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- 29 Mar 2022
- Book
5 Qualities That Help Companies Thrive for Decades—Even Centuries
What makes a business resilient, agile, and enduring? Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna analyze some of India's most successful companies and offer lessons for leaders everywhere in their book Leadership to Last. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Mar 2021
- Cold Call Podcast
A Family Business at a Crossroads: Scaling and Succession
In 2000, Rohit Gera turned his family’s boutique real estate development firm in Pune, India, into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for urban Indian families. Today Gera Developments stands at a crossroads, with Gera planning the end of his managerial career. How should the family think about scaling the business? And, should the company seek a successor to lead those efforts from inside or outside the family? Senior Lecturer Christina Wing and case protagonist Rohit Gera discuss the family business and the crucial decisions it faces in the case, “Gera Developments: Leadership at a Crossroads.” Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Jan 2021
- Working Paper Summaries
India’s Food Supply Chain During the Pandemic
Policy makers in the developing world face important tradeoffs in reacting to a pandemic. The quick and complete recovery of India’s food supply chain suggests that strict lockdown measures at the onset of pandemics need not cause long-term economic damage.
- 14 Jul 2020
- Research & Ideas
Restarting Under Uncertainty: Managerial Experiences from Around the World
A survey of 50 companies across countries and industries reveals business leaders are hard at work adapting to the COVID threat. Research by Raffaella Sadun and colleagues. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 18 May 2020
- Working Paper Summaries
No Line Left Behind: Assortative Matching Inside the Firm
This paper studies how buyer relationships influence suppliers' internal organization of labor. The results emphasize that suppliers to the global market, when they are beholden to a small set of powerful buyers, may be driven to allocate managerial skill to service these relationships, even at the expense of productivity.
- 16 Dec 2019
- Research & Ideas
Taking on the Taboos That Keep Women Out of India's Workforce
Giving women in rural India more control over household finances reduces the social stigma of working, says research by Natalia Rigol. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 29 Oct 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
Crowdsourcing Memories: Mixed Methods Research by Cultural Insiders-Epistemological Outsiders
Research on the traumatic 1947 partition of British India has most often been carried out by scholars in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. This article presents mixed methods research and analysis to explore tensions within current scholarship and to inspire new understandings of the Partition, and more generally, mass migrations and displacement.
- 07 Aug 2019
- Research & Ideas
Big Infrastructure May Not Always Produce Big Benefits
Government spending on bridges, roads, and other infrastructure pieces does not always ignite economic good times, say William Kerr and Ramana Nanda. The key question: Are financiers nearby? Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 27 Jun 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
The Effect of Payment Choices on Online Retail: Evidence from the 2016 Indian Demonetization
Online sellers in many emerging markets are in the early stages of a shift from cash-based payments to digital payments. Findings from this study of a leading Indian online retailer show that firms may enjoy gains from consumer demand on top of operational gains resulting from payment digitization.
- 16 Apr 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
Can Biometric Tracking Improve Healthcare Provision and Data Quality? Experimental Evidence from Tuberculosis Control in India
This paper shows the benefits of biometric technology for strengthening service delivery and improving reliability of government data. The technology improved productivity of health workers operating tuberculosis treatment centers and decreased misreporting.
- 02 Apr 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
Managerial Quality and Productivity Dynamics
Which managerial skills, traits, and practices matter most for productivity? This study of a large garment firm in India analyzes the integration of features of managerial quality into a production process characterized by learning by doing.
- 28 Aug 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Homesick or Home Run? Distance from Hometown and Employee Performance: A Natural Experiment from India
In the short and long term, distance from one’s hometown has a different effect on individual work performance. First-year performance ratings tend to be high the farther employees work from their hometown. Three years later, however, longer travel times are associated with lower ratings, with implications for managers.
- 18 Jul 2018
- Research & Ideas
No More General Tso's? A Threat to 'Knowledge Recombination'
Immigrants bring with them innovations from their homelands, knowledge that local inventors often build upon, says Prithwiraj Choudhury. Examples: turmeric medicine, double-entry bookkeeping, and American Chinese food. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 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; 0 Comments.
- 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; 0 Comments.
- 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.
- 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.
What Would It Take to Unlock Microfinance's Full Potential?
Microfinance has been seen as a vehicle for economic mobility in developing countries, but the results have been mixed. Research by Natalia Rigol and Ben Roth probes how different lending approaches might serve entrepreneurs better.