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(2,064)
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- Faculty Publications (418)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,064)
- People (22)
- News (557)
- Research (864)
- Events (23)
- Multimedia (17)
- Faculty Publications (418)
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- 2021
- Working Paper
'Just Letting You Know…': Underestimating Others' Desire for Constructive Feedback
By: Nicole Abi-Esber, Jennifer Abel, Juliana Schroeder and Francesca Gino
People often avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix a problem immediately. Indeed, in a pilot field study (N=155), only 2.6% of individuals provided feedback to survey administrators that the administrators had food or marker on their faces.... View Details
Keywords: Feedback; Helping; Prosocial Behavior; Relationships; Social Psychology; Theory; Perception
Abi-Esber, Nicole, Jennifer Abel, Juliana Schroeder, and Francesca Gino. "'Just Letting You Know…': Underestimating Others' Desire for Constructive Feedback." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-009, August 2021.
- Teaching Interest
Investing for Impact
By: Archie L. Jones
The Field Course: Investing for Impact was born out of the efforts of HBS students and faculty in the spring of 2020 and offered for the first time in fall semester of 2021.
This course seeks to help students understand why certain... View Details
- July 2023
- Article
Before or After? The Effects of Payment Decision Timing in Pay-What-You-Want Contexts
By: Raghabendra P. KC, Vincent Mak and Elie Ofek
We study how payment decision timing—before versus after product delivery—influences consumer payment under pay-what-you-want pricing. We focus on situations where there is minimal change in consumer uncertainty regarding the product before versus after receiving it.... View Details
KC, Raghabendra P., Vincent Mak, and Elie Ofek. "Before or After? The Effects of Payment Decision Timing in Pay-What-You-Want Contexts." Journal of Marketing 87, no. 4 (July 2023): 618–635.
- Article
Contingent Match Incentives Increase Donations
By: Lalin Anik, Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely
We propose a new means by which non-profits can induce donors to give today and commit to giving in the future: contingent match incentives, in which matching is made contingent on the percentage of others who give (e.g., "if X% of others give, we will match all... View Details
Keywords: Matching Donations; Social Proof; Prosocial Behavior; Charitable Giving; Plausibility; Motivation and Incentives; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving
Anik, Lalin, Michael I. Norton, and Dan Ariely. "Contingent Match Incentives Increase Donations." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 51, no. 6 (December 2014): 790–801.
- December 2020
- Article
Consumer Reactance to Promotional Favors
By: Marco Bertini and Aylin Aydinli
Promotional favors are an increasingly popular but seldom researched form of price promotion where the receipt of the saving by consumers depends on an action on their part that is nonmonetary in nature, such as completing a questionnaire, posting a review, or making a... View Details
Keywords: Promotional Favors; Conditional Discounts; Psychological Reactance; Price Promotions; Pricing; Marketing; Price; Consumer Behavior
Bertini, Marco, and Aylin Aydinli. "Consumer Reactance to Promotional Favors." Journal of Retailing 96, no. 4 (December 2020): 578–589.
- Research Summary
Overview
Empirically, Ryann uses a combination of in-depth qualitative field research and visual and textual archival data to examine moral action at multiple levels of analysis. Through observation and interviews, she aims to capture the lived experience of individuals and... View Details
- Research Summary
Optimal Contracting with Reciprocal Agents
(with Florian Englmaier) (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: Empirically, compensation systems often seem to generate substantial effort despite weak incentives. We consider reciprocal motivations as a source of incentives. We solve for the optimal... View Details
- October 2017
- Article
Observability Increases the Demand for Commitment Devices
By: Christine L. Exley and Jeffrey K. Naecker
Previous research often interprets the choice to restrict one’s future opportunity set as evidence for sophisticated time inconsistency. We propose an additional mechanism that may contribute to the demand for commitment technology: the desire to signal to others. We... View Details
Exley, Christine L., and Jeffrey K. Naecker. "Observability Increases the Demand for Commitment Devices." Management Science 63, no. 10 (October 2017): 3262–3267.
- September 2022
- Article
The Limits of Inconspicuous Incentives
By: Leslie K. John, Hayley Blunden, Katherine Milkman, Luca Foschini and Bradford Tuckfield
Managers and policymakers regularly rely on incentives to encourage valued behaviors. While incentives are often successful, there are also notable and surprising examples of their ineffectiveness. Why? We propose a contributing factor may be that they are not... View Details
John, Leslie K., Hayley Blunden, Katherine Milkman, Luca Foschini, and Bradford Tuckfield. "The Limits of Inconspicuous Incentives." Art. 104180. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 172 (September 2022).
- 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
Buell, Ryan W., Wei Cai, and Tatiana Sandino. "When Does Gamified Training Improve Performance? The Roles of Office and Leader Engagement." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-101, March 2019. (Revised October 2023.)
- 2012
- Article
Does Power Corrupt or Enable?: When and Why Power Facilitates Self-interested Behavior
By: K. A. DeCelles, D.S. DeRue, J.D. Margolis and T.L. Ceranic
Does power corrupt a moral identity, or does it enable a moral identity to emerge? Drawing from the power literature, we propose that the psychological experience of power, although often associated with promoting self-interest, is associated with greater self-interest... View Details
Keywords: Power; Moral Identity; Self-interested Behavior; Moral Awareness; Commons Dilemma; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Power and Influence
DeCelles, K. A., D.S. DeRue, J.D. Margolis, and T.L. Ceranic. "Does Power Corrupt or Enable? When and Why Power Facilitates Self-interested Behavior." Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 3 (May 2012): 681–689.
- September 20, 2019
- Editorial
Why Asking for Advice Is More Effective Than Asking for Feedback
By: Jaewon Yoon, Hayley Blunden, Ariella S. Kristal and A.V. Whillans
Conventional wisdom says you should ask your colleagues for feedback. However, research suggests that feedback often has no (or even a negative) impact on our performance. This is because the feedback we receive is often too vague—it fails to highlight what we can... View Details
Keywords: Feedback; Advice; Advice Seeking; Feedback Culture; Advice Taking; Interpersonal Communication
Yoon, Jaewon, Hayley Blunden, Ariella S. Kristal, and A.V. Whillans. "Why Asking for Advice Is More Effective Than Asking for Feedback." Harvard Business Review (website) (September 20, 2019).
- September 12, 2017
- Article
What's the Right Kind of Bonus to Motivate Your Sales Force?
By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas
Companies typically compensate their sales force by using some combination of salary, commission, and bonuses, but executives are often unsure which incentives provide the best motivation. Should bonuses be tied to quotas or should they be given unconditionally? Is it... View Details
Chung, Doug J., and Das Narayandas. "What's the Right Kind of Bonus to Motivate Your Sales Force?" Harvard Business Review (website) (September 12, 2017).
- December 2014
- Article
The Discipline of Business Experimentation
By: Stefan Thomke and Jim Manzi
The data you already have can't tell you how customers will react to innovations. To discover if a truly novel concept will succeed, you must subject it to a rigorous experiment. In most companies, tests do not adhere to scientific and statistical principles. As a... View Details
Thomke, Stefan, and Jim Manzi. "The Discipline of Business Experimentation." Harvard Business Review 92, no. 12 (December 2014): 70–79.
- Research Summary
Consumer Response to Online Ratings and Recommendations
Jolie is currently conducting several laboratory and field experiments to assess the tendency of individuals to employ predictable heuristics in complex information aggregation tasks, thus leading to search and choice behavior that is suboptimal relative to the fully... View Details
- March–April 2013
- Article
Unlocking Innovation Through Business Experimentation
By: Stefan Thomke
There is a downside to businesses that focus heavily on standardization, optimization, and driving out variability: Such organizations leave themselves vulnerable to underinvesting in experimentation and variation, which are the lifeblood of innovation. Good... View Details
Keywords: Experimentation; Innovation Management; Learning And Development; Research; Innovation and Management; Business Processes
Thomke, Stefan. "Unlocking Innovation Through Business Experimentation." European Business Review (March–April 2013): 55–58.
- Article
Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market
By: Santosh Anagol, Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar
We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents cater to the beliefs of... View Details
Keywords: Advice; Customers; Insurance; Service Operations; Motivation and Incentives; Ethics; India
Anagol, Santosh, Shawn Cole, and Shayak Sarkar. "Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market." Review of Economics and Statistics 99, no. 1 (March 2017).
- 2013
- Working Paper
Management: Theory and Practice, and Cases
By: Richard L. Nolan
This working paper reports on a major Harvard Business School project designed to enhance MBA and practicing executives in case learning. The work is built on the foundation of HBS field cases employing the monomyth "hero's journey" classic story structure along... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; CIO; CEO; Hero's Journey; Monomyth; Management; Practice; Cases; Theory; Innovation and Invention
Nolan, Richard L. "Management: Theory and Practice, and Cases." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 14-026, September 2013.
- Article
Assessing the Impact of CEO Activism
By: Aaron K Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
CEO activism refers to corporate leaders speaking out on social and environmental policy issues not directly related to their company’s core business. Distinct from nonmarket strategy and traditional corporate social responsibility, the recent wave of CEO activism... View Details
Keywords: Business And Society; Leadership; Policy; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Governance; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Public Opinion
Chatterji, Aaron K., and Michael W. Toffel. "Assessing the Impact of CEO Activism." Organization & Environment 32, no. 2 (June 2019): 159–185. (Profiled in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Chief Executive magazine, CEO magazine, and by Edelman and Weber Shandwick.)
- 2014
- Article
Investors Prefer Entrepreneurial Ventures Pitched by Attractive Men
By: Alison Wood Brooks, Laura Huang, Sarah Kearney and Fiona Murray
Entrepreneurship is a central path to job creation, economic growth, and prosperity. In the earliest stages of start-up business creation, the matching of entrepreneurial ventures to investors is critically important. The entrepreneur's business proposition and... View Details
Brooks, Alison Wood, Laura Huang, Sarah Kearney, and Fiona Murray. "Investors Prefer Entrepreneurial Ventures Pitched by Attractive Men." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 12 (March 25, 2014): 4427–4431.