Research - Global - Harvard Business School

2023
Book

Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership

Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should...

2023
Working Paper

Rule by Market: The Chinese State in Factor Markets

By: Meg Rithmire

Political economy on China and beyond generally has been premised on a trade-off between state and market power. In the context of China’s reforms, markets and market mechanisms were hypothesized to replace state power in allocating important economic resources. Yet,...

February 2023
Case

Doing Business in Bangkok, Thailand

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Billy Chan

Known as the “land of smiles” and the “Detroit of the East,” Thailand, with its geographical location at the heart of Asia, has attracted visitors and businesses from all over the world. This case serves as a guide that provides an overview of the history, political...

February 2023
Case

Doing Business in Seoul, South Korea

By: Sara Fleiss, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Bonnie Yining Cao and Dawn H. Lau

This case examines the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Seoul, South Korea. It highlights South Korea's economic development in the decades leading up to 2023 in the context of its history, culture, and politics.

February 2023
Case

Accelerating the Accelerator: Raja Al Mazrouei at DIFC Fintech Hive

By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Lydia Begag

In January 2023, Raja Al Mazrouei became the Managing Director and Acting CEO of Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) in Dubai, UAE. In her previous role as the Executive Vice President of the DIFC Fintech Hive, she successfully built and led an accelerator program for...

February 2023
Teaching Material

Astyanax Kanakakis at norbloc: A Founder's Experience with the DIFC Fintech Hive

By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC...

February 2023
Teaching Material

China's Management of COVID-19: People’s War or Chernobyl Moment? (A)

By: Meg Rithmire

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 720-035.

February 17, 2023
Article
Jurist

Why Ideology Still Matters in Chinese Foreign Policy: China's Quest to Create an Alternative Global Political Ecosystem

By: Jeremy Friedman

January 2023
Case

Junson Capital (B): Digital Transparency In the Family Office

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Trang Duong, Grace Headinger and Keven Wang

January 2023
Case

Baofeng's Philanthropic Efforts in China

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Bo Li and Zhaoheng Gong

Yanbao Dang, President of Baofeng Group and founder of the Yanbao Foundation, Baofeng Group’s philanthropic arm, weighed how the family nonprofit could maximize its impact. On a mission to eliminating poverty through broadening access to educational opportunities in...

January 2023
Case

Inclusion and Diversity at Mars Petcare

By: Katherine Coffman and Tom Quinn

In 2020, the Mars Petcare Leadership Team found themselves dealing with critically important inclusion and diversity issues. Social unrest, including unprecedented protests for racial justice in the U.S. and across the globe, generated an urgency for substantive...

2023
Working Paper

Is Pay Transparency Good?

By: Zoë Cullen

Countries around the world are enacting pay transparency policies to combat pay discrimination. 71% of OECD countries have done so since 2000. Most are enacting transparency horizontally, revealing pay between co-workers of similar seniority within a firm. While these...

January 2023
Case

Velong: Rethinking 'Made in China'

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Nancy Hua Dai and Billy Chan

Velong is a supplier of kitchen equipment and backyard grills for major global brands and store brands of large western retailers. In light of the COVID-related disruptions to the global supply chains, and the evolving trade tensions between China and the Western...

January 2023
Teaching Material

Perfect Diary (完美日记)

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Sunil Gupta

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-030.

December 2022 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Marfrig's Quest for Sustainable Beef

By: Jose B. Alvarez, Pedro Levindo and Ruth Costas

Marfrig, one of the world’s leading meatpackers, strived to comply with its commitment to have a deforestation-free value chain in Brazil by 2030. The company also pledged to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases in accordance with the guidelines set by the...

December 8, 2022
Article
ForeignAffairs.com

The New China Shock: How Beijing’s Party-State Capitalism Is Changing the Global Economy

By: Margaret M. Pearson, Meg Rithmire and Kellee S. Tsai

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, China began to move away from the market-based approach that had shaped its economic policies for three decades, and toward something that might be termed “party-state capitalism,” which involves a high degree of...

December 2022
Teaching Material

Freelancer, Ltd. Case Supplement

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500 companies,...

December 2022
Teaching Material

Driving Decarbonization at BMW - Video Supplement

By: Shirley Lu, George Serafeim and Michael W. Toffel

Videos of Thomas Becker, Vice President of Sustainability and Mobility at BMW Group, in support of the case "Driving Decarbonization at BMW" (HBS No. 123-008)

November 2022 (Revised March 2023)
Case

OneSmart

By: Nien-he Hsieh, Meg Rithmire and Shu Lin

At the end of 2021, Xi “Steve” Zhang was facing an existential crisis for himself and his business. OneSmart was a premium educational company founded in 2008 offering K-12 afterschool tutoring for students nationwide under a number of brands. The company was founded...

November 2022
Case

HTC and Virtual Reality (B)

By: Andy Wu and Matt Higgins

In 2022, Cher Wang, CEO and Chairwoman of HTC, was focused on the company's pivot to virtual reality and the metaverse. Growing competition in consumer virtual reality from Meta, Sony, and Chinese headset manufacturers had altered the competitive landscape since 2017....