First Look

Abstract—The United States has long epitomized capitalism. From its enterprising shopkeepers, wildcat banks, violent slave plantations, huge industrial working class, and raucous commodities trade to its world-spanning multinationals, its massive factories, and the centripetal power of New York in the world of finance, America has come to symbolize capitalism for over two centuries. But an understanding of the history of American capitalism is as elusive as it is urgent. What does it mean to make capitalism a subject of historical inquiry? What is its potential across multiple disciplines, alongside different methodologies, and in a range of geographic and chronological settings? And how does a focus on capitalism change our understanding of American history? American Capitalism presents a sampling of cutting-edge research from prominent scholars. These broad-minded and rigorous essays venture new angles on finance, debt, and credit; women’s rights; slavery and political economy; the racialization of capitalism; labor beyond industrial wage workers; and the production of knowledge, including the idea of the economy, among other topics. Together, the essays suggest emerging themes in the field: a fascination with capitalism as it is made by political authority, how it is claimed and contested by participants, how it spreads across the globe, and how it can be reconceptualized without being universalized. A major statement for a wide-open field, this book demonstrates the breadth and scope of the work that the history of capitalism can provoke.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53889

Abstract—Study objective—We define a minimally important difference for the Likert-type scores frequently used in scientific peer review (similar to existing minimally important differences for scores in clinical medicine). To our knowledge, the magnitude of score change required to change editorial decisions has not been studied.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53786

Abstract—How does the organization of patenting activity affect a firm’s patenting outcomes? We investigate how the composition of patenting teams relates to both the scope of their patent applications and the speed of their patent approvals by examining the main effects of team members’ intra-organizational diversity (based on affiliations with formal organizational units and informal organizational communities) and the moderating effects of team leader experience. We test our moderated mediation model in a sample of 121 teams that filed patents in a Fortune 50 company’s India R&D center between 2005 and 2015 using proprietary employee data combined with newly released micro-data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Our findings illuminate the micro-foundations of innovation in firms by highlighting a trade-off between organizing patenting activity to maximize scope versus speed.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53854

Abstract—Cross-boundary teaming, within and across organizations, is an increasingly popular strategy for innovation. Knowledge diversity is seen to expand the range of views and ideas that teams can draw upon to innovate. Yet, case studies reveal that teaming across knowledge boundaries can be difficult in practice, and innovation is not always realized. Two streams of research are particularly relevant for understanding the challenges inherent in cross-boundary teaming: research on team effectiveness and research on knowledge in organizations. They offer complementary insights: the former stream focuses on group dynamics and measures team inputs, processes, emergent states, and outcomes, while the latter closely investigates dialog and objects in recurrent social practices. Drawing from both streams, this paper seeks to shed light on the complexity of cross-boundary teaming, while highlighting factors that may enhance its effectiveness. We develop an integrative model to provide greater explanatory power than previous approaches to assess cross-boundary teaming efforts and their innovation performance.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53290

Abstract—This study examines the effect of psychological contract breach on budgetary misreporting. Psychological contracts are mental models or schemas that govern how employees understand their exchange relationships with their employers. Psychological contract breach leads to feelings of violation and can occur even when employees’ economic contracts are fulfilled. We study the effects of psychological contract breach on three common types of employee participation in budgeting that differ in the degree of employees’ influence over their approved budgets. These include affirmative budgeting (full influence), consultative budgeting (moderate influence), and authoritative budgeting (low influence). When organizations communicate that employees will be involved in budgeting, employees develop psychological contracts of affirmative budgeting. If employees subsequently experience authoritative or consultative budgeting, their psychological contracts are breached. Employees who experience psychological contract breach seek redress through budgetary misreporting. Experimental results indicate that psychological contract breach partially mediates the relation between budgeting type and budgetary misreporting. Results also indicate asymmetry in the effects of psychological contract breach versus repair. Effects of breach on budgetary misreporting persist even after the breach no longer occurs.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53857

Abstract—No abstract available.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53796

Abstract—This paper investigates a manufacturer’s ability to influence compliance rates among its authorized online retailers by exploiting changes in the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy and in dealer agreements. MAP is a pricing policy widely used by manufacturers to influence prices set by their downstream partners. A MAP policy imposes a lower bound on advertised prices, subjecting violating retailers to punishments such as termination of distribution agreements. Despite this threat, violations are common. I uncover two key elements to improve compliance: customization to the online environment and credible monitoring and punishments. I analyze the pricing, enforcement, and channel management policies of a manufacturer over several years. During this period, new channel policies take effect, providing a quasi-experiment. The new policies lead to substantially fewer violations. With improved compliance, channel prices increase by 2% without loss in volume. The reduction in violations is particularly stark among authorized retailers with lower sales volume, those that previously operated unapproved websites and those that have received violation notifications for the specific product before. Moreover, low service providers improve their service. At the same time, there is an increase in opportunistic behavior among top retailers, retailers that received notifications for other products, and for less popular products via deep discounting.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53817

Abstract—Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for retailers. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a “self-matching policy,” which allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and store prices to consumers. In practice, we observe considerable heterogeneity in self-matching policies: There are retailers who offer to self-match and retailers who explicitly state that they will not match prices across channels. Using a game-theoretic model, we investigate the strategic forces behind the adoption (or non-adoption) of self-matching across a range of competitive scenarios, including a monopolist, two competing multichannel retailers, as well as a mixed duopoly. Though self-matching can negatively impact a retailer when consumers pay the lower price, we uncover two novel mechanisms that can make self-matching profitable in a duopoly setting. Specifically, self-matching can dampen competition online and enable price discrimination in-store. Its effectiveness in these respects depends on the decision-making stage of consumers and the heterogeneity of their preference for the online versus store channels. Surprisingly, self-matching strategies can also be profitable when consumers use “smart” devices to discover online prices in stores. Our findings provide insights for managers on how and when self-matching can be an effective pricing strategy.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53829

Abstract—Due to its origins in the literature on judgment and decision-making, context effects in marketing are construed exclusively in terms of how choices deviate from utility maximization principles as a function of how choices are presented (e.g., framing, sequence, composition). This limits our understanding of a range of other relevant context effects on choice. This paper broadens the scope of context effects to include social (e.g., with friends or family) and situational factors (e.g., location, such as home or store; time; weather). We define contexts as any factor that has the potential to shift the choice outcomes by altering the process by which the decision is made. We use this lens to integrate the psychology literature on habitual choice, System I and II decision-making, and a recent stream of empirical work that involves social and situational effects into the scope of context effects. We distinguish between exogenous and endogenous context effects, based on whether the decision-maker chooses the context. We then discuss issues of empirically identifying context effects when using either experimentally generated data or naturally occurring secondary data. We conclude with a discussion of trends and opportunities for new research on context effects.

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53787

Abstract—This study explores the effects of subjective adjustments of objective performance rankings in a tournament incentive contract including both rewards and penalties. While prior research focuses predominantly on ex-ante incentive effects of tournament systems, we explore the consequences of awarding rewards and penalties subjectively. We extend the literature on the tradeoffs associated with subjectivity in performance evaluations by describing the effects of implicit penalties (rewards), whereby workers ranked at the top (bottom) of objective performance rankings fail to receive the reward (penalty) due to management’s subjective performance evaluations. Using data from a field setting where incentive contracts are structured as a repeated tournament with no carryover of performance across periods, we predict and find that workers subject to implicit rewards (penalties) exhibit performance reactions that counterbalance those of workers receiving subjective penalties (rewards). While the net performance effect of subjective rewards and implicit penalties is not significantly different than zero, we find that the net performance effect of subjective penalties and implicit rewards is significantly positive. Our study documents effects of subjective evaluations that might alter the effectiveness of tournament incentive systems and are relevant for the practice of management accounting.

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Abstract—Using a large administrative panel of Swedish households, we document the fast and broad adoption of retail structured products, an innovative class of contracts offering non-linear exposures to equity markets. Households investing in structured products differ from traditional stock market participants on key characteristics and significantly increase their equity exposures over the sample period. The introduction of retail structured products thereby raises both the likelihood and the extent of stock market participation, especially for households with lower wealth and IQ and of older age. The design of purchased products varies strongly with household characteristics, suggesting the importance of heterogeneity in preferences and financial circumstances. A simple portfolio choice model shows that household loss aversion best explains the demand for structured products and the empirical facts we observe. Our results illustrate how financial innovation can mitigate investor behavioral biases.

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Abstract—Ethnic migrant inventors might differ from locals in terms of knowledge they bring to host firms. We study the role of first-generation ethnic migrant inventors in cross-border transfer of knowledge previously locked within the cultural context of their home regions. Using a unique dataset of Chinese and Indian herbal patents filed in the United States, we find that an increase in the supply of first-generation ethnic migrant inventors increases the rate of codification of herbal knowledge at U.S. assignees. Our identification comes from an exogenous shock to the quota of H1B visas and from a list of entities exempted from the shock. We also find that ethnic migrant inventors are more likely to engage in reuse of their prior knowledge, whereas inventors from other ethnic backgrounds are more likely to engage in knowledge recombination.

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Abstract—While prior literature on within-country migration is focused on self-selection models, agents such as firms can also play an important role in facilitating within-country migration. In the face of physical, informational and social barriers to migration, firms with nationwide hiring practices can benefit from facilitating the migration of high ability individuals from smaller towns to production centers located in larger cities. We argue that despite the ex-ante higher search costs associated with hiring from smaller towns, firms can benefit from such hiring. In this study, we explore the relationship between an employee’s hometown and her subsequent work productivity. To do so, we exploit unique personnel data for newly hired college graduates within an Indian technology firm. We leverage the fact that the assignment of an employee to one of many production centers within the firm is uncorrelated with observable characteristics of the employee and find that employees hired from smaller towns have higher productivity than their counterparts from large cities. As a possible explanation of our results, we test for selection and find that employees hired from smaller towns outperform their large city counterparts in standardized logical tests at the recruitment stage. We also find that employees hired from smaller towns have lower attrition rates compared to those hired from large cities. We provide evidence that the extra payoff conferred by higher productivity and lower attrition rates sufficiently outweigh the extra search costs associated with hiring from smaller towns. Our secondary results also indicate that other forms of marginalization (e.g., being from a “lower caste”) are related to higher productivity.

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Abstract—We exploit a natural experiment to study how codifying information about prior innovation affects subsequent innovation. A codified database of traditional Indian herbal formulations was adopted by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) at different points in time. The database, the Traditional Knowledge Depository Library (TKDL), was created by state-owned Indian R&D labs to provide patent examiners searchable “prior art” drawn from ancient Indian medicinal texts. Using a unique dataset of herbal patents filed between 1977 and 2013, we find that adoption of the TKDL affected the level of herbal patent filings and grants and shifted the nature of patenting away from pure herbal formulations, similar to those in the ancient texts, toward combinations of herbs and synthetic compounds that were less similar to the prior art and apt to be less contestable.

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Abstract—The advent of artificial intelligence in the form of machine learning technologies ushers new questions regarding the pace at which it may substitute both older technology vintages and human capital. Rather than assuming superior productivity of one vintage over another, we examine contingency effects on productivity by heterogeneity in prior specialized knowledge bases in complementary human capital and provision of concurrent expert advice. Within the research context of patent examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which has developed both machine learning and Boolean search technologies, we hypothesize that absorptive capacity from skill-technology matches will result in higher productivity, and these effects will be stronger in the presence of expert advice constituting technology and task specific information. We test and find support for our hypotheses using experimental methods that permit causal inferences and examination of underlying mechanisms. Our study contributes to literature streams on artificial intelligence, endogenous technological change, and strategic management of the pace of technological substitution by providing insights on complementarities between technologies and horizontally differentiated human capital

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Abstract—We shed light on oral business history data, widely available and yet underutilized, as a relevant and useful resource for strategy and management scholars. Specifically, we outline a novel methodology based on topic modeling and sentiment analysis to illustrate that such data can be used to generate insight about the relationship between a firm’s past financial performance and the language and tone of speeches by the firm’s CEO. Using 88 CEO interviews conducted between 2008 and 2017, archived at the publicly accessible Harvard Business School online repository titled “Creating Emerging Markets,” we employ our unique methodology to study how environmental factors, such as unexpected market returns, are related to the range of topics and sentiments expressed by CEOs’ spoken words. In doing so, we match the data from the CEO interviews with financial performance data for the set of firms led by those CEOs as well as market performance data from the countries in which these firms are headquartered. Our results suggest that greater abnormal returns just prior to the date of the CEO interview are positively correlated with certain emotions expressed by CEOs, such as surprise, fear, and anticipation, an indication that unanticipated firm performance heightens the emotional states of firm leadership, with possible consequences for subsequent strategy choices. Furthermore, greater abnormal returns also are positively correlated with CEOs’ tendency to focus their speech more on work-related topics than personal topics.

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Abstract—An active debate has centered on the importance of manufacturing for driving innovation in the U.S. economy. This paper proposes an alternative framework that focuses on the role of suppliers of goods and services (the “supply chain economy”) in national performance. Using the 2002 Benchmark Input-Output Accounts, we introduce a new industry categorization that separates supply chain (SC) industries (i.e., those that sell their goods and services primarily to businesses or government) from business-to-consumer (B2C) industries (i.e., those that sell primarily to consumers). We find that the supply chain economy is a distinct and large segment of the economy, with a mix of manufacturers and more importantly service providers. Supply chain industries, especially “traded” services (i.e., those that are sold across regions, like software), have higher average wages than B2C industries. The supply chain economy also has a much larger intensity of STEM jobs and generates the majority of patents. While STEM jobs are most prevalent among suppliers of traded services, patents are concentrated primarily in manufacturing suppliers. We also find that employment in the economy has been evolving from manufacturing into different types of services for the period under examination (1998–2013): SC traded services (with the highest STEM intensity and wages) experienced high growth in employment and wages; and B2C local services (with the lowest STEM intensity and wages) experienced high growth in employment but a decline in wages. Overall, our findings suggest that the subcategory of supply chain traded services is particularly important to innovation and the economy.

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Abstract—The debate in economic policymaking about the drivers of innovation and job creation has long been centered on manufacturing versus services. The predominant view is that manufacturing drives innovation, wages, and growth, and that services provide less innovation and lower-wage jobs. We propose an alternative framework that focuses on the suppliers of goods and services to businesses and the government: the “supply chain economy.” Our research shows that by categorizing the economy into supply chain versus business-to-consumer industries, a different picture emerges. The supply chain industries are a distinct category of the economy that is important to innovation and well-paid jobs. In particular, the supply chain services have the highest wages and intensity of STEM jobs in the U.S. and have experienced rapid growth in employment and wages in the last two decades. However, supply chain industries face unique challenges that may require new policy solutions from the public and private sector. Critical initiatives could focus on improving their access to skilled labor, buyers, and capital.

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Abstract—We analyze the effects of increasing the salience of corporate values in an organization rewarding its employees based on financial performance. We use data from a field experiment conducted at an Indian mobile phone retail chain that implemented a 360° performance assessment system focused on organizational values. We find a counterintuitive result: the intervention drove even higher effort on dimensions of short-term financial performance associated with preexisting monetary incentives but did not substantially affect nonfinancial performance dimensions linked to long-term organizational goals. Our setting allows us to explore the effects of underlying counterbalancing mechanisms. While the 360° system drives higher effort to benefit the organization, consistent with the system improving goal clarity, activating organizational identification, or increasing implicit incentives, it may not improve all of the dimensions of performance intended to promote organizational alignment. Increasing employees’ multitasking requirements, without adequate support and training, can generate confusion, which, in turn, can drive effort away from the sources of confusion and toward known elements of performance. Our findings provide insights about benefits and pitfalls that managers may need to consider when implementing 360° performance assessment programs as a complement to incentives based on financial performance.

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Abstract—Marketplace lending relies on large-scale loan screening by investors, a major deviation from the traditional banking paradigm. Theoretically, participation of sophisticated investors in marketplace lending improves screening outcomes but also creates adverse selection. In maximizing loan volume, the platform trades of these two forces by choosing intermediate levels of platform pre-screening and information provision to investors. We use novel investor-level data to test these predictions. We empirically show that more sophisticated investors screen loans differently, and systematically outperform less sophisticated investors. However, the outperformance shrinks when the platform reduces information provision to investors, consistent with platforms managing adverse selection.

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No abstract available.

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It’s August 2014 and John Chambers is expected to announce his retirement after 17 years as CEO of global technology giant Cisco Systems. Under Chambers’s leadership, Cisco has grown from $2.2 billion in annual revenues and under 4,000 employees to revenues of $46 billion and more than 66,000 employees. With Chambers’s retirement imminent, Cisco’s board of directors must design a detailed succession process that will allow a smooth transfer of power. What type of selection process should the board members use? Which qualities should they look for in potential candidates? Who should the board select for their shortlist of final candidates? In addition to exploring the history of Cisco, its current market position, and profiles of potential candidates, the case provides an overview of different types of succession planning processes.

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This note explores the mechanics of multiples, different types of multiples, when and how to use them, and common pitfalls associated with multiples valuation. While a multiples approach is a very convenient valuation method, breaking down the underlying assumptions can significantly improve the robustness and power of multiples valuation.

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Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) was a medical technology firm headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, with 43,000 employees and 2016 revenues of $12.5 billion. For several years, the company had pursued developing products that created shared value, defined as those that both generated profits and created positive social impact. One of the primary ways the company advanced such products was through establishing and maintaining public-private partnerships (PPPs) with governmental or non-governmental organizations. In June 2017, Gary Cohen, an executive vice president of BD, and Renuka Gadde, vice president of BD’s Global Health function, were deeply engaged in a six-year PPP to bring a new low-cost labor and delivery tool called the Odon Device to market. This device had the potential to avert hundreds of thousands of maternal and newborn deaths, primarily in low-resource settings. Although they had faced many challenges in bringing together multiple organizations to develop and launch the device, Cohen and Gadde were convinced that BD’s ability to collaborate with governments and international agencies to address urgent global health needs was a source of competitive advantage for the company. Through these collaborations, BD had strengthened important external relationships and developed a distinctive corporate strategy for its expansion in emerging markets. Cohen, Gadde, and the BD Global Health team were also working to construct a framework for measuring both the social and financial impact of the company’s shared value initiatives, starting with the BD Odon Device. Cohen believed that creating shared value was “fundamentally a better way to do business,” but he wanted hard data to demonstrate the full economic and social benefit of BD’s shared value initiatives. The competition for internal capital and the challenges of taking on new types of products meant that any shared value initiative required a rigorous business case and clear indicators of social impact.

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No abstract available.

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In mid-2015, the Singapore-based CEO of Choson Exchange Geoffrey See pondered his next move. He had founded Choson Exchange as a non-profit in 2009 to further female entrepreneurship in North Korea by providing business and legal training in the isolated country. Now, however, he considered launching a for-profit incubator, PY Ventures, to provide North Korean entrepreneurs with customized mentorship and access to foreign capital. What role did See play in North Korea, and how should he evaluate the risks and opportunities of moving out of the non-profit space in what many around the world considered a “Rogue State”?

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