Publications

April 2002 (Revised September 2002)
Case

Transformation of Seattle Public Schools, 1995-2002

Investigates the reform of the Seattle Public Schools from 1995 to 2002. To initiate reform in 1995, the district hired John Stanford, an Army general, and Joseph Olchefske, an investment banker, as the district's superintendent and chief financial officer,... View Details

Keywords: Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leading Change; Organizational Structure; Education; Business Strategy; Public Administration Industry; Education Industry; Seattle

02 Mar 2020
HBS Seminar

Drew Carton, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania

12 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

What Actually Draws Sports Fans to Games? It's Not Star Athletes.

Ferguson and Lakhani decided to test this theory using data from the Australian Football League (AFL), the wildly popular sport also known as “footy.” They detailed their findings in the recent working paper Consuming Contests: Outcome... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Sports

12 Feb 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Platform Competition, Compatibility, and Social Efficiency

Keywords: by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Francisco Ruiz-Aliseda; Computer

May 2024
Article

Relational Attributions for One’s Own Resilience Predict Compassion for Others

By: Rachel Ruttan, Ting Zhang, Sivahn Barli and Katherine DeCelles

Existing work on attribution theory distinguishes between external and internal attributions (i.e., “I overcame adversity due to luck” vs. “my own effort”). We introduce the construct of relational resilience attributions (i.e., “due to help from other people”) as a... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; Forecasting and Prediction; Attitudes; Behavior

Purchase

Article

Default Neglect in Attempts at Social Influence

By: Julian Zlatev, David P. Daniels, Hajin Kim and Margaret A. Neale

Current theories suggest that people understand how to exploit common biases to influence others. However, these predictions have received little empirical attention. We consider a widely studied bias with special policy relevance: the default effect, which is the... View Details

Keywords: Social Influence; Default Effect; Nudges; Choice Architecture; Decision Making; Behavior

Summer 2014
Article

When Does a Platform Create Value by Limiting Choice?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Hanna Halaburda

We present a theory for why it might be rational for a platform to limit the number of applications available on it. Our model is based on the observation that even if users prefer application variety, applications often also exhibit direct network effects. When there... View Details

Keywords: Platform Governance; Direct Network Effects; Indirect Network Effects; Complements; Tragedy Of The Commons; Equilibrium Selection; Coordination; Foresight; Strategy; Value Creation; Digital Platforms; Balance and Stability; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Network Effects

SSRN

2010
Working Paper

Performance Tradeoffs in Team Knowledge Sourcing

By: Bradley R. Staats, Melissa Valentine and Amy C. Edmondson

This research examines how teams organize knowledge sourcing (obtaining access to others' knowledge or expertise) and investigates the performance trade-offs involved in two approaches to knowledge sourcing in teams. One approach a team can take is to specialize, such... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Quality; Groups and Teams; Information Technology Industry; India

December 2008
Article

Style Investing and Institutional Investors

By: Kenneth A. Froot and Melvyn Teo

This paper explores institutional investors' trades in stocks grouped by style and the relationship of these trades with equity market returns. It aggregates transactions drawn from a large universe of approximately $6 trillion of institutional funds. To analyze style... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Behavioral Finance; Stocks; Investment Return; Market Transactions; Performance Expectations; Personal Characteristics; Financial Services Industry

2007
Working Paper

Acting Globally but Thinking Locally? The Influence of Local Communities on Organizations

By: Christopher Marquis and Julie Battilana

We develop an institutional theory of how local communities continue to matter for organizations, and why community factors are particularly important in a global age. Since globalization has taken center stage in both practitioner and academic circles, research has... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Local Range; Globalization; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business and Community Relations; Power and Influence

We live in a dynamic economic and commercial world, surrounded by objects of remarkable complexity and power. In many industries, changes in products and technologies have brought with them new kinds of firms and forms of organization. We are... View Details

Bank Capital and the Low Risk Anomaly

Minimum capital requirements are a central tool of banking regulation. Setting them balances a number of factors, including any effects on the cost of capital and in turn the rates available to borrowers. Standard theory predicts that, in perfect and efficient... View Details

29 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

Are You Paying a Tip--or a Bribe?

Few people see a relationship between tipping and bribing. But consider this: In places where people tip heavily, bribes are more likely to exchange hands as well. Research shows that there's actually a fine line between the socially acceptable act of tipping and the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

09 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations

In Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, the authors combine the latest thinking from the biological and social sciences to lay out a new theory on human nature. The idea: We are all influenced and guided by four drives: acquiring,... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

Web

Business History - Faculty & Research

market economies such as the United States. This article finds instead that regional influences were more important, supporting sociological theories about the importance of visibility in corporate green strategies. It identifies major... View Details

03 Jun 2013
Research & Ideas

The Power of Rituals in Life, Death, and Business

All over the world, people in pain turn to rituals in the face of loss—no matter if it's the death of a loved one (dressing in black, for example), the end of a relationship (burning old love letters), or the crushing defeat in a Little League baseball game (graciously... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

20 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: December 20

Thought Theory (UTT); namely, that unconscious thought is a bottom-up process, whereas conscious thought is a top-down process. In two experiments on impression formation, participants read behavioral information about a fictitious person... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2015
Discussion Paper

The Roles of Import Competition and Export Opportunities for Technical Change

By: Claudia Steinwender

A variety of empirical and theoretical trade papers have suggested and documented a positive impact of trade on the productivity of firms. However, there is less consensus about the underlying mechanism at work. While trade papers focus on access to export markets,... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Trade

2014
Article

Models of Caring, or Acting as if One Cared, About the Welfare of Others

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper surveys the theoretical literature in which people are modeled as taking other people's payoffs into account either because this affects their utility directly or because they wish to impress others with their social-mindedness. Key experimental results that... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving