Asia
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- 16 May 2018
- Research & Ideas
How Companies Managed Risk (and Even Benefitted) in World War Internment Camps
Foreign businesses located in at-war countries are often victims of expropriation. Historian Valeria Giacomin explores how German businesses in the United Kingdom and India mitigated risk and even benefitted when their employees were placed in internment camps during the World Wars. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 12 Apr 2018
- Op-Ed
Op-Ed: The Trouble with Tariffs
The world's economies are interconnected by globalization, which makes threats of tariff wars doubly dangerous, says Willy Shih. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 29 Mar 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Government Incentives and Financial Intermediaries: The Case of Chinese Sell-Side Analysts
This study is the first to examine analysts’ incentives vis-à-vis the government in a context where government has the ability and motives to influence capital market institutions. The paper highlights the role of government incentives in analysts’ behavior and output.
- 06 Feb 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Subjectivity in Tournaments: Implicit Rewards and Penalties and Subsequent Performance
Analyzing data from a Chinese manufacturing company, this study explores side effects of subjective performance evaluations in a setting where workers are rewarded based on performance rankings and subject to both rewards and penalties. Among other contributions the paper highlights factors that could impact the overall effectiveness of incentive systems.
- 24 Jan 2018
- Research & Ideas
How to Get People Addicted to a Good Habit
Reshmaan Hussam and colleagues used experimental interventions to determine if people could be persuaded to develop a healthy habit. Potentially at stake: the lives of more than a million children. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 04 Jan 2018
- Cold Call Podcast
How to Monetize Happiness
Is there a business model around happiness? Hitachi believes that a happy employee is a productive one, and is investing in "happiness sensors" to prove the connection. Ethan Bernstein explains why in this podcast. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 05 Dec 2017
- Research & Ideas
What We've Learned from 101 Entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets
Harvard Business School’s project exploring the evolution of business leadership in emerging economies has reached an important milestone. Project leaders Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna discuss what's been learned from the Creating Emerging Markets study so far. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 16 Nov 2017
- Cold Call Podcast
Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten
Japan’s largest online retailer, Rakuten, is rapidly expanding into global markets and requiring all employees, where ever they are located, to conduct business in English. Tsedal Neeley discusses the strong connection between language and globalization. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 18 Oct 2017
- Research & Ideas
How Economic Clusters Drive Globalization
Historical research by Valeria Giacomin shows that industrial clusters, often cited in explaining local economic growth, have had a much wider impact, especially in developing countries. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 09 Oct 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Habit Formation and Rational Addiction: A Field Experiment in Handwashing
This study in rural West Bengal considers the role of habituation in an essential but unpopular preventive health behavior: handwashing with soap. The study finds that frontloading both financial and social incentives facilitates habituation, and agents internalize this habitual nature. Findings help guide the design of optimal incentives to increase the adoption of positive habits.
- 09 Oct 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Marry Rich, Poor Girl: Investigating the Effects of Sex Selection on Intrahousehold Outcomes in India
This study examines the unintended consequences in India of sex selection technology on the marriage market and the bargaining power of surviving women. It finds women in regions exposed to ultrasound face poorer matches and outcomes in marriage.
- 29 Aug 2017
- Book
Using Language to Build a Global Company
In her new book The Language of Global Success, Tsedal Neeley describes Japanese tech giant Rakuten's five-year effort to adopt English as its lingua franca of business. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 18 Aug 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Emerging Markets and the Future of Business History
This paper argues that there are important commonalities about the business history of countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America despite differences between countries and within regions of each country. It is possible to discern a distinctive body of scholarship different from that on the West.
- 07 Aug 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior in Japan
By exploiting the unique features of Japan’s JPX-Nikkei 400 index, this paper examines how membership in a stock index serves as a source of prestige that can motivate managers and influence corporate governance norms. Findings are important for understanding non-pecuniary mechanisms to induce meaningful changes in corporate behavior.
- 13 Jul 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Catering Through Disclosure: Evidence from Shanghai-Hong Kong Connect
The researcher studies firms’ use of disclosure to build investor confidence when they operate in a market where the institutions that support the supply of credible information are weak.
- 20 Jun 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Conversational Peers and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment
To develop a theory of innovator capability, this study extends existing research linking personality and creativity to take into account the social nature of idea generation. Using data from an experiment embedded in a bootcamp for aspiring entrepreneurs, results show that better ideas are generated by “open” innovators exposed to extroverted peers. Extroverts provide more raw information that innovators high in openness are best able to recombine into novel ideas.
- 19 Jun 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Learning to Manage: A Field Experiment in the Indian Startup Ecosystem
This study of 100 high-growth startups in India finds that founder-executives can learn how to improve their management style from their peers at other firms. These interfirm network connections between founders may help explain why some companies are well managed and others less so. Despite the apparent value of this peer learning, founders don’t appear to naturally connect with peers who could help them improve their management style.
- 01 Jun 2017
- Cold Call Podcast
Building India’s First $100 Billion Company
Startups welcome growth but are often strangled by it. In this podcast, Sunil Gupta discusses how entrepreneur Vijay Shekhar Sharma is meeting this challenge with his mobile payments company Paytm. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 04 May 2017
- Cold Call Podcast
Leading a Team to the Top of Mount Everest
In a podcast, Amy Edmondson describes how students learn about team communication and decision making by making a simulated climb up Mount Everest. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
Business, Governments, and Political Risk in South Asia and Latin America Since 1970
This study shows how perceptions of political risk by business leaders in emerging markets have differed between regions. For Latin Americans, macroeconomic and policy turbulence were the biggest sources of risk. For South Asians, excessive bureaucracy was the biggest source of risk. The study is based on a unique Harvard Business School oral history database.