclusion; Reputation incentives; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Governance; Behavior; Investment Return; Status and Position; Japan;

  Citation:

  Chattopadhyay, Akash, Matthew D. Shaffer, and Charles C.Y. Wang. "Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior." Journal of Financial Economics 135, no. 3 (March 2020): 704–724.  View Details

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