How to Cite Business Sources in Harvard and APA: Cases, 10-Ks, and Reports
A business paper usually mixes peer-reviewed journals with teaching cases, SEC filings, and consultant PDFs. Cite the object you opened, in one author–date system: APA Style 7th edition (Publication Manual, 2020, §10.1 periodicals and §10.4 reports and gray literature) or the Harvard variant your school names—usually *Cite Them Right* by Richard Pears and Graham Shields, 13th edition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). This page is the source-type how-to. It is not a punctuation bake-off; that comparison lives at Harvard vs APA.
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Quick Answer: How to Cite Business Sources in Harvard and APA
Pick the style the assignment names, then name the document type. A Journal of Management article is a journal. A Harvard Business Review essay is a magazine article with volume and issue—not a teaching case. An HBS case is a numbered stand-alone report. A Form 10-K is gray literature under APA §10.4. A McKinsey review is a report: use the people on the title page, or the firm if only the firm is named. Do not cite Business Source Complete, Capital IQ, Bloomberg, or EDGAR as the author.
| Source | APA 7 reference slots | Cite Them Right Harvard slots |
|---|---|---|
| Journal article | Surname, I. I. (2020). Article title. Journal Title, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xx | Surname, I.I. (2020) 'Article title', Journal Title, volume(issue), pp. xx–xx. Available at: https://doi.org/xx |
| HBR article | Surname, I. I. (2020). Article title. Harvard Business Review, volume(issue), pages. | Surname, I.I. (2020) 'Article title', Harvard Business Review, volume(issue), pp. xx–xx. |
| HBS case | Surname, I. I. (2020). Case title (HBS No. xxx-xxx). Harvard Business School Publishing. | Surname, I.I. (2020) Case title. Harvard Business School Case xxx-xxx. |
| Form 10-K / annual report | Company Name. (2020). Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/... | Company Name (2020) Form 10-K. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year). |
| Working paper | Surname, I. I. (2020). Title (NBER Working Paper No. xxxxx). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/wxxxxx | Surname, I.I. (2020) Title (NBER Working Paper No. xxxxx). National Bureau of Economic Research. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3386/wxxxxx |
The Open University's Cite Them Right Harvard guide and the APA Style author–date page state the shared method in one sentence each:
Official wording for the two author–date systems business schools assign
Open University (Cite Them Right Harvard)
There are different versions of the Harvard referencing style. This guide is a quick introduction to the commonly used Cite Them Right version.
APA Style
APA Style uses the author-date citation system, in which a brief in-text citation directs readers to a full reference list entry.
What This Guide Covers—and What It Does Not
Use this page when the hard part is the business object: an Academy of Management journal versus HBR, the teaching case versus the company's 10-K, the NBER working paper versus the later AER article, or a McKinsey PDF versus the database you clicked through. For the punctuation differences between the two author–date systems—et al. cutoffs, ampersands, quotation marks, access dates—start at Harvard vs APA. For how to write a teaching-case analysis, use How to Write a Case Study. For finding reports outside journals, use Grey Literature. For agency reports with NIH-style numbers, use How to Cite a Government Report in APA 7.
UK, Australian, and many European business schools assign Harvard or Cite Them Right. U.S. MBA and organizational-behavior courses more often assign APA 7. If the syllabus names a style, that instruction wins over any field convention. Some journals (Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal) ship their own author guidelines; follow those when you submit there.
Harvard Referencing Is a Family; APA 7 Is One Manual
Harvard University does not teach or maintain "Harvard style." Harvard Library's FAQ calls the name a misnomer. What UK business schools mean is an institutional author–date sheet, or the commercially published Cite Them Right Harvard chapter (13th ed., 2025). The Open University Library's October 2025 note on that edition is the change students still miss: drop the place of publication, and use title case for titles in your prose while the reference list stays sentence case.
How Harvard Library describes the name
Harvard Library
The "Harvard System" is something of a misnomer, as there is no official institutional connection.
Harvard Library
It's another name for the author/date citation system, the custom of using author and date in parentheses, e.g. (Robbins 1987) to refer readers to the full bibliographic citations in appended bibliographies.
Harvard Library
Harvard Library has no guide to this system as most of our scholars and researchers use APA, Chicago, MLA, or another style specific to their discipline.
| Feature | APA 7 (2020) | Harvard as commonly taught (Cite Them Right 13, 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | One official manual from the American Psychological Association | A family of author–date variants; CTR is the usual UK teaching edition |
| Two authors in parentheses | (Groysberg & Connolly, 2015) | (Groysberg and Connolly, 2015) |
| Three authors in parentheses | (Autor et al., 2012) from the first citation | (Autor, Dorn and Hanson, 2012); et al. starts at four |
| Article title in the list | Sentence case, no quotation marks | Sentence case, single quotation marks |
| Title in running text (CTR 13) | Title case for the work you name in prose | Title case in prose; sentence case in the reference list |
| Year in the reference | (1991). Title | (1991) Title — no full stop after the year |
| Journal pages | 99–120 (no pp.) | pp. 99–120 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/…, no full stop | Available at: https://doi.org/… |
| Web access date | Only if the page is designed to change and is unarchived | Usual for web reports: (Accessed: 10 September 2026) |
| No date | (n.d.) | (no date) |
| Publisher location | Dropped in APA 7 | Dropped in CTR 13; older handouts still show Boston: |
Cite Them Right 13th edition no longer asks for the place of publication. APA 7 had already dropped it. If a photocopied MBA handout still shows Boston: Harvard Business School Press, it is teaching an older sheet. Confirm the edition your marker is using before you strip the city.
Cite the Object You Retrieved, Not the Database
APA's reference formats follow the document type (journal article, report, case), not the retrieval method (online, in print, in a library database). Finding Porter in Business Source Complete or a 10-K in EDGAR does not make EBSCO or the SEC the author. Name the work a reader can recover. Villanova's business-citation pages rest this on APA §§9.30–9.34: when the same filing sits on the investor-relations site, on EDGAR, and in Capital IQ, a database URL may be omitted.
| What you used | Cite this object | Do not cite as the source |
|---|---|---|
| Peer-reviewed strategy article | The article (authors, year, journal, volume, issue, pages, DOI) | Business Source Complete, ABI/INFORM, or the PDF filename |
| Harvard Business Review essay | The HBR article (same periodical slots; HBR articles usually have no DOI) | A blog summary, a slide deck, or an HBS teaching case with a product number |
| HBS or Ivey teaching case | The case (authors, year, italic title, case number, publisher) | The teaching note, unless you are citing the note itself |
| U.S. annual report on Form 10-K | The filing (company as author, year, Form 10-K, EDGAR or IR URL) | Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, or a database session link |
| Consultant or industry report | The report PDF or stable landing page you opened | Statista's excerpt, a slide deck about the report, or "Gartner (n.d.)" |
| NBER or SSRN working paper | The working-paper version you read, with its number | The later journal article, unless you also read that version |
Journal Articles in Management and Strategy
Peer-reviewed business journals (Journal of Management, Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal) take the ordinary journal template. Include the issue number when the journal paginates issues separately. Prefer a DOI written as https://doi.org/…. For the journal-only walkthrough, see How to Cite a Journal Article in APA 7.
Jay Barney (1991), a real Journal of Management article
APA 7:
Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), 99–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639101700108
Cite Them Right Harvard:
Barney, J. (1991) 'Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage', Journal of Management, 17(1), pp. 99–120. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639101700108
APA in-text:
(Barney, 1991) or Barney (1991)
Harvard in-text:
(Barney, 1991) or Barney (1991)
Amy Edmondson (1999), a real Administrative Science Quarterly article
APA 7:
Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Cite Them Right Harvard:
Edmondson, A.C. (1999) 'Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams', Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 350–383. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Harvard Business Review Is Not a Peer-Reviewed Journal
Harvard Business Review is a practitioner magazine. Cite it as a periodical with volume and issue. HBS's own record for Porter's 2008 update lists Harvard Business Review 86, no. 1 (January 2008): 78–93. HBR articles generally have no DOI; do not invent one, and do not paste a Business Source session URL. The 2008 essay updates Porter's 1979 HBR article "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy." Cite the version you read.
Real HBR articles (no invented DOIs)
APA 7, Porter 2008:
Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard Business Review, 86(1), 78–93.
Cite Them Right Harvard, Porter 2008:
Porter, M.E. (2008) 'The five competitive forces that shape strategy', Harvard Business Review, 86(1), pp. 78–93.
APA 7, Drucker June 2004:
Drucker, P. F. (2004). What makes an effective executive. Harvard Business Review, 82(6), 58–63.
In-text (either style, one author):
(Porter, 2008, p. 80) or Porter (2008) argues
Books and Management Frameworks
When you use Porter's five forces, the resource-based view, or disruptive innovation, cite the source you opened—not "SWOT" or "Five Forces" as if they were anonymous tools. Christensen's argument first appeared as The Innovator's Dilemma (Harvard Business School Press, 1997). Many courses now assign the 2016 Harvard Business Review Press reprint (ISBN 9781633691780). Cite that reprint if that is the copy in your hand. Cite Them Right 13 and APA 7 both omit the city.
Clayton Christensen (2016 reprint), a real book
APA 7:
Christensen, C. M. (2016). The innovator's dilemma: When new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business Review Press.
Cite Them Right Harvard:
Christensen, C.M. (2016) The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business Review Press.
Teaching Cases from HBS and Ivey
A Harvard Business School case is a teaching packet with a product number, not a journal article and not an HBR magazine essay. SNHU Library's FAQ, which business students meet constantly, states the gap in the APA manual and then applies the ordinary author–date elements:
SNHU Library on HBS cases in APA
The APA Manual does not include instructions on how to cite a Harvard Business Review case study.
Treat the case as a stand-alone report under APA §10.4: authors, year, italic sentence-case title, the publisher's case number in parentheses, and Harvard Business School Publishing (APA 7 drops Boston, MA). SNHU's worked example leaves the title roman and puts HBS No. 415-047 as its own sentence; the parenthetical report-number form below is the Publication Manual pattern for numbered reports. Ivey cases use an Ivey ID the same way. Cite the case you were assigned, not a later book that grew out of it, and not the teaching note unless you are quoting the note. HBS's faculty record for the example below is Harvard Business School Case 415-047, February 2015.
Groysberg and Connolly (2015), a real HBS case
APA 7:
Groysberg, B., & Connolly, K. (2015). BlackRock: Diversity as a driver for success (HBS No. 415-047). Harvard Business School Publishing.
Cite Them Right Harvard:
Groysberg, B. and Connolly, K. (2015) BlackRock: diversity as a driver for success. Harvard Business School Case 415-047.
APA in-text:
(Groysberg & Connolly, 2015) or Groysberg and Connolly (2015)
Harvard in-text:
(Groysberg and Connolly, 2015) or Groysberg and Connolly (2015)
Do not confuse an HBR article with an HBS case
Library FAQs often say "Harvard Business Review case study" when they mean an HBS teaching case sold by Harvard Business Publishing. The two objects do not share a template. Porter (2008) is volume 86, issue 1, pages 78–93, with no case number. Groysberg and Connolly (2015) is Case 415-047, with no volume and no pages in the reference. If your PDF shows a product code such as 415047-PDF-ENG, you are holding a case. If it shows a magazine date line such as "From the Magazine (January 2008)," you are holding HBR.
HBR magazine article
- Author + year + sentence-case article title
- Italic Harvard Business Review with volume(issue) and pages
- Usually no DOI and no case number
- Example: Porter (2008), 86(1), 78–93
HBS teaching case
- Author + year + italic case title
- HBS or Ivey number in parentheses (APA) or after the title (Harvard)
- Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing
- Example: Groysberg and Connolly (2015), HBS No. 415-047
Annual Reports and SEC Form 10-K
A glossy "annual report to shareholders" and a Form 10-K are related but not identical. The 10-K is the audited SEC filing. Cite the document you used. Villanova's Falvey Library places both in APA §10.4 gray literature. Because the same filing appears on the investor-relations site, on EDGAR, and in Capital IQ, Villanova notes that a URL may be omitted under APA 9.30–9.34. If you include a link, prefer the official EDGAR HTML, not a database session.
Official and library wording for company filings
Villanova Falvey Library
Annual, company reports and SEC filings are considered grey literature and follow the reference example in section 10.4 of the Publication Manual of the APA 7th.
APA Style, report by a government agency
The specific agency responsible for the report appears as the author. The names of parent agencies not present in the group author name appear in the source element as the publisher.
APA Style
This creates concise in-text citations and complete reference list entries.
A company 10-K follows the same group-author logic: Apple is the author, so you omit a repeating publisher. Apple's fiscal 2025 Form 10-K covers the year ended 27 September 2025 and was filed with the SEC on 31 October 2025 (accession 0000320193-25-000079).
Apple Inc. fiscal 2025 Form 10-K (real EDGAR filing)
APA 7:
Apple Inc. (2025). Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019325000079/aapl-20250927.htm
Cite Them Right Harvard:
Apple Inc. (2025) Form 10-K. Available at: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019325000079/aapl-20250927.htm (Accessed: 10 September 2026).
APA in-text:
(Apple Inc., 2025) or Apple Inc. (2025)
Harvard in-text:
(Apple Inc., 2025) or Apple Inc. (2025)
Consultant Reports and Industry Research
McKinsey, BCG, Gartner, Forrester, and IBISWorld reports are gray literature. Apply APA's title-page test from §10.4: if people are named on the cover or the "about the authors" line, those people are the authors and the firm is the publisher; if only the firm is named, the firm is the author and you omit a repeating publisher. The APA Style white-paper page (also §10.4) adds a bracketed description when the document calls itself a white paper:
APA Style on white papers (Publication Manual §10.4)
A white paper is a persuasive document that is written by a person or group to convince readers of their position and philosophy on a topic.
Include the description “[White paper]” in square brackets after the title of the white paper.
McKinsey's *Global Banking Annual Review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of banking* (23 October 2025) lists eight named authors on the public page, plus three colleagues introduced with "with." If that is the version you read, the eight named authors are the authors. If you used a cover-only PDF that names only McKinsey & Company, cite the firm.
McKinsey Global Banking Annual Review 2025 (real public report)
APA 7, named authors on the web page:
Imregun, D., Segev, I., Steitz, J., Dallerup, K., Riba, M., Dietz, M., Patiath, P., & Ganguly, S. (2025). Global banking annual review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of banking. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/global-banking-annual-review
APA 7, cover names only the firm:
McKinsey & Company. (2025). Global banking annual review 2025: Why precision, not heft, defines the future of banking. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/global-banking-annual-review
APA in-text, eight named authors:
(Imregun et al., 2025) or Imregun et al. (2025)
Cite Them Right Harvard, firm as author:
McKinsey & Company (2025) Global banking annual review 2025: why precision, not heft, defines the future of banking. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/global-banking-annual-review (Accessed: 10 September 2026).
Subscription products such as a Gartner Magic Quadrant or an IBISWorld industry report are citeable if you actually opened them. Do not invent a report ID. Use the title, year, and identifier printed on the PDF, and name the database only if there is no stable public URL. The row below is a labelled template, not a source.
| Style | Template |
|---|---|
| APA 7, database report with no public URL | Surname or Firm. (2020). Exact title from the PDF (Report ID if printed). Database Name. |
| Cite Them Right Harvard | Surname or Firm (2020) Exact title from the PDF. Available at: Database Name (Accessed: Day Month Year). |
Working Papers: Cite the Version You Read
NBER, SSRN, and university working papers circulate before peer review. APA §10.4 treats a numbered working paper as a report: italic title, series number in parentheses, publisher, DOI. If you later read the journal version, cite that instead and drop the working-paper number. Do not treat the two as interchangeable. NBER's own page for the example below still cites Working Paper 18054 (2012) and notes the later American Economic Review 103, no. 6 (2013): 2121–2168.
NBER's own copy-citation string (keep English; then restyle)
NBER
David H. Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson, "The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States," NBER Working Paper 18054 (2012), https://doi.org/10.3386/w18054.
Autor, Dorn, and Hanson — working paper versus journal article
APA 7, NBER working paper:
Autor, D. H., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. H. (2012). The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States (NBER Working Paper No. 18054). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w18054
APA 7, later journal article:
Autor, D. H., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. H. (2013). The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States. American Economic Review, 103(6), 2121–2168. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.103.6.2121
APA in-text, three authors:
(Autor et al., 2012) or Autor et al. (2012)
Cite Them Right Harvard in-text, three authors:
(Autor, Dorn and Hanson, 2012) or Autor, Dorn and Hanson (2012)
Failure Modes Business Students Actually Hit
No date on a company page
Investor pages and press rooms often lack a clear year. Check the PDF cover, the 10-K header, and "last updated" before you give up. APA uses (n.d.). Cite Them Right Harvard writes (no date).
Open University (Cite Them Right) on missing dates
If the publication date is not given, the phrase 'no date' is used instead of a date in both the in-text citation and the full reference.
Do not write (n.d.) for a 10-K that prints a fiscal year-end and a filing date. That document has a date. Apple's fiscal 2025 10-K is (2025), not (n.d.), even though the fiscal year ended in September and the file hit EDGAR in October. For the general no-date walkthrough, see How to Cite a Source with No Date.
Corporate authors and abbreviations
Company reports, OECD papers, and many IBISWorld PDFs have a firm or agency as author. Write the name the same way in the parenthesis and in the list. The Open University's Harvard guide allows an acronym in later citations after you introduce the full name once; the full reference still uses the full name. APA 7 allows a similar abbreviation in text after the first citation when the group name is long.
Open University on corporate authors
If a source has been created by a corporate body (e.g. a company, a government department, a university etc.) then use the name of that body as the author in both the in-text citation and the full reference.
Database links, access dates, and stale market data
APA 7 does not want "Retrieved from Business Source Complete" for a journal with a DOI, and it wants an access date only for unarchived, changing pages. Cite Them Right Harvard still expects (Accessed: Day Month Year) on most web reports. Prefer a DOI or an EDGAR URL over a proxy link that dies at graduation. Market figures go stale in months: if the claim is "current share," the 2019 10-K is historical evidence, not current evidence. That is a source-evaluation problem as much as a citation problem; see Scholarly vs Popular Sources.
Citing a framework you met in a textbook
If you applied five forces from a textbook chapter, that is a secondary citation. APA writes (Porter, 2008, as cited in …). Cite Them Right Harvard writes (Porter, 2008, cited in …) or (Porter, 2008, quoted in …). The Open University's Harvard guide is explicit: your full reference is to the source you actually read. Trace the original when you can. Do not cite "Porter's Five Forces" with no year and no work.
Which Document to Cite When Two Versions Exist
| You are writing about | Cite | Do not substitute |
|---|---|---|
| A decision in an assigned teaching case | The HBS or Ivey case packet | The company's later 10-K, unless you are adding outside facts the instructor allowed |
| Audited financials or risk factors | The Form 10-K or the annual report you opened | A Yahoo Finance table or a news recap of earnings |
| A working-paper result you actually read | The NBER or SSRN version, with its number | The later journal article's pages, unless you read that version |
| A published journal result | The journal article | The working paper, once you have switched to the journal text |
| A framework's original argument | Porter 2008 (or 1979), Barney 1991, Christensen 2016/1997 | A slide deck or a blog post that restates the framework |
Where Business Students Actually Find These Sources
- Peer-reviewed journals: Business Source Complete (EBSCO), ABI/INFORM (ProQuest), the journal's own site.
- U.S. filings: EDGAR is free. Company investor-relations sites republish the same 10-K.
- Teaching cases: Harvard Business Publishing and Ivey Publishing. Your library may have a course pack; cite the case, not the pack.
- Working papers: NBER and SSRN. Use the working-paper number printed on the PDF.
- Industry data: IBISWorld, Statista, Gartner, and Forrester are usually library-licensed. Cite the report title on the PDF.
- Citation export: Database "cite" buttons guess. Check author order, italics, the DOI, and whether the tool mixed APA punctuation into a Harvard list.
Finish the reference in the matching generator
Use one style for the whole paper. The Harvard generator follows an author–date list; the APA generator follows APA 7. For the punctuation differences in isolation, open Harvard vs APA.
Related Guides
- Harvard vs APA: Differences, Cite Them Right 13, and When to Use Each
- How to Write a Case Study
- Grey Literature: What It Is and How to Find It
- How to Cite a Government Report in APA 7
- How to Cite a Journal Article in APA 7
- How to Cite a Source with No Date
Business citation FAQs
- Which citation style do business schools use?
- UK, Australian, and many European programmes assign Harvard or Cite Them Right. Many U.S. MBA and organizational-behavior courses assign APA 7. The syllabus wins. Some management journals use house author–date rules that are neither CTR nor APA.
- How do I cite a Harvard Business School case in APA 7?
- The APA manual has no HBS-specific template. Cite the case as a stand-alone report: authors, year, italic title,
(HBS No. 415-047)or the number on your PDF, and Harvard Business School Publishing. Example: Groysberg, B., & Connolly, K. (2015). BlackRock: Diversity as a driver for success (HBS No. 415-047). Harvard Business School Publishing. - Is a Harvard Business Review article the same as an HBS case?
- No. HBR is a practitioner magazine with volume, issue, and pages (Porter, 2008, is 86(1), 78–93). An HBS case is a numbered teaching packet (Groysberg and Connolly, 2015, is Case 415-047). Library FAQs that say "HBR case study" usually mean the teaching case. Check the PDF for a product code or a magazine date line before you pick a template.
- How do I cite a 10-K in APA?
- Treat it as APA §10.4 gray literature with the company as group author: Apple Inc. (2025). Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019325000079/aapl-20250927.htm. Omit a publisher that merely repeats the company name. Prefer the EDGAR HTML over a Capital IQ session link. Do not write (n.d.) when the filing prints a fiscal year-end.
- Is Harvard Business Review a journal?
- No. HBR is a practitioner magazine. Cite it with volume and issue like any periodical. It is not a substitute for a peer-reviewed test of a theory. Use Journal of Management or ASQ when you need that test, and HBR when you are citing the managerial essay you actually read.
- Should I cite the NBER working paper or the later journal article?
- Cite the version you read. Autor, Dorn, and Hanson's China-syndrome paper is NBER Working Paper 18054 (2012) and American Economic Review, 103(6), 2121–2168 (2013). The year, the italics, and the page numbers change. Do not attach AER pages to the working-paper year.
- Do I need an access date for a company report?
- In APA 7, only if the page is designed to change and is not archived. A filed 10-K is a stable document; a DOI does not take an access date. Cite Them Right Harvard still usually wants
(Accessed: Day Month Year)on web reports. - Who is the author of a McKinsey report?
- Read the title page. If the web page or cover lists people, those people are the authors and McKinsey & Company is the publisher. If only the firm is named, the firm is the author. The 2025 global banking review lists Imregun, Segev, Steitz, Dallerup, Riba, Dietz, Patiath, and Ganguly on the public page.
- How do I cite Porter's Five Forces?
- Cite the work you opened. The current managerial statement is Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard Business Review, 86(1), 78–93. If you only saw the framework in a textbook, that is a secondary citation. Do not write "(Porter, n.d.)" or "(Five Forces, 2008)."
- Can I cite Gartner or IBISWorld from my library?
- Yes, if you opened the report. Use the exact title and any report number printed on the PDF. Name the database only when there is no public URL. Do not invent a Magic Quadrant ID or cite "Gartner" with no title. Database export buttons often mix APA ampersands into a Harvard list or restore a Boston publisher location that both APA 7 and Cite Them Right 13 have dropped—check the punctuation before you submit.