How should the most appropriate employers and job candidates find each other? A retooling of the job market for fledgling Ph.D. economists could offer valuable insight for other professional categories, too, from managers to engineers. As HBS professors Peter A. Coles and Alvin E. Roth and colleagues describe in their working paper, “The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective,” new economists typically cast the net wide, mailing out applications to as many as 80 potential employers. Overwhelmed employers are then prone to hedge their bets, placing offers to candidates who are not necessarily the best, but who are deemed most likely to accept the offer. The result: missed opportunities on both sides.
To improve the market, the researchers outline practical mechanisms to help the matching process at different stages of the job-search timetable. They also describe new ways to communicate job-market information. Perhaps the lessons learned among economists could in time level the playing field for other professions, too.
This week in cases, “Monsanto: Helping Farmers Feed the World” sheds light on the role of biotechnology in food production and the efforts of a new CEO to revitalize the company after consumer resistance and missteps by previous management.
— Martha Lagace
Publications
Technology Manager’s Journey: An Extended Narrative Approach to Educating Technical Leaders
| Authors: |
Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan, and Shannon O’Donnell |
| Publication: |
Academy of Management Learning & Education 8, no. 3 (2009) |
Abstract
Technology management poses particular challenges for educators because it requires a facility with different kinds of knowledge and wide-ranging learning abilities. We report on the development and delivery of an information technology (IT) management course designed to address these challenges. Our approach is built around a narrative, the “IVK extended case series,” a fictitious but reality-based story about a newly appointed, not technically trained chief information officer (CIO) in his first year on the job. We designed the course around a narrative and composed the narrative in a specific way to achieve two key objectives. First, this format allowed us to combine the active student orientation typical of case-based approaches with the systematic construction of cumulative theoretical frameworks more characteristic of lecture-based methods. Second, basing the narrative on the monomyth—a literary pattern common to important narratives around the world that encourages students to more fully inhabit the story’s hero—leads to fuller engagement and more active learning. We report results using this approach with undergraduate and graduate students in two universities located in different countries, with executives at a major multinational corporation, and with participants in an open-enrollment program at a major business school. Student course feedback and a follow-up survey administered about one year after the course suggest that the extended narrative approach mostly achieves its design objectives. We suggest that the approach might be used more widely in teaching technology management, particularly with “digital natives,” who have come of age in an environment crowded with engaging approaches to communication and entertainment competing for their attention.
Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective
| Authors: |
Peter A. Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried |
| Publication: |
Journal of Economic Perspectives (forthcoming) |
Abstract
This paper provides an overview of the market for new Ph.D. economists. It describes the role of the American Economic Association (AEA) in the market and focuses in particular on two mechanisms adopted in recent years at the suggestion of our committee. First, job market applicants now have a signaling service to send an expression of special interest to up to two employers prior to interviews at the January Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) meetings. Second, the AEA now invites candidates who are still on the market, and employers whose positions are still vacant, to participate in a web-based “scramble” to reduce search costs and thicken the late part of the job market. We present statistics on the activity in these market mechanisms and present survey evidence that both mechanisms have facilitated matches. The paper concludes by discussing the emergence of platforms for transmitting job market information.
Working Papers
Men as Cultural Ideals: How Culture Shapes Gender Stereotypes
| Authors: |
Amy J.C. Cuddy, Susan Crotty, Jihye Chong, and Michael I. Norton |
Abstract
Three studies demonstrate how culture shapes the contents of gender stereotypes, such that men are perceived as possessing more of whatever traits are culturally valued. In Study 1, Americans rated men as less interdependent than women; Koreans, however, showed the opposite pattern, rating men as more interdependent than women, deviating from the “universal” gender stereotype of male independence. In Study 2, bi-cultural Korean American participants rated men as less interdependent if they completed a survey in English, but as more interdependent if they completed the survey in Korean, demonstrating how cultural frames influence the contents of gender stereotypes. In Study 3, American college students rated a male student as higher on whichever trait—ambitiousness or sociability—they were told was the most important cultural value at their university, establishing that cultural values causally impact the contents of gender stereotypes.
Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-097.pdf
Characteristic Timing
| Authors: |
Robin Greenwood and Samuel Gregory Hanson |
Abstract
We use differences between the attributes of stock issuers and repurchasers to forecast characteristic-related stock returns. For example, we show that large firms underperform following years when issuing firms are large relative to repurchasing firms. Our approach is useful for forecasting returns to portfolios based on book-to-market (HML), size (SMB), price, distress, payout policy, profitability, and industry. We consider interpretations of these results based on both time-varying risk premia and mispricing. Our results are primarily consistent with the view that firms issue and repurchase shares to exploit time-varying characteristic mispricing.
Download the paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1320187
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
| Authors: |
Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and M. Utku Ünver |
Abstract
Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms are willing to make early offers and workers are willing to accept them. We present a model and experiment in which workers’ quality becomes known only in the late part of the market. However, in equilibrium, matching can occur (inefficiently) early only when there is comparable demand and supply: a surplus of applicants, but a shortage of high-quality applicants.
Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-095.pdf
Cases & Course Materials
Monsanto: Helping Farmers Feed the World
David E. Bell, Carin-Isabel Knoop, and Mary Shelman
Harvard Business School Case 510-025
Monsanto has led the effort to bring biotechnology to bear on food production. Through some management missteps and consumer resistance the company had difficulties in its early years. But since Hugh Grant became CEO the picture has brightened with widespread adoption of the company’s products. This case focuses on the company’s product pipeline and the galvanizing effect of the CEO’s promise to substantially improve global food production by 2030.
Purchase this case:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/510025-PDF-ENG
Ergo: Open Sourcing Research on Complicated Markets
Bhaskar Chakravorti and Natalie Kindred
Harvard Business School Case 810-060
In 2009, Ergo, a primary source research and consulting firm founded in 2006 with offices in New York, Washington, and Baghdad, was considering growth options. Clients came to Ergo for in-depth research into complex questions, usually pertaining to obscure industries, opaque markets, and complicated geographies. To meet its clients’ information needs, Ergo’s research staff interviewed members of Ergo’s 7,000-strong expert network comprised of former government officials, scientists, scholars, business leaders, and other individuals with specialized expertise or rare access to information. Ergo staff then synthesized the experts’ input into a report for the client. In November 2009, Ergo founder RP Eddy was working on a joint-venture deal with a foreign sovereign wealth fund, which would boost Ergo’s visibility (and revenues) in international markets and represent a major step for the young firm. To Ergo’s leadership team, the move highlighted the need to revisit some major strategic questions. Would the joint venture be seen as a conflict of interest by Ergo’s sovereign wealth fund clients? Should Ergo pursue a growth strategy based on regional joint ventures? Aim to be acquired? Or perhaps develop into large, diversified consultancy? To what extent was Ergo’s model of open-sourced expertise even scalable?
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/810060-PDF-ENG
Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande
Bhaskar Chakravorti and Shirley M. Spence
Harvard Business School Case 810-110
Examine the life journey of an HBS 2002 alum, in her own words, and her perspective on success.
Purchase this case:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/810110-PDF-ENG
Life Journey Profile: Mark Goldweitz
Bhaskar Chakravorti and Shirley M. Spence
Harvard Business School Case 810-112
Examine the life journey of an HBS 1969 alum, in his own words, and his perspective on success.
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/810112-PDF-ENG
Greenbriar Growth Partners and Microsurgery Devices
Nabil N. El-Hage and Kristin Meyer
Harvard Business School Case 310-060
Greenbriar Growth Partners (GGP), a venture capital (VC) firm, has been an investor in Microsurgery Devices (MSD) for four-plus years and has come into conflict with the company’s founder. Should the Board’s nominating committee re-nominate the VC investor, and should the board go along with the VC’s push for a stock buy-back in the midst of the financial crisis, and so soon after the company’s IPO?
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/310060-PDF-ENG
Tremblant Capital Group
Robin Greenwood
Harvard Business School Case 210-071
Brett Barakett, CEO and founder of Tremblant Capital Group, a New York-based hedge fund, must decide what to do with his fund’s position in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which has dropped in value by more than 40% in recent months. Tremblant is a hedge fund that specializes in forecasting consumer behavioral change and capitalizes on the disconnect between stock prices and consumer behavior. In the case of Green Mountain Coffee, many other sophisticated investors have taken short positions in the stock, leading Barakett to question whether his fund had the right trade thesis.
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/210071-PDF-ENG
Lehman Brothers
Tom Nicholas and David Chen
Harvard Business School Case 810-106
: In 2008, the U.S. financial system was in a state of crisis and Lehman Brothers went from a major Wall Street investment bank to an insolvent institution. It was a swift end for a firm that had its beginnings over 150 years prior. What would be the firm’s legacy? And how, if at all, had its activities changed the course of American history?
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/810106-PDF-ENG
NFL U.K
Elie Ofek and Peter Wickersham
Harvard Business School Case 510-105
The NFL faces a decision on how to continue efforts to grow its fanbase in the U.K. The decision needs to take into account lessons learned from previous NFL activities in Europe, market research on the U.K. sports fan, and the implications of any move on the U.S. fan. Moreover, the decision should be couched within the broader context of the NFL’s goal to expand internationally. Alistair Kirkwood, head of NFL U.K., and Chris Parsons, VP of NFL International, must propose a course of action that the London-based team can both execute and that will receive the approval of the NFL’s commissioner and owners.
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/510105-PDF-ENG
Toward Golden Pond (A)
Nicolas P. Retsinas, G.A. Donovan, Nancy Dai, and Justin Ginsburgh
Harvard Business School Case 210-045
The Rong-D companies must decide whether to build a luxury senior housing development in Chengdu, China. Demographics are very encouraging for this new product type, but there are numerous cultural, market, financial, and political risks that they must assess before moving forward.
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/210045-PDF-ENG
Purchase this supplement (B), 210-046:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/210046-PDF-ENG
Mercadona
Zeynep Ton and Simon Harrow
Harvard Business School Case 610-089
This case presents the predicament of a company trying to do right by its customers and its employees as the economic crisis of 2008 hits home. Fifteen years earlier, this Spanish supermarket chain had adopted its own version of total quality management, called the Total Quality Model, switching from the industry’s traditional high-low pricing to “always low prices” and continuous improvement. These changes called for a well-trained, empowered, and enthusiastically engaged workforce dedicated to providing the best products and service to their customers, who were always and seriously referred to as “the Bosses.” The Total Quality Model had been a success in terms of company growth and profitability, sustained by the success of Mercadona’s unusually high investment in employee training and satisfaction. Nevertheless, when sales growth slowed down in 2008, CEO Juan Roig concluded that Mercadona had let its customers down by not keeping prices low enough for such hard times. Mercadona set about lowering its prices, reducing product variety, and lowering its financial targets for 2009. Of the 9,200 SKUs in an average store, the company decided to eliminate 1,000. But Roig still had to decide what to do about employee bonuses. Since Mercadona did not meet its 2008 targets, the company policy was that no one—not even top management—would get a bonus. But Roig knew that his employees worked hard and well in 2008 and could not be held totally responsible for the downturn or for management’s failure to react quickly enough.
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http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/610089-PDF-ENG
San Francisco-based Pattern Energy Group has secured more than $800 million in equity funding and could use some of that cash to fund acquisitions of wind projects, both operating or under development. Of the $800 million, about $400 million come from investment funds controlled by New York-based private equity firm Riverstone Holdings.
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