Debora L. Spar
Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean, Business in Global Society
Unit Head, General Management
Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean, Business in Global Society
Unit Head, General Management
Debora Spar is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean for Business and Global Society. Her current research focuses on issues of gender and technology, and the interplay between technological change and broader social structures. Spar tackles some of these issues in her latest book, Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny.
Spar served as the President of Barnard College from 2008 to 2017, and as President and CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from 2017 to 2018. During her tenure at Barnard, Spar led initiatives to highlight women’s leadership and advancement, including the creation of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and the development of Barnard’s Global Symposium series.
Before joining Barnard, Spar spent 17 years on the HBS faculty as the Spangler Family Professor as well as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development. A prolific writer, Spar’s books include Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet (2001), The Baby Business (2006), and Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection (2013).
Spar is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as a director of Value Retail LLC and Thermo Fisher Scientific, as well as a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Bentley University. She has also served on the boards of Goldman Sachs and the Wallace and Markle Foundations. Spar earned her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and her B.S. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
She and her husband, Miltos Catomeris, are the parents of three grown children.
- Featured Work
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What will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies increasingly allow for newfangled ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another, or to remain happily perched in between? What will happen to love and sex and romance as our relationships migrate from the real world to the Internet? Can people fall in love with robots? Will they? In short, what will happen to our most basic notions of humanity as we entangle our lives and emotions with the machines we have created?
- Books
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- Spar, Debora L. Work, Mate, Marry, Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. View Details
- Spar, D. L. Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. View Details
- Spar, Debora L. The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006. View Details
- Journal Articles
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- Spar, Debora L. "Goodfellows: Men's Role and Reason in the Fight for Gender Equality." Special Issue on Women & Equality edited by Nannerl O. Keohane and Frances McCall Rosenbluth. Daedalus 149, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 222–235. View Details
- Spar, Debora. "Return to the Era of Rule-Making." The Hill Times (November 23, 2018). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "The Baby Benefits Club." Foreign Policy 215 (November–December 2015). View Details
- Spar, Debora. "Should You Freeze Your Eggs?" Marie Claire (June 2015). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Crash and Burn: Why Silicon Valley's Notion That Failure Leads to Success Won't Work for the Rest of the World." Foreign Policy 214 (September–October 2015). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "The Secret of Singapore: Why Cuba Should Look to Lee Kuan Yew's Thriving City-State for Economic Inspiration." Foreign Policy 213 (July–August 2015). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Dead Weight: How Greece Wound up Trapped in the European Union." Foreign Policy 212 (May–June 2015). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "The Almighty Ruble." Foreign Policy 211 (March–April 2015). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Heroic Villains: Are Foreign Investors Problems or Solutions in the Ebola Crisis?" Foreign Policy 210 (January–February 2015). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Leaning in Without Falling Over." New York Times Book Review (April 13, 2014). View Details
- Spar, Debora. "What Men Can Do to Help Women Advance Their Careers." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (November 8, 2013). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Where Feminism Went Wrong." Chronicle of Higher Education 60, no. 1 (September 30, 2013). View Details
- Spar, Debora. "Women Don't Need to Lead Better Than Men. They Need to Lead Differently." Harvard Business Review (website) (August 26, 2013). View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "A Welcome to College Parents." Huffington Post (October 26, 2013). View Details
- Spar, D. L. "Stop That Woman!" Glamour (September 2013). View Details
- Spar, Debora. "Why Women Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect." Newsweek (September 24, 2012). View Details
- Spar, Debora. "Why Do Successful Women Feel So Guilty?" The Atlantic (June 28, 2012). View Details
- Spar, Debora, and Anna M. Harrington. "Building a Better Baby Business." Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology 10, no. 1 (2009): 41–69. View Details
- Spar, Debora, and Anna Harrington. "Selling Stem Cell Science: How Markets Drive Law along the Technological Frontier." American Journal of Law & Medicine 33, no. 4 (2007): 541–565. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Lane T La Mure. "The Power of Activism: Assessing the Impact of NGOs on Global Business." California Management Review 45, no. 3 (Spring 2003). View Details
- Book Chapters
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- Spar, Debora L. "Wrinkles in Time. Or Not." Chap. 4 in The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier, edited by Cathi Hanauer. New York: William Morrow, 2016. View Details
- Spar, D. L., and D. B. Yoffie. "A Race to the Bottom or Governance from the Top?" In Coping with Globalization, edited by Aseem Prakash and Jeffrey A. Hart, 31–51. London, England: Routledge, 2000. View Details
- Goodman, John, Debora Spar, and David B. Yoffie. "Foreign Direct Investment and the Demand for Protection in the United States." In Trade and Investment Policy, edited by Thomas Brewer. Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Spar, Debora L., and Julia M. Comeau. "Taiwan After Globalization: Twilight of the Developmental State?" Harvard Business School Teaching Note 325-057, October 2024. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia M. Comeau. "Martine Rothblatt and United Therapeutics: A Series of Implausible Dreams." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 325-058, November 2024. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Comeau. "Novo Nordisk Foundation." Harvard Business School Case 325-031, August 2024. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Gunnar Trumbull, Henry Tao, and Julia Comeau. "H2 Green Steel: A Clean-Tech Triple Play?" Harvard Business School Case 324-101, March 2024. (Revised July 2024.) View Details
- Healy, Paul M., and Debora L. Spar. "Monsters in the Machine? Tackling the Challenge of Responsible AI." Harvard Business School Case 324-062, December 2023. (Revised August 2024.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia M. Comeau. "The ICARUS Principles: What It Takes to Tackle the World." Harvard Business School Technical Note 324-055, January 2024. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Paul Healy, Tricia Peralta, and Julia Comeau. "'Care in Every Drop': Ayala Corporation and Manila Water (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 324-039, November 2023. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Paul Healy, Tricia Peralta, and Julia M. Comeau. "'Care in Every Drop': Ayala Corporation and Manila Water (A)." Harvard Business School Case 324-038, November 2023. (Revised July 2024.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia M. Comeau. "Taiwan after Globalization: Twilight of the Developmental State?" Harvard Business School Case 324-032, October 2023. View Details
- Spar, Debora, Willis Emmons, Leonard A. Schlesinger, and Ruth Costas. "Beyond the Barricades: Chile 2023." Harvard Business School Case 324-005, August 2023. (Revised October 2023.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Comeau. "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Sweden's Utopia at a Crossroads." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 323-105, March 2023. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Comeau. "Afrigen Biologics: Vaccines for the Global South." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 323-098, March 2023. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., George Serafeim, and Julia Comeau. "Northvolt: Building Batteries to Fight Climate Change." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 323-097, March 2023. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia M. Comeau. "The Social Purpose of the Firm." Harvard Business School Module Note 323-051, March 2023. (Revised November 2023.) View Details
- Elkins, Caroline M., Debora L. Spar, Zeke Gillman, and Julia M. Comeau. "'A Marshall Plan for Africa': James Mwangi and Equity Group Holdings." Harvard Business School Case 323-048, November 2022. (Revised October 2024.) View Details
- Serafeim, George, Debora L. Spar, and Julia M. Comeau. "Northvolt: Building Batteries to Fight Climate Change." Harvard Business School Case 323-042, November 2022. (Revised March 2024.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia M. Comeau. "Martine Rothblatt and United Therapeutics: A Series of Implausible Dreams." Harvard Business School Case 323-039, November 2022. (Revised April 2024.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Comeau. "Afrigen Biologics: Vaccines for the Global South." Harvard Business School Case 323-030, October 2022. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Alicia Dadlani. "General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 323-020, July 2022. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Alicia Dadlani. "General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (A)." Harvard Business School Case 323-019, July 2022. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia M. Comeau. "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Sweden's Utopia at a Crossroads." Harvard Business School Case 322-046, June 2022. (Revised November 2022.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Comeau. "Linda Oubré at Whittier College." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 722-048, February 2022. View Details
- Healy, Paul M., Debora L. Spar, and Amy Klopfenstein. "Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place." Harvard Business School Case 122-017, November 2021. (Revised November 2023.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Haley P. Brown. "Linda Oubré at Whittier College (C)." Harvard Business School Supplement 721-061, June 2021. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Haley P. Brown. "Linda Oubré at Whittier College (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 721-058, June 2021. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Haley P. Brown. "Linda Oubré at Whittier College." Harvard Business School Case 721-057, June 2021. View Details
- Rithmire, Meg, and Debora L. Spar. "ALDDN: Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria." Harvard Business School Case 721-026, March 2021. (Revised May 2021.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Facebook Faces the Regulators." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 721-009, September 2020. View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Halftime for Heidelberg." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 721-385, September 2020. (Revised December 2020.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Halftime for Heidelberg." Harvard Business School Case 720-021, February 2020. View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Facebook Faces the Regulators." Harvard Business School Case 720-019, December 2019. (Revised September 2020.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Olivia Hull. "Extend Fertility: Conceiving the Market for Egg Preservation (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 720-017, October 2019. (Revised December 2019.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Olivia Hull. "Extend Fertility: Conceiving the Market for Egg Preservation." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 720-002, October 2019. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Olivia Hull. "Extend Fertility: Conceiving the Market for Egg Preservation (A)." Harvard Business School Case 719-019, February 2019. (Revised October 2019.) View Details
- Maurer, Noel, Debora L. Spar, and J. Gunnar Trumbull. "Afghanistan 2006: Building a Brand New State." Harvard Business School Case 707-033, January 2007. (Revised February 2010.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Brian DeLacey. "The Coartem Challenge (A)." Harvard Business School Case 706-037, April 2006. (Revised November 2008.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "The Coartem Challenge (B)." Harvard Business School Case 707-025, October 2006. (Revised July 2008.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Lygeia Ricciardi, and Laura Bures. "Lenzing AG: Expanding in Indonesia." Harvard Business School Case 796-099, December 1995. (Revised January 2008.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Terence Mulligan. "Chiquita Brands International (A)." Harvard Business School Case 797-015, October 1996. (Revised December 2022.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Jean C. Oi, and Chris Bebenek. China: Building "Capitalism with Socialist Characteristics". Harvard Business School Case 706-041, February 2006. (Revised October 2006.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Chris Bebenek. "deCODE Genetics: Hunting for Genes to Develop Drugs." Harvard Business School Case 706-040, February 2006. (Revised August 2006.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Adam Day. "Drug Testing in Nigeria (A)." Harvard Business School Case 706-033, January 2006. (Revised July 2006.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Adam Day. "Drug Testing in Nigeria (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 706-042, March 2006. (Revised July 2006.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Adam Day. "Rx Depot: Importing Drugs from Canada." Harvard Business School Case 705-010, February 2005. (Revised April 2006.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Nick Bartlett. "Life, Death, and Property Rights: The Pharmaceutical Industry Faces AIDS in Africa." Harvard Business School Case 702-049, June 2002. (Revised November 2005.) View Details
- Alfaro, Laura, Debora L. Spar, Faheen Allibhoy, and Vinati Dev. "Botswana: A Diamond in the Rough." Harvard Business School Case 703-027, March 2003. (Revised November 2005.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Cate Reavis. "Rwandan Tea Industry, The: Looking into the Future." Harvard Business School Case 704-007, January 2004. (Revised November 2004.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Cate Reavis. "Business of Life, The." Harvard Business School Case 704-037, March 2004. (Revised June 2004.) View Details
- Alfaro, Laura, Debora L. Spar, and Cate Reavis. "New Partnership for Africa's Development, The." Harvard Business School Case 704-006, September 2003. (Revised May 2004.) View Details
- Abdelal, Rawi E., Debora L. Spar, and Katherine E. Cousins. "Remaking the Rainbow Nation: South Africa 2002." Harvard Business School Case 702-035, February 2002. (Revised February 2003.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Nick Bartlett. "Phase Two: The Pharmaceutical Industry Responds to AIDS." Harvard Business School Case 703-005, July 2002. (Revised December 2002.) View Details
- Abdelal, Rawi E., and Debora L. Spar. "Remaking the Rainbow Nation: South Africa 2002 (TN)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 703-017, October 2002. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Jennifer Burns. "Hitting the Wall: Nike and International Labor Practices." Harvard Business School Case 700-047, January 2000. (Revised September 2002.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Jennifer Burns. "Forever: De Beers and U.S. Antitrust Law." Harvard Business School Case 700-082, February 2000. (Revised September 2002.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Allison Morhaim, and Bharesh Patel. "WorldSpace: Digital Radio for the Developing World." Harvard Business School Case 702-034, June 2002. (Revised August 2002.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Lane LaMure. "Burma Pipeline, The." Harvard Business School Case 798-078, February 1998. (Revised March 2000.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Jennifer Burns. "Network Associates: Securing the Internet." Harvard Business School Case 799-087, March 1999. (Revised May 1999.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Note on Rules." Harvard Business School Background Note 799-013, January 1999. (Revised March 1999.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L. Toys "R" Us Japan. Harvard Business School Case 796-077, December 1995. (Revised February 1999.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Paula Zakaria. "BSkyB." Harvard Business School Case 798-077, March 1998. (Revised August 1998.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Elizabeth B. Stein. "Regarding NAFTA." Harvard Business School Case 797-013, October 1996. (Revised May 1998.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Jeffrey Bell, Christine Dinh-Tan, and Phillip Purnama. "Busang (A): River of Gold." Harvard Business School Case 798-002, October 1997. (Revised May 1998.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Julia Kou, Elizabeth B. Stein, and Karen Gordon. "Japan's Automakers Face Endaka." Harvard Business School Case 796-030, January 1996. (Revised February 1998.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Heidi Deringer, and Jennifer Wang. "Note on Political Risk Analysis." Harvard Business School Background Note 798-022, September 1997. View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "China (A): The Great Awakening." Harvard Business School Case 794-019, September 1993. (Revised September 1997.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Elizabeth B. Stein. "Advent of Venture Capital in Latin America, The." Harvard Business School Case 797-077, February 1997. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Julia Kou, and Laura Bures. "Singapore's Trade in Services." Harvard Business School Case 796-135, March 1996. (Revised October 1996.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Suzanne Hull, and Julia Kou. "Union Carbide's Bhopal Plant (A)." Harvard Business School Case 795-070, June 1995. (Revised September 1996.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., William W. Jarosz, and Julia Kou. "White Nights and Polar Lights: Investing in the Russian Oil Industry." Harvard Business School Case 795-022, June 1995. (Revised June 1996.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Laura Bures. Toys "R" Us Japan (B). Harvard Business School Supplement 796-107, January 1996. (Revised June 1996.) View Details
- Vietor, Richard H.K., and Debora L. Spar. "Controlling International Oil (B): The Rise and Fall of OPEC (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 796-165, April 1996. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Kou. "Union Carbide's Bhopal Plant (B)." Harvard Business School Case 796-035, July 1995. (Revised April 1996.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., Lygeia Ricciardi, and Laura Bures. "Layton Canada." Harvard Business School Case 796-108, December 1995. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Zanley Galton. "Assessing Foreign Business Practices." Harvard Business School Case 796-105, December 1995. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Richard H.K. Vietor. "Controlling International Oil (A): The Seven Sisters." Harvard Business School Case 795-065, December 1994. (Revised February 1995.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Richard H.K. Vietor. "Controlling International Oil (B): The Rise and Fall of OPEC." Harvard Business School Case 795-066, January 1995. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Kou. "Note on Foreign Direct Investment." Harvard Business School Background Note 795-031, January 1995. View Details
- Spar, Debora L., and Julia Kou. "Being There: Sony Corporation and Columbia Pictures." Harvard Business School Case 795-025, December 1994. View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Foreign Investment and Free Trade: Canada in the 1990s." Harvard Business School Case 793-032, October 1992. (Revised October 1994.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Gerber Products Company: Investing in the New Poland." Harvard Business School Case 793-069, March 1993. (Revised July 1994.) View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "China (B): Polaroid of Shanghai Ltd." Harvard Business School Case 794-089, January 1994. View Details
- Spar, Debora L. "Poland--1989." Harvard Business School Case 792-091, April 1992. (Revised September 1993.) View Details
- Other Publications and Materials
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- Spar, D. L. "Today's Awkward Zoom Classes Could Bring a New Era of Higher Education." EdSurge (September 10, 2020). View Details
- Research Summary
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My work focuses generally on the intersection between technological change and societal structures, and on the many areas in which business both shapes and is shaped by societal norms.Keywords: Technological And Scientific Innovation; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Business & Government Relations; Business And Community; Capitalism; Reproduction; Technological Innovation; Government and Politics; Gender; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Education Industry; United States; Europe; Africa; AsiaWhat will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies increasingly allow for newfangled ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another, or to remain happily perched in between? What will happen to love and sex and romance as our relationships migrate from the real world to the Internet? Can people fall in love with robots? Will they? In short, what will happen to our most basic notions of humanity as we entangle our lives and emotions with the machines we have created?
In this book, Spar explores how American women’s lives have—and have not—changed over the past fifty years. Armed with reams of new research, she details how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection. The challenges confronting women are more complex than ever, and they are challenges that come inherently and inevitably from being female. Spar is acutely aware that it is time to change course.
It is difficult to conceive of the child as commerce. For even at the start of the 21st century, we like to believe that some things remain beyond both markets and science; that there are some things that money can't buy. In economic terms, these things are defined as being inalienable; the people who own the assets have no ability to profit from them. In moral terms, they are things that we as a society have chosen not to sell;assets or attributes that are somehow more valuable than any price they might fetch. This prohibition is particularly strong for children. For who, after all, could put a price on a child? Yet every day, around the world, babies and children are indeed being sold. South American toddlers are advertised to their prospective parents by reference to their physical characteristics. Eggs are priced according to their 'donor's' intelligence. Embryos are being created and manipulated to produce particular genetic trains. Such transactions may appear to be above or beyond the market. But they are not. When parents buy eggs or sperm; when they contract with surrogate mothers; when they choose a child to adopt or an embryo to implant, they are doing business. This research project examines the commercial and political aspects of the baby trade. Rather than focusing on either the science or the personal implications of reproductive medicine, it looks instead at the commerce that has evolved along with the science; at the business that is actually shaping what science can and cannot do.In 2004, the topic of stem cell research made both medical and moral headlines. Buoyed by a series of technological breakthroughs, stem cell scientists grew increasingly convinced that they would eventually be able to use embryonic stem cells -- the pluripotent cells taken from an early stage embryo -- to attack and perhaps cure a wide range of devastating illnesses. Opponents, however, were equally convinced that any use of embryonic stem cells was morally reprehensible, takng, in effect, one form of life to save another. Political forces quickly allied themselves on both sides of this divide, either rallying to raise government funds for stem cell research or rushing to prohibit its development. This project does not attempt to resolve either the moral or scientific debates that surround stem cell research. Instead, it views stem cells through the lens of the market; a lens that sees stem cells as a set of highly promising but still unproven technologies. Accordingly, the project will attempt to plot how private firms are moving into the stem cell industry; how they are dealing with laws that vary widely across national and state borders; and how this nascent commerce will both shape and by shaped by powerful political debates.There are certain periods of time when technological innovation pushes at the frontiers of government and law; when technology undermines state authority and opens massive loopholes for entreneneurs to exploit. During these critical junctures, rules disappear and markets flourish wildly. We are living through one of these junctures right now, witnessing the advance of digital technologies and the creation of whole new markets and industries. As these changes ripple across the global economy, they promise to create hordes of entrepreneurs and billions of dollars in revenue, but also to change the rules of the commercial game. In her recently published book, Professor Debora Spar examines how new rules are likely to emerge and who will create them.In the last decades of the 20th century economic growth was distributed unevenly across the world. While some countries experienced sustained and unprecedented prosperity, others fell further and further behind. This widening gap was particularly evident in Africa, where per capita incomes actually declined and disease and war continue to ravage large sections of the continent.There are many factors that have contributed to this troubling performance: the weight of a colonial past, the vagaries of climate and geography, the torment of war. These are all well-known and exceedingly difficult to address. Equally critical, though, and somewhat more amenable, is the role of governance and the state. Where governments are effective and institutions sound, growth in Africa and elsewhere has generally proceeded apace. Where firms are able to access capital and international markets, development followed suit. Where governments are ineffective, however, and markets weak, growth has faltered, leaving nations to bear the increasing burdens of poverty.
Making Markets Work is an executive education program focused on development and targeted at managers in both the public and private sectors. It starts with the presumption that both government and markets are critical to a nation's social and economic growth and that both public and private sector managers need to understand and play a role in the governance process. Using a combination of cases, videos, texts and online exercises, the course will expose participants to both leading research and local best practice. It will endeavor to engage participants in their own process of discovery, exploring how firms and governments can together affect the pattern of development in Africa, and how individual leaders can contribute to both governance and growth.
As members of civil society NGOs would seem to have a built-in proclivity towards representation: towards working on behalf of some group of people, or toward some specific goal. Yet in practice such moments of accountability are rare. Unlike other social agents, NGOs have not yet developed customary mechanisms for reporting on their activities. This gap is not due to either oversight or neglect. On the contrary, both NGOs and their observers have argued with increased vigor over the past decades for some measures of accountability; some way to determine the impact of NGOs and the cost-effectiveness of their behavior. Such measures, however, are inherently difficult to assemble. It is hard to attribute specific achievements to individual NGOs or count the efficacy of non-market based activities; harder still to crack the connection between NGOs and either development or democratization. And yet as the NGO sector grows in both scope and power, it is precisely these measurements that become more critical.This paper probes the problem of accountability in three separate but related ways. First, it describes the wide variation that characterizes NGOs and propose a typology based on these differences. Second, it examines more specifically how performance might be measured across NGO sectors and what kind of information can be derived from these measures. It then concludes with a brief discussion of perhaps the thorniest issue of NGO accountability: whether NGOs contribute to democratization and how society can tell.
In the final years of the twentieth century, the world was hit by a plague of epidemic proportions--the plague of AIDS, a life-threatening disease that remained stubbornly immune to any cure or vaccine. In the developed nations of the West, AIDS was slowly brought under control through a combination of education, prevention, and cutting-edge medicines. But in the developing world, where health care expenditures were often paltry, AIDS continued to rampage. By the year 2000, 25 million people in Africa alone were infected with the disease. Millions had already died.For the pharmaceutical industry, the plague of AIDS was compounded by a unique, and baffling set of problems. Nearly all of the medicines were expensive to produce and often difficult to administer. They demanded levels of income and structures of distribution that often were sorely lacking in the developing world. Yet the growing tragedy of the disease had raised a public outcry for a solution. And the pharmaceutical companies were in the center of the storm. Increasingly, activist groups were demanding that the companies respond to the AIDS epidemic with drastic measures, giving their drugs away for free or abandoning the patent rights that had long protected their intellectual property. It had become painfully obvious that the pharmaceutical firms needed to respond to their critics. The question was, how?
Introduced by Debora Spar in 1995, Managing International Trade and Investment is an elective course that prepares students to deal with the distinct set of management challenges that face cross-border businesses. Building on experience that suggests that what works in one country does not necessarily work in another, the course develops a framework for evaluating competitive advantage, political environments and legal structures, currency fluctuations and trading regimes, and cultural and business norms on a market-by-market basis. Consideration of the impact of different environments on corporate strategy begins at the firm level and progresses through the industry, state, and international levels (e.g., the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement). Specific attention is accorded cross-border trade and investment in information-based industries. The course incorporates a host of teaching cases, many developed around trade issues in emerging markets such as those of China, Indonesia, and Mexico.This is a project about foreign investment, about what happens when big multinational firms invest in small, poor, and often nasty places. Typically, most observers assume that this is a largely negative relationship: that multinationals exploit the local population, embolden brutal dictators, and destroy the natural environment. And oftentimes they do. Yet sometimes foreign investment has more beneficial effects. Sometimes it actually paves the way for progress in a developing state and advances the state of human rights. Profitable Souls attempts to distinguish between these two radically different outcomes, describing when foreign investment destroys human rights and when it can help them.The topic of human rights, of course, is both subtle and complex. It encompasses a wide range of alleged 'rights' - the right to life, the right to privacy, the right to equality - and an even wider range of controversy: when does the right to life begin? How is equality defined? What if the right to privacy entails a threat to life? Profitable Souls is not intended as a discourse on these topics. Instead, it starts with a straightforward approach to rights, one that concentrates on the basic qualities of life: if starving people gain access to food, or illiterate children find education, their human rights improve. Undeniably, this definition of rights will raise eyebrows among those who study the topic or protest on its behalf. But it is also most relevant to understanding the direct link between foreign investment and human conditions; the link between multinationals and the populations they affect.
What makes this topic particularly intriguing is the vast range of experience that it encompasses. Foreign investment, after all, takes many forms, and over time, the pendulum of public opinion has swung back and forth, with multinationals painted as either the demons of third world development or the beacons of change.
This project takes a different tack. Rather than arguing that foreign investment is either good or bad, it explores various types of investment across time and space, examining how a specific investment operates and what chain of events it unleashes. Do certain kinds of investment force the foreign firm to embrace local governments? Does the amount of imported capital matter? Or the nationality of the investor? What role is played by the media, or by activists who rail against global capitalism? Using a combination of statistical, historical, and on-site analyses, the project attempts to sort through these questions.
- Teaching
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I currently teach an Elective Course on Capitalism and the State (CATS), and serve as Course Head for a new Required Curriculum course on the Social Purpose of the Firm (SPF). Previously, I developed and taught Managing International Trade and Investment (MITI) in the Elective Curriculum, along with the first-year BGIE and Strategy courses.Keywords: Business and Government Relations
- Additional Information
- Areas of Interest
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- economic development
- government and business
- international business
- political economy
- business policy
- emerging markets
- global
- globalization
- intellectual property
- life sciences
- biotechnology
- broadcasting
- communications
- entertainment
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