Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,339)
- Faculty Publications (122)
- Article
Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors
By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
- Article
What It Takes to Reshore Manufacturing Successfully
By: Willy C. Shih
The data on comparative labor and energy costs may seem compelling, but the process of bringing assembly work back to domestic factories from abroad is substantially more challenging than the economics alone would predict. This paper looks at some of the issues firms... View Details
- September 2014
- Article
Income Inequality and Social Preferences for Redistribution and Compensation Differentials
By: William R. Kerr
In cross-sectional studies, countries with greater income inequality typically exhibit less support for government-led redistribution and greater acceptance of wage inequality (e.g., United States versus Western Europe). If individual nations evolve along this pattern,... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Signaling without Certification: The Critical Role of Civil Society Scrutiny
By: Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell and Michael W. Toffel
In response to stakeholders' growing concerns, companies are joining voluntary environmental programs to signal their superior environmental management capabilities. In contrast to the literature's focus on certification programs that require a third-party audit, we... View Details
Keywords: United Nations; Labor Standards; Supplier Relationship; Procurement; Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Quality And Safety; Risk; Globalization; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Working Conditions; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Reputation
- May 2014
- Case
Groupon, Inc.
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Blythe J. McGarvie and James Weber
Internet coupon site "Groupon" grew revenues rapidly and went public, but struggled to impress investors or operate profitably. Did it have a sustainable business model?
Groupon sold coupons called Groupons which purchasers used to acquire goods or services at... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors
By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
- 2014
- Article
Paying It Forward: Generalized Reciprocity and the Limits of Generosity
By: Kurt Gray, Adrian F. Ward and Michael I. Norton
When people are the victims of greed or recipients of generosity, their first impulse is often to pay back that behavior in kind. What happens when people cannot reciprocate, but instead have the chance to be cruel or kind to someone entirely different—to pay it... View Details
- May 2013
- Article
Sweatshop Labor Is Wrong Unless the Shoes Are Cute: Cognition Can Both Hurt and Help Motivated Moral Reasoning
By: Neeru Paharia, Kathleen Vohs and Rohit Deshpandé
The present research investigated the dual role of cognition as either an enabler of moral reasoning or self-interested motivated reasoning for endorsing sweatshop labor. Experiment 1A showed motivated reasoning: participants were more likely to endorse the use of... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Innovation, Reallocation and Growth
By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, Nicholas Bloom and William R. Kerr
We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth, and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the... View Details
- July 2012
- Article
The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love
By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely
In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as... View Details
- Fall 2011
- Article
A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance
By: Gunnar Trumbull and Peter Tufano
In this brief history of U.S. consumer finance since World War II, the sector is defined based on the functions delivered by firms in the form of payments, savings and investing, borrowing, managing risk, and providing advice. Evidence of major trends in consumption,... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
'Last-place Aversion': Evidence and Redistributive Implications
By: Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan W. Buell, Taly Reich and Michael I. Norton
Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory... View Details
Keywords: Wages; Surveys; Wealth and Poverty; Behavior; Income; Research; Rank and Position; Attitudes; Personal Characteristics; Economics
- 2011
- Book
The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Steve J. Kramer
The most effective managers have the ability to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives-consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine... View Details
Keywords: Creativity; Interpersonal Communication; Employee Relationship Management; Leadership; Performance Effectiveness; Emotions; Motivation and Incentives; Groups and Teams; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Working Conditions; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Performance Productivity; Attitudes; Behavior; Happiness; Perception; Trust; Time Management; Resource Allocation; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Managerial Roles
- 2011
- Working Paper
The 'IKEA Effect': When Labor Leads to Love
By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely
In a series of studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate the boundary conditions for what we term the "IKEA effect&"—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance
By: Andrea Ryan, Gunnar Trumbull and Peter Tufano
This article describes the consumer finance sector in the US since World War II. We first define the sector in terms of the functions delivered by firms (payments, savings/investing, borrowing, managing risk, and providing advice.) We provide time series evidence on... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes
By: William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers
We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised August 2010)
- Background Note
Advanced Leadership Note: An Institutional Perspective and Framework for Managing and Leading
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Rakesh Khurana
Large-scale societal issues increasingly appear on the agenda of business leaders, including poverty, health, education, business-government relations, and the degradation of the environment. These problems are not entirely new, but the forces of globalization and the... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Deferred Acceptance Algorithms: History, Theory, Practice
By: Alvin E. Roth
The deferred acceptance algorithm proposed by Gale and Shapley (1962) has had a profound influence on market design, both directly, by being adapted into practical matching mechanisms, and indirectly, by raising new theoretical questions. Deferred acceptance algorithms... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Opening Platforms: When, How and Why?
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne
Platform-mediated networks encompass several distinct types of participants, including end users, complementors, platform providers who facilitate users' access to complements, and sponsors who develop platform technologies. Each of these roles can be opened-that... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
The Effects of a Central Clearinghouse on Job Placement, Wages, and Hiring Practices
By: Muriel Niederle and Alvin E. Roth
New gastroenterologists participated in a labor market clearinghouse (a "match") from 1986 through the late 1990s, after which the match was abandoned. This provides an opportunity to study the effects of a match by observing the differences in the outcomes and... View Details