Faculty & Research

Facilitating faculty research and case development on an international scale

Our unprecedented network of research centers and regional offices in key areas of the world enable faculty to work with leaders, industry, government, and academia worldwide, and to learn from business challenges and innovations wherever they occur. Through sustained work in the field, faculty are provided the opportunity to immerse themselves in the culture and values – as well as intricacies and nuances – that lead to truly meaningful and insightful global research.

Research Centers & Offices

More than half the faculty are actively involved in international research, developing high-impact cases and course materials on relevant global issues and innovations.

New Research

2021
Working Paper

The Business of K-12 Education in China

By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu

This working paper examines the evolution of K-12 education in China, especially between 1985 and the present day, drawing extensive interviews with participants in the educational sector. China has been hugely successful in reaching almost 100 percent literacy, overcoming gender inequality in educational provision, and performing well in harmonized test scores. However, the model is not readily transferable to other emerging markets as it rested on a complex intermeshing of public and private interests seen in the “walking on two legs strategy.” This sanctioned the provision of K-12 education both by the Central Government and by “social forces,” including local governments, state-owned enterprises and the private sector. The paper describes how three different types of capital – political, financial and educational – became involved in the industry with their relative importance fluctuating over time. The resulting marketization of educational provision after 1985 led to excessive profit-driven strategies symbolized by heavy investments by the real estate sector in K-12 education. There were major quality issues, including in the vast private supplemental tutoring industry. The level of dysfunctionality was exacerbated by a rigid examination system in China that determined future life opportunities. The score in the gaokao examination determined which college a student could attend, which in turn fundamentally shaped their future careers. This encouraged parents to spend heavily on children’s education, which became a form of conspicuous consumption, often undertaken at the cost of the happiness of the children themselves. Since 2016, the Central Government has sought to address some of the major challenges through radical policy shifts. In 2021, it was ruled that core parts of tutoring company business had to be conducted on a non-profit basis. This caused stunning losses in value of leading Chinese private tutoring and edtech companies, who were listed in the United States. However in the absence of a modification of the gaokao system, it is unlikely that parental demand for educational services will decline, suggesting that new forms of excessive profit-making and dysfunctionality may arise going forward, despite the radical shifts in public policy.

October 2021
Case

CrisisReady: Private Data for Public Good

By: Tarun Khanna and James Barnett

In October 2021, CRISISREADY.io considers how and if it should scale operations.

October 2021
Case

Diversifying P&G’s Supplier Base (A)

By: Kris Ferreira, Kym Lew Nelson, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Sarah Mehta

In February 2003, P&G hosted two meetings—one with its largest woman- and minority-owned suppliers and one with its largest non-minority-owned suppliers. Attendees in each meeting heard the same message: P&G was keen to grow its commitment to inclusive supply chains, but felt hamstrung by the limited scale and scope of its existing woman- and minority-owned suppliers. It was up to the attendees to determine how to work together to meet P&G’s needs. Otherwise, the consumer packaged goods giant would be forced to look outside its home city of Cincinnati, Ohio, for diverse suppliers at scale. This case tells the story of how Carl Satterwhite, president and co-owner of Infinity Services, a minority-owned furniture installation business, and J. Scott Robertson, president and owner of Globe Business Interiors (GBI), a non-minority-owned office furniture company, responded to P&G’s call.

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Global Colloquium for participant-centered learning

For senior faculty at top business schools in emerging economies who want to be trained in interactive methods of teaching and learning. GloColl comprises a seven-day session held on the HBS campus, followed by a three-day session held in two cities in Asia, Europe, or Latin America each year.

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