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All workplaces have one thing in common: each of these organizations has its own unique culture. All organizations use these cultures to socialize their members and guide their behavior and values. Culture may manifest itself in the company's messaging, metaphors, language, or storytelling as well as in formal policies, including how workers are compensated, evaluated, and rewarded within the organization. The most important elements of culture, though, are invisible or even subconscious, including beliefs, rules, assumptions, and attitudes about what is right or wrong. This primer, which includes real-world business scenarios illustrating positive and negative cultural forces, is designed to empower students to become leaders who seek to improve every organization they join.

This note on supply chain management provides background for the seven class supply chain module in the Technology & Operations Management required curriculum course taught at the Harvard Business School. This module includes four broad topics: sourcing and supply chain structure, supply chain coordination, coping with uncertain demand, and supply chain visibility.

Background note for product CB0028.

Profit-making corporations returned cash to investors through dividends or share repurchases. Market participants referred to the fraction of the profits paid to shareholders in the form of dividends as the "payout ratio." However, a large number of firms have never paid a dividend. For instance, over the past decade, more than half of the listed firms in the United States neither paid a dividend nor repurchased shares. For example, only 20 per cent of firms on the Singapore Stock Exchange consistently paid dividends over the past decade, with similar proportions observed in both US and European stock markets. The percentage of dividend-paying firms plummeted to a record low of 17 per cent in 2000. In fact, most of the "new economy" firms such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google, reinvested their entire savings. This note describes rational dividend theories, behavioural dividend theories, and outlines the four categories of dividend strategies followed by firms.

While managers of both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations often focus on their area of specific expertise, true success comes only from taking a complete enterprise perspective. Organizations must focus on global, not local, optimization across all functional areas, not just one. In this note, we present a model based on nine interrelated areas that when jointly considered will increase the likelihood of enterprise success. This note presents the 9 Cs Enterprise-Perspective Model, which allows a manager to consider the interactions among various functional areas in making decisions.

The purpose of this note is to explain the application areas of the chi-square goodness-of-fit test and how to run the test in Excel.

The purpose of this note is to explain the application areas of the chi-square goodness-of-fit test and how to run the test in Excel.

A case analysis is an effective tool for teaching, learning, and most importantly, practising the art and science of management. The case method immerses students in real-life situations, allowing them to develop their business skills by analyzing realistic situations, applying business theories and tools, and making substantiated recommendations. However, working with cases is a pedagogical approach unfamiliar to most new business students and often inadequately understood by advanced students. The Student Guide to the Case Method introduces students to the case method and, in discrete notes, walks them through the tasks that are typically involved in case assignments: analyzing a case, discussing cases in class, writing case reports and giving presentations (individually and in groups), and writing case exams. A final note introduces students to the most common business tools used for case analysis. This guide is best used as a complete package to orient students to the case method, but each note also stands on its own and can be used to supplement other course materials.

While there are a number of courses focused on helping students create and perfect innovative new products, there remains a gap regarding how to create and perfect the idea-or the positioning behind the product. The reality is that it is significantly more difficult than most people think to create a superior positioning concept. In addition, most sophisticated marketing organizations begin with a winning idea before they begin to deploy R&D resources to create a product. This note helps students understand what a positioning concept is, the critical elements of a testable positioning concept, and the attributes of those concepts that tend to be superior to those of their rivals. It is useful for undergraduate and graduate students interested in marketing, sales, brand management, and entrepreneurship.

Historically, data analytics have not been used in the professions of accounting and auditing to the extent that they have been in other industries. However, an understanding of big data and the relevant analysis techniques is more often becoming mandatory for accountants and auditors so that they can provide greater business insights for their businesses and clients. This note prepares readers for using big data and data analytics by providing an overview of data analytics, explaining how data analytics techniques can be used in accounting and auditing practices, and providing a tutorial that walks students through a basic use of ACL Analytics.

This note replaces "Valuation of Late-Stage Companies and Buyouts" (UVA-F-1639). This note focuses on the valuation of late-stage companies with a particular emphasis on leveraged buyouts (LBOs). In contrast to venture capital, where firms are typically at an early stage of development, late-stage investments involve more-established businesses that have an ability to take on higher levels of debt to augment investor returns. The note provides a description of LBOs, an overview of the commonly used sources of financing and the metrics used to assess LBO capital structures, a discussion of the value drivers of buyouts, and a step-by-step example of an LBO analysis. This note takes the perspective of private equity (PE) investors and assumes some basic familiarity with the structure of PE investing. Their approach is compared to other discounted cash flow valuation methods based on the weighted-average cost of capital or adjusted present value.

Organizations have often sought to meet the pressures of rapid change through novel ways of managing human capital to boost innovation and productivity. Hackathons have emerged as one of the latest approaches to do just that. How can those responsible for managing human capital use hackathons as a new tool in their toolkit? This note is meant as a guide for academics and practitioners to understand what hackathons are, how they work, when and how they can be useful, and how they complement other more traditional tools for organizational innovation and productivity. The note ends with a summary of questions and additional resources for more detail.

This technical note explores the many different forms of equity compensation. Equity compensation, defined as compensation that provides for the delivery of equity securities, aligns employees' incentives with shareholder value driven by a company's stock price. Equity compensation is used extensively to attract and retain key employees. However, the types of equity compensation differ in their effects on incentives, dilution, net income, corporate cash flow, and income taxes.

This note describes the major considerations and frameworks of compensation. Its audience is general managers interested in learning about their own or their employees' compensation.

Literature in food marketing provides many examples of implicit associations and tensions of which marketers should be aware. For example, a brand that positions its product as healthy and tasty may struggle to gain traction in the market because consumers tend to associate good-tasting food with low health value, and therefore assume healthy food tastes bad. Often, consumers make purchases based on heuristics and perceptions. This note provides insights on some of the main tension in the literature. The note can be used alone, but fits nicely with the cases "Just: Positioned to Target Mainstream Tastes?" (A) and (B) (UVA-M-0956 and UVA-M-0957).

This note reviews seven recurrent factors in financial crises (runnable debt, rising leverage, financial innovation, complexity, contagion, cognitive bias, incompetence, and ethical violations) and some 17 responses aimed at preventing or mitigating crises.

This note shapes a framework of competing policy priorities for governments in responding to a financial crisis: rescue, relief, recovery, and reform. The dominant considerations are where, when, how, and why governments should choose the order of these policy priorities. The second part of the note highlights six hurdles to policy making: ideologies, interests, incentives, institutions, innovations, and infrastructure.

Business has become increasingly globalized, interconnected, and disrupted by the unceasing progress of technology. As markets span ever-larger geographical areas, the war for talent among companies continues to heat up. As businesspeople enter the workforce, they seek not only challenging and stimulating roles with competitive compensation, but also organizations dedicated to people development. To attract the best and the brightest, companies are finding that they must demonstrate a commitment to training, coaching, and career planning. At the heart of people development is performance management, and this note does a deep dive on how performance management systems are wound into the fabric of our companies, how to leverage effective tools for evaluating and coaching employees, and how to look to examples of best-in-class organizations for creating a strong performance feedback culture.

This technical note offers students a definition of brand activism (as contrasted to corporate social responsibility) along with an explanation of the different forms that this corporate practice can take. Specifically, students are introduced to the concepts of both progressive and regressive brand activism, in addition to the different causes the activist efforts may champion, whether social, legal, or environmental, to name a few. In order to illustrate these different categories and the sensible ways for managers to approach brand activism, examples of both successful and unsuccessful brand activism initiatives are provided, including those of Benetton Group, Dove, Patagonia, and Pepsi. While these companies' moves were intentionally designed to resonate with consumers, students are also presented examples of companies that unwillingly elicited activist customer responses (including GrubHub, Uber, Nordstrom, Starbucks, and Papa John's). Finally, the examples of Jack Daniels and Chick-fil-A illustrate deliberate corporate decisions not to communicate their values, while an explanation of boycotting and buycotting helps students understand the impact that brand activism initiatives can have on the bottom line.