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- December 2022
- Article
When and How Should Firms Differentiate? Quality and Advertising Decisions in a Duopoly
By: Dominique Olié Lauga, Elie Ofek and Zsolt Katona
A prominent hallmark of competitive interaction is the desire to differentiate from rivals. In this article, the authors examine under what conditions firms will differentiate through product quality versus advertising intensity. Firms select quality in a first stage,...
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- November 2022
- Case
Hiring with the Community in Saint Paul
By: Mitchell B. Weiss and Sarah Mehta
This case reviews Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s decision to involve the community in the process of hiring his cabinet members. Rather than relying on an executive recruiting firm or choosing cabinet heads from his own network, Carter recruited 100 community members...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Are Transformational Ideas Harder to Fund? Resource Allocation to R&D Projects at a Global Pharmaceutical Firm
By: Joshua Krieger and Ramana Nanda
We study resource allocation to early-stage ideas at an internal startup program of one the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world. Our research design enables us to elicit every evaluator's scores across five different attributes, before seeing how would allocate...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Hidden Alpha
By: Lauren Cohen, Manuel Amman, Alexander Cochardt and Stephan Heller
Using the setting of financial agents, we explore the importance of hidden connections relative
to all other network connections. We find that hidden connections are those associated with
the largest and most significant abnormal returns accruing to fund managers—on...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
ESG Performance and Voluntary ESG Disclosure: Mind the (Gender Pay) Gap
By: June Huang and Shirley Lu
We study if firms with better ESG performance are more likely to provide voluntary ESG disclosure, an assumption embedded in many ESG ratings. We focus on gender diversity and proxy for performance using a firm's gender pay gap ("GPG") disclosed under a UK disclosure...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Distributional Consequences of Monetary Policy Across Races: Evidence from the U.S. Credit Register
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia and Camelia Minoiu
We examine the consequences of monetary policy on racial disparities, focusing on the role of bank lending to firms through collateral and selection channels. Leveraging comprehensive loan-level data from the U.S. credit register (Y-14Q) of the Federal Reserve, we show...
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- March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Winning Business at Russell Reynolds (A)
By: Ethan Bernstein and Cara Mazzucco
In an effort to make compensation drive collaboration, Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) CEO Clarke Murphy sought to re-engineer the bonus system for his executive search consultants in 2016. As his HR analytics guru, Kelly Smith, points out, that risks upsetting–and...
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Keywords:
Compensation;
Collaboration;
Executive Search Firms;
Consulting Firms;
Compensation and Benefits;
Restructuring;
Human Resources;
Human Capital;
Management Practices and Processes;
Organizational Culture;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Social and Collaborative Networks;
Recruitment;
Selection and Staffing;
Talent and Talent Management;
Consulting Industry;
Employment Industry;
Asia;
Europe;
Latin America;
Middle East;
North and Central America;
South America;
Oceania
- March 2022
- Supplement
Winning Business at Russell Reynolds (B)
By: Ethan Bernstein and Cara Mazzucco
In an effort to make compensation drive collaboration, Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) CEO Clarke Murphy sought to re-engineer the bonus system for his executive search consultants in 2016. As his HR analytics guru, Kelly Smith, points out, that risks upsetting–and...
View Details
Keywords:
Compensation;
Collaboration;
Executive Search Firms;
Consulting Firms;
Compensation and Benefits;
Restructuring;
Human Resources;
Human Capital;
Management Practices and Processes;
Organizational Culture;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Social and Collaborative Networks;
Recruitment;
Selection and Staffing;
Talent and Talent Management;
Consulting Industry;
Employment Industry;
Asia;
Europe;
Latin America;
Middle East;
North and Central America;
South America;
Oceania
- Article
Scandal, Social Movement, and Change: Evidence from #MeToo in Hollywood
By: Hong Luo and Laurina Zhang
Social movements have the potential to effect change in firm decision-making. In this paper, we examine whether the #MeToo movement, spurred by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, led to changes in the likelihood of Hollywood producers working with female writers on new...
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- January 2022
- Article
Replicating Private Equity with Value Investing, Homemade Leverage, and Hold-to-Maturity Accounting
By: Erik Stafford
The contributions of asset selection and incremental leverage to buyout investment performance are more important than typically assumed or estimated to be. Buyout funds select small firms with distinct value characteristics. Public equities with these characteristics...
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- December 2021
- Article
The Evolutionary Nature of Breakthrough Innovation: An Empirical Investigation of Firm Search Strategies
By: Dominika Kinga Randle and Gary P. Pisano
Breakthrough innovation has been an important topic of study for generations of scholars. Previous research in this domain has focused on exploring the way breakthroughs emerge from cumulative combination and recombination of prior technologies and knowledge components...
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- September 2021
- Case
Brown Capital Management
By: Luis M. Viceira, Emily R. McComb and Sarah Mehta
Set in July 2021, this case looks at several growth strategies under consideration at Brown Capital, the second-oldest Black-owned asset management firm in the U.S. Since its 1983 founding, Baltimore-based Brown Capital has specialized in small company growth...
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Keywords:
Business Growth and Maturation;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Diversity;
Race;
Finance;
Equity;
Public Equity;
Stocks;
Financial Management;
Financial Strategy;
Investment;
Investment Portfolio;
Employee Stock Ownership Plan;
Recruitment;
Retention;
Selection and Staffing;
Employee Ownership;
Strategy;
Financial Services Industry;
United States;
Maryland;
Baltimore
- Article
What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation
By: Noubar Afeyan and Gary P. Pisano
Many people believe that the process for achieving breakthrough innovations is chaotic, random, and unmanageable. But that view is flawed, the authors argue. Breakthroughs can be systematically generated using a process modeled on the principles that drive evolution in...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Multi-location Workers in Multinational Firms? Tradeoffs in Contextual Specialization of Employees and Organizational Outcomes
We study how “contextual specialization,” the act of focusing workers’ organizational tasks within a particular locational context, and “contextual non-specialization,” the practice of diversifying workers’ organizational tasks among multiple locational contexts,...
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- 2021
- Article
Decarbonizing Everything
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, David Turkington and Hui (Stacie) Wang
We analyze how the use of different climate risk measures leads to different portfolio carbon outcomes and risk-adjusted returns. Our findings are synthesized in a rules-based investment framework, which selects a different type of climate metric across industries and...
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Keywords:
Climate Risk;
ESG;
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
ESG Disclosure;
ESG Disclosure Metrics;
ESG Ratings;
Investing;
Investing For Impact;
Investment Strategy;
Environment;
Decarbonization;
Climate Change;
Environmental Sustainability;
Environmental Management;
Environmental Accounting;
Investment;
Strategy;
Investment Portfolio;
Investment Return
- 2021
- Working Paper
Going by the Book: Valuation Ratios and Stock Returns
By: Ki-Soon Choi, Eric So and Charles C.Y. Wang
We study the use of firms’ book-to-market ratios (B/M) in value investing and its implications for comovements in firms’ stock returns and trading volumes. We show B/M has become increasingly detached from common alternative valuation ratios over time while also...
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- Article
Selling After the Crisis
Like perishable goods in grocery stores, sales models have a sell-by date. As product standards evolve and new entrants emerge, buyers have more choices and demand more in terms of quality and performance across vendors. Firms that fail to adjust to changing customer...
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- November–December 2020
- Article
Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey and Nithya Vaduganathan
As companies struggle with chronic skills shortages and changing labor demographics, a new generation of talent platforms, offering on-demand access to highly trained workers, has begun to help. These platforms include marketplaces for premium expertise (such as Toptal...
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- October 2020
- Article
Peer Influence on Trade Credit
By: Daniel Gyimah, Michael Machokoto and Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi
We examine the influence of peer firms on trade credit policies of listed firms in the United States. We posit and find evidence that firms mimic their peers in formulating trade credit policies. The findings are more pronounced for firms in highly competitive product...
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Keywords:
Trade Credit;
Peer Effects;
Product Market Competition;
Trade;
Credit;
Policy;
Competition
- 2021
- Working Paper
Does Who Helps You Impact Your Behavior? Examining the Effects of Social Interactions on Knowledge Sharing in Online Communities
By: Eunkwang Seo, Frank Nagle and Sonali K. Shah
Online communities provide vibrant forums for knowledge sharing and are increasingly being used by individual users and firms to source knowledge and create and capture value. Yet, there is much to learn about how the actions of community members affect other members,...
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