Publications

June 1998
Article

Reward, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creativity

By: B. A. Hennessey and T. M. Amabile

Comments on R. Eisenberger and J. Cameron's (see record 1996-06440-007) discussion on the impact of reward on creativity. The authors argue that Eisenberger and Cameron overlooked or failed to adequately explain several demonstrations of lower creativity on rewarded... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Motivation and Incentives; Performance Evaluation

Find at Harvard

December 2001 (Revised January 2002)
Case

Nestle S.A.

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Hal Hogan

Peter Brabeck wants to focus Nestle as a wellness company in the global food system and do so in a way that provides both growth in sales and margins in both developed and developing countries. View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Product Development; Supply Chain Management; Food; Multinational Firms and Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Sales; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Switzerland

29 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

Are You Paying a Tip--or a Bribe?

about and weighs the past and future. In some places, tips are provided not so much to reward good service but to encourage good service in the future—a perception that brings the tip closer to the purpose... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

September 1990 (Revised November 1991)
Case

Merck & Co., Inc. (A)

Merck & Co., Inc., a major pharmaceutical company, is in the process of reviewing and evaluating its personnel policies and practices. Employee interviews revealed that rewards for excellent performance were not adequate: outstanding performers received salary... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Pharmaceutical Industry

07 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Digital Transformation: A New Roadmap for Success

process than those who reported otherwise. Some roundtable participants have added an "office of ethics" or ombudsman to provide oversight over ethics policies and practices and to adjudicate complex ethical challenges, engaging outside... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

2009
Other Unpublished Work

Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns

By: William R. Kerr

This study tests the importance of Ricardian technology differences for international trade. The developed panel includes both emerging and advanced economies, and particular attention is devoted to the variation exploited in empirical tests. The elasticity of export... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Immigration; Competitive Advantage; Integration; Technology; United States

July 2006 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Changan Automobile Co., Ltd.

By: Dennis Campbell and Donglin Xia

Chairman Yin Jiaxu must communicate that the company's extraordinary reported performance in 2002 reflects Changan's unique strategy within the competitive dynamics of China's automobile industry. Changan's 2002 annual report demonstrated an extraordinary level of... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Media; Business and Shareholder Relations; Auto Industry; China

Find at Harvard

13 Apr 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Incorporating Price and Inventory Endogeneity in Firm-Level Sales Forecasting

Keywords: by Saravanan Kesavan, Vishal Gaur & Ananth Raman; Retail

2016
Working Paper

Capital Requirements, Risk Choice, and Liquidity Provision in a Business Cycle Model

By: Juliane Begenau

This paper develops a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model in which households' preferences for safe and liquid assets constitute a violation of Modigliani and Miller. I show that the scarcity of these coveted assets created by increased bank capital... View Details

Keywords: Capital Requirement; Bank Regulation; Demand For Safe Assets; Business Cycles; Bank Lending; Risk Management; Financial Liquidity; Financing and Loans; Capital; Banks and Banking

SSRN

2023
Working Paper

Design-Based Inference for Multi-arm Bandits

By: Dae Woong Ham, Iavor I. Bojinov, Michael Lindon and Martin Tingley

Multi-arm bandits are gaining popularity as they enable real-world sequential decision-making across application areas, including clinical trials, recommender systems, and online decision-making. Consequently, there is an increased desire to use the available... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

Article

Matchmaking Promotes Happiness

By: Lalin Anik and Michael I. Norton

Four studies document and explore the psychology underlying people's proclivity to connect people to each other—to play "matchmaker." First, Study 1 shows that chronic matchmaking is associated with higher well-being. Studies 2 and 3 show that matching others on the... View Details

Keywords: Happiness; Relationships

Find at Harvard

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

natural gas that were burdened with highly inefficient delivery systems. In time, the company supported his basic concept with EnronOnline, a Web-based trading platform that instantly became the world's largest e-commerce system in 1999. Skilling also created what was... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

16 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

Why Technology Alone Can't Solve AI's Bias Problem

other tasks. This shows that despite the fair algorithm’s attempts to provide a more inclusive mix of candidates, people’s gender biases still factored into their decisions, Lakkaraju says. “People said, OK, for moving candidates, I chose... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology

2013
Working Paper

Testing Coleman's Social-Norm Enforcement Mechanism: Evidence from Wikipedia

By: Mikolaj J. Piskorski and Andreea Gorbatai

Since Durkheim, sociologists have believed that dense network structures lead to fewer norm violations. Coleman (1990) proposed one mechanism generating this relationship and argued that dense networks provide an opportunity structure to reward those who punish norm... View Details

Keywords: Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Publishing; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Issues; Societal Protocols

SSRN

November 2000
Background Note

Note on Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and Phantom Stock Plans

By: Dwight B. Crane and Indra Reinbergs

Provides a brief overview of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and phantom stock plans for owners of closely held companies. ESOPs can be used as a tool of corporate financing, and can provide employees with ownership interests. Phantom stock plans can reward... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Motivation and Incentives; Management Teams; Corporate Governance; Ownership Stake; Taxation

February 1995 (Revised June 1999)
Case

Chemical Bank: Implementing the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Norman Klein

The retail bank division of Chemical Bank faces declining margins and increased competition in its credit and deposit gathering and processing business. It wishes to implement a new strategy to become a preferred financial service provider to target customer groups.... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Adoption; Growth and Development Strategy; Communication Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Management Systems; Performance Evaluation; Banks and Banking; Measurement and Metrics; Banking Industry

Article

Learning by Thinking: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning

By: Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano and Bradley R. Staats

It is common wisdom that practice makes perfect. And, in fact, we find evidence that when given a choice between practicing a task and reflecting on their previously accumulated practice, most people opt for the former. We argue in this paper that this preference is... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Cognition and Thinking; Practice; Experience and Expertise

31 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Observation Bias: The Impact of Demand Censoring on Newsvendor Level and Adjustment Behavior

Keywords: by David F. Drake

2023
Working Paper

Incentivizing Innovation in Open Source: Evidence from the GitHub Sponsors Program

By: Annamaria Conti, Vansh Gupta, Jorge Guzman and Maria P. Roche

Open source is key to innovation, but we know little about how to incentivize it. In this paper, we examine the impact of a program providing monetary incentives to motivate innovators to contribute to open source. The Sponsors program was introduced by GitHub in... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives; Technology Industry