Accounting & Management

Accounting & Management

Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students
    • 2022
    • Working Paper

    Passing the Mic: Career and Firm Outcomes of Executive Interactions

    By: Wei Cai, Ethan Rouen and Yuan Zou

    We exploit a unique feature of conference calls to study one type of interaction among executives—directly inviting colleagues to respond to analysts’ questions. We find that the frequency of initiating interaction is positively associated with an executive’s ability, but not associated with firm performance. When new CEOs initiate more interactions than their predecessors, interaction among the rest of the executive team also increases, suggesting a learning effect. Turning to the outcomes of this practice, we find that executives who initiate more interactions than their peers are twice as likely as the average executive to be promoted to CEO. What is more, appointing CEOs who initiate more interactions than their predecessors results in an average three-day abnormal return of 0.9% around the announcement of the appointment. Teams composed of executives who interact with each other more frequently also have greater retention. Lastly, firms in which new CEOs initiate more interactions than their predecessors experience higher growth in Tobin’s Q, a result that is concentrated among growth and R&D-intensive firms.

    • 2022
    • Working Paper

    Passing the Mic: Career and Firm Outcomes of Executive Interactions

    By: Wei Cai, Ethan Rouen and Yuan Zou

    We exploit a unique feature of conference calls to study one type of interaction among executives—directly inviting colleagues to respond to analysts’ questions. We find that the frequency of initiating interaction is positively associated with an executive’s ability, but not associated with firm performance. When new CEOs initiate more...

    • Article

    How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?

    By: Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker and Charles C.Y. Wang

    Difference-in-differences analysis with staggered treatment timing is frequently used to assess the impact of policy changes on corporate outcomes in academic research. However, recent advances in econometric theory show that such designs are likely to be biased in the presence of treatment effect heterogeneity. Given the pronounced use of staggered treatment designs in applied corporate finance and accounting research, this finding potentially impacts a large swath of prior findings in these fields. We survey the nascent literature and document how and when such bias arises from treatment effect heterogeneity. We apply recently proposed methods to a set of prior published results, and find that correcting for the bias induced by the staggered nature of policy adoption frequently impacts the estimated effect from standard difference-in-difference studies. In many cases, the reported effects in prior research become indistinguishable from zero.

    • Article

    How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?

    By: Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker and Charles C.Y. Wang

    Difference-in-differences analysis with staggered treatment timing is frequently used to assess the impact of policy changes on corporate outcomes in academic research. However, recent advances in econometric theory show that such designs are likely to be biased in the presence of treatment effect heterogeneity. Given the pronounced use of...

    • April 2022
    • Case

    Antler

    By: Dennis Campbell and Iuliana Mogosanu

    The case describes the founding, development, and scaling of Antler, an early-stage investment platform that invests in entrepreneurs pre-team and, in many cases, even pre-idea. The case explores the economics of venture capital investing at such an early stage and the various challenges and opportunities to build a platform that not only systematically selects the right founders, but also allows them to build teams and access resources needed to succeed. The case allows for a detailed look at these issues through the lens of two founding teams that were selected for Antler's early-stage investment programs but have very different assessed quantitative and qualitative factors that may impact their future success. Through analyzing these two opportunities for Antler, important issues are surfaced in how to combine analytics with human judgment as Antler's senior leadership looks to scale their investment platform both in terms of number of founding teams and across multiple countries.

    • April 2022
    • Case

    Antler

    By: Dennis Campbell and Iuliana Mogosanu

    The case describes the founding, development, and scaling of Antler, an early-stage investment platform that invests in entrepreneurs pre-team and, in many cases, even pre-idea. The case explores the economics of venture capital investing at such an early stage and the various challenges and opportunities to build a platform that not only...

About the Unit

The Accounting & Management unit at Harvard Business School strives to be the worldwide leader in research, course development, and teaching on top managements' use of performance measurement systems to:

  • Communicate with external investors to ensure that their firms' securities are fairly priced and that they are able to access capital,
  • Measure and evaluate their firms' economic performance,
  • Improve resource allocation and strategy implementation within their firms, and
  • Build accountability for performance through effective external and internal governance.

Unit research, course development, and teaching fall into two broad areas: Financial Reporting and Analysis and Management Accounting. Our research helps scholars and educators understand current best practices for the design and use of performance measurement systems that help managers to build more effective, value-creating organizations. Our teaching materials enable us to bring the results of this research into the classroom, and to practice.

Recent Publications

Passing the Mic: Career and Firm Outcomes of Executive Interactions

By: Wei Cai, Ethan Rouen and Yuan Zou
  • 2022 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
We exploit a unique feature of conference calls to study one type of interaction among executives—directly inviting colleagues to respond to analysts’ questions. We find that the frequency of initiating interaction is positively associated with an executive’s ability, but not associated with firm performance. When new CEOs initiate more interactions than their predecessors, interaction among the rest of the executive team also increases, suggesting a learning effect. Turning to the outcomes of this practice, we find that executives who initiate more interactions than their peers are twice as likely as the average executive to be promoted to CEO. What is more, appointing CEOs who initiate more interactions than their predecessors results in an average three-day abnormal return of 0.9% around the announcement of the appointment. Teams composed of executives who interact with each other more frequently also have greater retention. Lastly, firms in which new CEOs initiate more interactions than their predecessors experience higher growth in Tobin’s Q, a result that is concentrated among growth and R&D-intensive firms.
Keywords: Conference Calls; CEO Succession; Executive Interactions; Promotion; Interpersonal Communication; Personal Development and Career; Retention
Related

How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-In-Differences Estimates?

By: Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker and Charles C.Y. Wang
  • Article |
  • Journal of Financial Economics
Difference-in-differences analysis with staggered treatment timing is frequently used to assess the impact of policy changes on corporate outcomes in academic research. However, recent advances in econometric theory show that such designs are likely to be biased in the presence of treatment effect heterogeneity. Given the pronounced use of staggered treatment designs in applied corporate finance and accounting research, this finding potentially impacts a large swath of prior findings in these fields. We survey the nascent literature and document how and when such bias arises from treatment effect heterogeneity. We apply recently proposed methods to a set of prior published results, and find that correcting for the bias induced by the staggered nature of policy adoption frequently impacts the estimated effect from standard difference-in-difference studies. In many cases, the reported effects in prior research become indistinguishable from zero.
Keywords: Difference In Differences; Staggered Difference-in-differences Designs; Generalized Difference-in-differences; Dynamic Treatment Effects; Mathematical Methods
Related

Antler

By: Dennis Campbell and Iuliana Mogosanu
  • April 2022 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
The case describes the founding, development, and scaling of Antler, an early-stage investment platform that invests in entrepreneurs pre-team and, in many cases, even pre-idea. The case explores the economics of venture capital investing at such an early stage and the various challenges and opportunities to build a platform that not only systematically selects the right founders, but also allows them to build teams and access resources needed to succeed. The case allows for a detailed look at these issues through the lens of two founding teams that were selected for Antler's early-stage investment programs but have very different assessed quantitative and qualitative factors that may impact their future success. Through analyzing these two opportunities for Antler, important issues are surfaced in how to combine analytics with human judgment as Antler's senior leadership looks to scale their investment platform both in terms of number of founding teams and across multiple countries.
Keywords: Platform; Technology; Analytics; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Expansion; Financial Services Industry
Related

Conflicts of Interest at Bell Bank

By: Jonas Heese
  • April 2022 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
In 2013, two employees debated whether to blow the whistle on their employer, Bell Bank, after completing an internal review that revealed undisclosed conflicts of interest. Bell Bank’s Asset Management business disproportionately invested clients’ money in Bell Bank’s mutual funds over funds managed by other banks, letting Bell Bank collect additional fees—and the bank had not disclosed this conflict of interest to clients. Both employees agreed that failing to disclose the conflict was a problem, but beyond that, they saw the situation very differently. One employee, Neel, perceived the internal review as a good-faith effort by Bell Bank’s senior management to identify and address the problem. The other, Akash, thought that the entire business model was problematic, even with a disclosure, and believed that Bell Bank may have even broken the law. They considered their options: Should they escalate the issue internally or report it to Bell Bank’s board of directors? Should they go even further and report their findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission? What would the potential risks and rewards of speaking out be?
Keywords: Whistleblower; Whistleblowing; Mutual Funds; Conflicts Of Interest; Decision Making; Decisions; Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Financial Institutions; Banks and Banking; Financial Management; Investment; Investment Funds; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Policy; Law; Legal Liability; Social Psychology; Motivation and Incentives; Perception; Perspective; Trust; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States
Related

MicroStrategy: Accounting for Cryptocurrency (B)

By: Jonas Heese and Annelena Lobb
  • April 2022 |
  • Supplement |
  • Faculty Research
In early 2022, the technology firm MicroStrategy unveiled a series of letters with the SEC that questioned its accounting practices around its holdings of Bitcoin. Since 2020, the firm had shifted its strategy to include not just selling software but buying and holding large quantities of Bitcoin. But accounting standards for cryptocurrency remained unclear, which could lead to conflicts such as this one with the SEC.
Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Bitcoin; Accounting; Finance; Technology Industry
Related

We Need Better Carbon Accounting. Here's How to Get There.

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
  • Article |
  • Harvard Business Review Digital Articles
Any effective system of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting needs to measure each company’s supply-chain carbon impacts accurately. Such information would provide visibility and incentives for the company to make more climate-friendly product-specification and purchasing decisions. The current dominant system for carbon accounting, the GHG Protocol, misses this critical point by allowing companies to guestimate upstream and downstream emissions. To address this shortcoming, we "introduced" an E-liability accounting system, based on well-established practices from inventory and cost accounting, for accurately measuring GHG emissions across corporate supply chains. In this follow-up piece, we describe the basic flaw inherent in the GHG Protocol, explain why it has persisted, and offer a way forward for robust carbon accounting that does not involve rescinding the Protocol, which is already widely used in many global climate agreements. We conclude by identifying which companies stand to gain most from accurate GHG accounting and could be early adopters of the E-liability system.
Keywords: Accounting; Greenhouse Gas Emissions; GHG; Carbon Accounting; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Management; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Supply Chain
Related

A Career Life-Cycle Perspective on Women's Health and Safety

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Chizoba L. Chukwura, Gregory H. Gorman, Vivian S. Lee, Chester B. Good, Kathleen L. Martin, Gregory A. Ator and Michael D. Parkinson
  • Article |
  • Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Women's health has demanded more attention from employers as women integrated into the workforce. Traditionally male-dominant fields and occupations require special attention to workplace design, physical standards for entry, employment practices, equipment, and health monitoring. This editorial summarizes the Defense Health Board's (DHB) review of Active Duty Women's Health and its recommendations grounded in a woman's career life-cycle. The DHB reviewed the Department of Defense and foreign militaries’ current women's health services, relevant policies and practices, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and subject matter expert interviews. The DHB's recommendations centered on a comprehensive approach to education, health care access and treatment, professional workforce development, workplace standards and equipment, and accountable outcomes metrics to guide improvement. Conclusion: Employers can learn how to reduce morbidity, leading to a healthier and more productive female workforce.
Keywords: Women's Health; Healthcare Access; Workplace Design; Military Health System; Occupational Health; Medical Equipment ＆ Devices; Employees; Gender; Personal Development and Career
Related

Sustainable Strategies and Net-Zero Goals

By: Mark L. Frigo, Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
  • Other Article |
  • Strategic Finance
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Kaplan and Ramanna describe a rigorous approach, the E-liability method, for companies’ ESG reporting, especially as it pertains to GHG emissions measurements. They argue that the current standards for measuring emissions from its upstream (supply chain) and downstream operations (customers and end-use consumers) have fatal flaws that introduce high-measurement errors and opportunities for bias and manipulation. A new accounting system solves these problems using two basic steps: (1) Calculate the net E-liabilities the company creates and eliminates each period plus those it acquires from suppliers; and (2) allocate the net E-liabilities, produced and acquired, to the units of output it produced during the reporting period. This process captures all the upstream and scope 1 emissions of a company, assigns them to the company’s outputs, and transfers the acquired and produced E-liabilities to its immediate customers that purchase the company’s products and services. The interview covers key elements of this approach: its benefits, the pathway forward to implementation, and the role of CFOs and management accountants in the process.
Keywords: Measurement; Sustainability; Net-zero Emissions; Environmental Sustainability; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Measurement and Metrics; Strategy
Related
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Accounting & Management Unit
Harvard Business School
Morgan Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
A&M@hbs.edu