R & D
Male Consumers as Man-of-Action Heroes: Assistant Professor Douglas B. Holt
Bottom-Line Discrepancies: Assistant Professor Mihir A. Desai
400 and Counting: Surge in HBS Cases with Women Protagonists: Professor Myra M. Hart
Gompers, Merton Honored: Professors Paul A. Gompers and Robert C. Merton
Prize for Nonprofit Paper: Professors Allen S. Grossman and Kasturi Rangan
Mentoring Award: Professor Max H. Bazerman
No Dispute Here: Associate Professor Michael D. Watkins
Male Consumers as Man-of-Action Heroes
What do men want? The conventional theory — the so–called compensatory consumption thesis — has held that men are torn between responsibility and domesticity on the one hand and a desire to live the untethered, exciting life of the rebel on the other. Accordingly, so the theory goes, men spend on products and activities that help them escape the daily pressures of families and careers, in order to become rebels for a day.
But in a working paper titled “Man–of–Action Heroes: How the American Ideology of Manhood Structures Men’s Consumption,” HBS assistant professor Douglas B. Holt and Craig J. Thompson of the University of Wisconsin challenge this notion and develop a new model. Holt and Thompson posit that “the pinnacle of American manhood is the man–of–action hero who deftly combines [emphasis added] the strengths of respectability and rebellion, while eluding their stigmatized connotations.”
In their study, the authors trace the man–of–action hero in American mass culture, individuals such as John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Steve Jobs, and Dale Earnhardt. Holt and Thompson find that American males seem to relish the dramatic tension between breadwinning and rebellion in their quest to be like the man–of–action heroes they find everywhere in the mass media. For the white working– and middle–class men in the study, these are the most potent role models — heroic figures who defy institutions but, in the end, actually outdo the “organization men” in society’s competitions.
In light of the authors’ research, marketers may need to re-examine the idea that they should imbue their brands with either respectability or rebellion. Instead, as Holt and Thompson’s study suggests, it is in the tensions between the two where the most valued meanings for male consumers may lie.
On the one hand, your company did extremely well last year. You reported large profits to your shareholders. On the other hand, last year was very difficult for your company. Your tax returns showed losses. Such a scenario is more and more common, according to HBS assistant professor Mihir A. Desai, who is studying the gap between book income — what companies report to shareholders — and tax income — what companies report to the IRS. In a paper titled “The Divergence between Book and Tax Income” published in the forthcoming volume 17 of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Tax Policy and the Economy, Desai examines the relationship between book and tax income for U.S. corporations over the last two decades.
In the past, the discrepancy between book and tax income was associated with different treatments of depreciation, in the reporting of income from foreign sources, and, in particular, the changing nature of employee compensation. By taking these items into account, one could reconcile tax returns with accounting statements. In the last decade, however, a huge, unexplained difference between the two methods has emerged.
“During the 1990s, book and tax income have diverged markedly for reasons not associated with identifiable factors,” says Desai. “In 1998, more than half of the difference between tax and book income — approximately $154.4 billion or 33.7 percent of tax income — could not be accounted for by these historically relevant measures of discrepancy.”
“The evidence suggests that the large unexplained gaps between tax and book income that have arisen during the late 1990s are at least partly associated with increased sheltering activity,” writes Desai, who adds that it has become necessary to reevaluate the manner in which corporate earnings are taxed and the degree to which book and tax income are allowed to diverge. Desai concludes by pointing out that “the underlying developments driving these phenomena — including increased globalization and financial innovations — are unlikely to decline in importance in the near future.”
Desai and several coauthors examine the discrepancy further in two related working papers: one that looks at the link between stock options and sheltering activity and another that discusses the implications of tax enforcement on shareholders.
For more information, visit www.hbs.edu/research.
400 and Counting: Surge in HBS Cases with Women Protagonists
What do Joanne Hilferty of Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries, Abby Cohen of Goldman Sachs, Robin Chase of Zipcar, and Nanci Mackenzie of U.S. Gas Transportation have in common? Each is a protagonist in a recent HBS case study.
These are just four of nearly one hundred women who have been featured in new HBS cases and videos over the last five years. The targeted effort to boost the number of female executives featured in cases and discussed in classrooms at HBS and beyond was launched by the School in 1997. Leadership support for the initiative came from entrepreneur and former corporate executive Marjorie Alfus and The Committee of 200, a national organization of women business executives. The project provided funding, case connections, and research assistance to HBS faculty who wrote cases featuring women.
“We’ve made tremendous progress,” says HBS professor Myra M. Hart, who has overseen the venture. While the five-year time span of the initial project is now officially over, a group of alumnae from the Class of 1976 designated that their class gift support and continue the effort. Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP) currently offers some four hundred cases with women in key decision-making roles. “The cases feature women in all areas of responsibility, including accounting, production and operations management, competitive strategy, entrepreneurship, and service management,” notes Hart in an introduction to the HBSP Women in Business catalogue.
“There is a lot of rich material available,” says Hart. “It isn’t as though successful women are one in a million.” She worked with about fifty faculty members, most of whom came to her seeking women protagonists facing very specific situations and challenges. “I could usually offer five or more alternatives,” says Hart, whose primary sources of female executives were The Committee of 200’s rolodex and the HBS alumni database. “There are many women in significant roles in industry.”
Hart, who plans to continue to oversee the project next year, is happy with the progress made so far. “These cases are in the curriculum. There are still not enough, but we’ll keep working on it. Eventually people will consider it natural when they open a case with a woman executive.”
The 2002 Geewax, Terker & Company Prize in Investment Research, offered by the Rodney L. White Center at The Wharton School, has gone to Professor Paul A. Gompers and coauthors Joy Ishii and Andrew Metrick for their paper “Corporate Governance and Equity Prices.”
University Professor Robert C. Merton has been honored by Risk magazine with the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award. Merton received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1997.
“Managing Multi-Site Nonprofits,” by HBS professors Allen S. Grossman and V. Kasturi Rangan, has received the annual Editors’ Prize for the Best Scholarly Paper in the journal Nonprofit Management and Leadership for 2002. This paper emerged from the School’s 1998 Social Enterprise Research Forum.
Professor Max H. Bazerman has been named one of the recipients of this year’s Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award. Based on student nominations, this award is offered annually by the Graduate Student Council of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to recognize outstanding faculty mentors and to promote the importance of mentoring.
Associate Professor Michael D. Watkins has received the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution’s 2002 book award for Breakthrough Business Negotiation: A Toolbox for Managers. He won the 2001 award as well for Breakthrough International Negotiation, co-authored by Susan Rosegrant. The CPR Institute is the leading U.S. organization of dispute resolution professionals.
