Strategy
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Leadership and the Value of Persistence
By: James J. Anton, Alan Jaske and Dennis YaoConsider a leader’s decision whether to persist with an unsuccessful R&D project or to terminate the project in favor of a new project with an uncertain value. How does that decision affect the effort exerted by the manager assigned to the project? To study this question we build and analyze an equilibrium, infinite-horizon model which embeds a search problem with an agency problem. We assess the policy value of a leader’s persistence instrument under conditions of complete and incomplete information. Among other things, we find that persistence takes advantage of a manager’s incentive to gain access to future, potentially higher-payoff projects to induce effort on the current project. Furthermore, when the leader has superior information about the value of the current project, the manager may choose to delay effort to better take advantage of the information signal provided by the leader’s persistence choice.
- 2023
- Working Paper
Leadership and the Value of Persistence
By: James J. Anton, Alan Jaske and Dennis YaoConsider a leader’s decision whether to persist with an unsuccessful R&D project or to terminate the project in favor of a new project with an uncertain value. How does that decision affect the effort exerted by the manager assigned to the project? To study this question we build and analyze an equilibrium, infinite-horizon model which embeds a...
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- January 2023
- Case
Zaoui & Co. (A): Consigliere for High Stakes M&A Transactions
By: Ashish Nanda, Alex Kitsberg and Zack KurtovichIn September 2019, Zaoui & Co.’s close-knit team of professionals convened for their annual off-site. In its nine years of operation, the boutique investment bank founded by the brothers Michael (HBS ’83) and Yoel Zaoui (Stanford GSB ’88), had garnered a track record for advising on several significant transactions across Europe. At the retreat, the firm’s leaders were debating whether to (a) continue as a small boutique focused on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory services, (b) grow aggressively in M&A advisory, or (c) diversify into principal investing. Each alternative presented strategic and organizational challenges and opportunities. Whichever path they elected to pursue would significantly influence what kind of firm Zaoui & Co. would become.
- January 2023
- Case
Zaoui & Co. (A): Consigliere for High Stakes M&A Transactions
By: Ashish Nanda, Alex Kitsberg and Zack KurtovichIn September 2019, Zaoui & Co.’s close-knit team of professionals convened for their annual off-site. In its nine years of operation, the boutique investment bank founded by the brothers Michael (HBS ’83) and Yoel Zaoui (Stanford GSB ’88), had garnered a track record for advising on several significant transactions across Europe. At the retreat,...
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- January 2023
- Article
Firm-Induced Migration Paths and Strategic Human-Capital Outcomes
By: Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Victoria SevcenkoFirm-induced migration typically entails firms relocating workers to fill value-creating positions at destination locations. But such relocated workers are often exposed to external employment opportunities at their destinations, possibly triggering turnover. We conceptualize the firm-induced migration path, consisting of the relocated workers’ place of origin and destination, as relevant in determining worker performance and post-relocation turnover. Using a unique dataset from a large Indian technology firm that hires talent from both large cities and smaller towns, we document robust econometric patterns by exploiting the firm’s randomized assignment of workers to production centers across the country. These production centers are located in the largest technology cluster in India (Bangalore), smaller technology clusters, and non-cluster locations. We find that the firm-induced migration path shapes both worker performance and turnover. Compared to workers from large cities, workers from smaller towns achieve higher performance when relocated to Bangalore than to other production centers, but are also more likely to join competing firms. Fine-grained data on employment and human-capital-augmentation opportunities at workers’ destination locations, and on socioeconomic conditions in workers’ places of origin, help us rule in an abductive explanation: across firm-induced migration paths, differences in external labor-market opportunities between workers’ places of origin and their destinations, as well as intrafirm skill-development opportunities at the destination, are related to heterogeneous human-capital outcomes.
- January 2023
- Article
Firm-Induced Migration Paths and Strategic Human-Capital Outcomes
By: Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Victoria SevcenkoFirm-induced migration typically entails firms relocating workers to fill value-creating positions at destination locations. But such relocated workers are often exposed to external employment opportunities at their destinations, possibly triggering turnover. We conceptualize the firm-induced migration path, consisting of the relocated workers’...
About the Unit
The Strategy unit studies firms as competitors in an economic landscape. Key issues include: the development and effectiveness of firm strategy at both a business and corporate level; the analysis of the competitive environment; and the sustainability of strategy over time.
Our research, course development, and teaching draws on multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, and political science, and focuses on both domestic and global competition. The objective of the work is to generate findings and develop concepts that will help managers improve their strategic decisions while advancing the state of knowledge in the academic study of strategy and related disciplines.
Recent Publications
Leadership and the Value of Persistence
- 2023 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
Zaoui & Co. (B): Executing the Odyssey SPAC Transaction
- January 2023 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
Zaoui & Co. (A): Consigliere for High Stakes M&A Transactions
- January 2023 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
What Do You Bring to the Game? Understanding Competitive Advantage
- January 2023 (Revised January 2023) |
- Module Note |
- Faculty Research
India’s Quest for Sustainable Growth in a New Global Reality:: The Need for a Region- and Sector-Driven Approach
- 13 Jan 2023 - 14 Jan 2023 |
- Conference Presentation |
- Faculty Research
Network Effects in Technology
- January 2023 |
- Module Note |
- Faculty Research
Firm-Induced Migration Paths and Strategic Human-Capital Outcomes
- January 2023 |
- Article |
- Management Science
How Do You Keep Winning? Strategy Across Technological and Industry Lifecycles
- December 2022 |
- Module Note |
- Faculty Research
Harvard Business Publishing
Seminars & Conferences
- 14 Feb 2023