Publications

October 17, 2022
Article

Relational Diversity in Social Portfolios Predicts Well-Being

By: Hanne K. Collins, Serena F. Hagerty, Jordi Quoidbach, Michael I. Norton and Alison Wood Brooks

We document a link between the relational diversity of one’s social portfolio—the richness and evenness of relationship types across one’s social interactions—and well-being. Across four distinct samples, respondents from the United States who completed a preregistered... View Details

Keywords: Social Interaction; Social Engagement; Well-being; Happiness; Social and Collaborative Networks; Family and Family Relationships

June 2018
Article

Personal and Social Usage: The Origins of Active Customers and Ways to Keep Them Engaged

By: Clarence Lee, Elie Ofek and Thomas Steenburgh

We study how digital service firms can develop an active customer base, focusing on two questions. First, how does the way that customers use the service postadoption to meet their own needs (personal usage) and to interact with one another (social usage) vary across... View Details

Keywords: Customer Engagement; Adoption Routes; Word-of-Mouth; Digital Marketing; Bayesian Estimation; Customers; Communication; Consumer Behavior; Marketing; Internet and the Web; Analytics and Data Science

Web

Alumni Engagement | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

resources on governance. Sign Up For OnBoard Program Updates The Leadership Collaborative The Leadership Collaborative is designed to connect and support alumni deeply engaged in social impact as a career... View Details

01 Sep 2012
News

HBS Is Committed to Increasing Alumni Engagement

Skeete Tatum HBS has taken on a major initiative to deepen its connection to alumni by increasing engagement and participation. To better understand the relationships that currently exist between alumni and HBS, the School has launched a... View Details

Keywords: Lisa Skeete Tatum; engagement; Educational Support Services; Educational Services

2016
Article

Academia's Emerging Crisis of Relevance and the Consequent Role of the Engaged Scholar

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Universities are facing a crisis of relevance. While there are multiple reasons for this to be happening, one that deserves particular attention is the extent to which academic scholars do not see it as their role to engage in public and political discourse. However,... View Details

Keywords: Political Discourse; Public Engagement; Higher Education; Social Media

January 2018 (Revised January 2021)
Background Note

Customer Lifetime Social Value (CLSV)

By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller

One of the hallmarks of the digital revolution is the rise of the socially connected consumer. Concomitantly, the ability of companies to affect and measure the social interactions among customers has grown tremendously. Consequently, in assessing the full value of... View Details

Keywords: Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Management; Social Contagion; Word Of Mouth; Customer Engagement; Customer Value and Value Chain; Measurement and Metrics; Customer Relationship Management

Educators

Article

Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance

By: Beiting Cheng, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

In this paper, we investigate whether superior performance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies leads to better access to finance. We hypothesize that better access to finance can be attributed to a) reduced agency costs due to enhanced stakeholder... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Capital Constraints; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Stakeholder Engagement; Disclosure; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Capital

SSRN

September 2022
Case

Deciding When to Engage on Societal Issues

By: Hubert Joly and Amram Migdal

This case provides brief descriptions of 18 examples of corporate leaders confronting questions of whether and how to engage with societal issues, including social, political, and environmental issues. Social issues include COVID-19; social and racial justice;... View Details

Keywords: Political Issues; Social Justice; Racial Justice; Environmental Issues; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Values and Beliefs

Educators

2023
Working Paper

When Does Gamified Training Improve Performance? The Roles of Office and Leader Engagement

By: Ryan W. Buell, Wei Cai and Tatiana Sandino

Gamified training is a novel management control system in which companies use gamification techniques to engage and motivate employees to learn. This study empirically examines the performance consequences of gamified training using data from a natural field... View Details

Keywords: Gamified Training; Management Control Systems; Employee Engagement; Employees; Learning; Training; Motivation and Incentives; Performance

SSRN

1997
Working Paper

Social Enterprise Series No.3: Corporate Community Service: Achieving Effective Engagement

By: James E. Austin

October 2019
Case

Engaging the Nationwide Workforce

By: Ethan S. Bernstein, Jessica Gover and Sarah Mehta

Nationwide is “on your side,” but did employees feel that way? CAO Gale King and CEO Steve Rasmussen, starting in 2008, invested heavily in a human capital strategy centered around “engagement” at the Ohio-based Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. Set in 2014, this... View Details

Educators

2019
Chapter

Problem, Person, and Pathway: A Framework for Social Innovators

By: Julie Battilana, Brittany Butler, Marissa Kimsey, Johanna Mair, Christopher Marquis and Christian Seelos

As the appetite for learning about social innovation intensifies, how can we better prepare practitioners for the work of addressing the world’s pressing social problems at the relevant scale? This chapter presents the “3P” framework that we developed to help address... View Details

Keywords: Social Innovation; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Issues; Change; Problems and Challenges

2015
Chapter

Leading Socially Responsible, Value-Creating Corporations

By: Daniel A Brown, Rakesh Khurana and James O'Toole

We explore the role of the corporate leader in creating value for stakeholders throughout three eras: one of naïve idealism, one of naïve cynicism, and an emerging era of rugged idealism. We explain how the role of the corporate leader and society's perceptions of this... View Details

Keywords: Stakeholder Management; Value; Shared Value; Institution; Business School; Stakeholder Engagement; Value Creation; Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Alignment; Business Education; Business and Stakeholder Relations

April 2012
Article

Emotion-induced Engagement in Internet Video Ads

By: Thales S. Teixeira, Michel Wedel and Rik Pieters

This study shows how advertisers can leverage emotion and attention to engage consumers in watching Internet video ads. In a controlled experiment, joy and surprise were assessed through automated facial expression detection for a sample of ads. Concentration of... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Online Advertising; Emotions

2022
Article

Social Interactivity in Live Video Experiences Reduces Loneliness

By: Benjamin T. Kaveladze, Robert R. Morris, Rosa Victoria Dimitrova-Gammeltoft, Amit Goldenberg, James J. Gross, Judd Antin, Melissa Sandgren and Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt

Background: Loneliness, especially when chronic, can substantially reduce one's quality of life. However, positive social experiences might help to break cycles of loneliness by promoting more prosocial cognitions and behaviors. Internet-mediated live video... View Details

Keywords: Lonelines; Social Connection; Internet-mediated Communication; Experiment; Emotions; Well-being; Interpersonal Communication; Internet

Article

Heuristics Guide the Implementation of Social Preferences in One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemma Experiments

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Valerio Capraro and David G. Rand

Cooperation in one-shot anonymous interactions is a widely documented aspect of human behavior. Here we shed light on the motivations behind this behavior by experimentally exploring cooperation in a one-shot continuous-strategy Prisoner’s Dilemma (i.e. one-shot... View Details

Keywords: Human Behavior; Social Evolution; Behavior; Cooperation; Decision Making; Game Theory

Article

Conversational Receptiveness: Expressing Engagement with Opposing Views

By: M. Yeomans, J. Minson, H. Collins, H. Chen and F. Gino

We examine “conversational receptiveness”—the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then... View Details

Keywords: Receptiveness; Natural Language Processing; Disagreement; Interpersonal Communication; Relationships; Conflict Management