Decision Avoidance - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Aug 2013
What Do You Think?

Is There Still a Role for Judgment in Decision-Making?

that we don't allow our decisions to get sidetracked (or sidetrack them ourselves). In their book Decisive, the Heath brothers cite four major reasons—all linked to common human traits—why we make poor choices and how to View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

25 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 25, 2007

for download. Fair (and Not So Fair) Division Author:John W. Pratt Abstract Drawbacks of existing procedures are illustrated and a method of efficient fair division is proposed that avoids them. Given additive participants' utilities,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

30 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

Why Ethical People Become Unethical Negotiators

believe that surgery is the proper course of action, but her perception is biased: She has an incentive and makes money off the decision to operate. Another surgeon might just as easily come to the conclusion that if it’s not bothering... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

10 Aug 2009
Research & Ideas

High Commitment, High Performance Management

firms are able to avoid defensiveness and resulting blindness. HCHP firms institutionalize what I call Learning and Governance Systems, a means for having honest, collective, and public conversations with key people at lower levels about... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

28 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

Keep or Cut Workers? How Companies Reacted to the COVID-19 Crisis

conduct an analysis to determine how companies were responding to the crisis. Were they retaining their staff and providing essential workers with extra pay, or were they cutting expenses through layoffs and furloughs? "It gave us a rare opportunity. Every View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

12 Dec 2005
Research & Ideas

Using the Law to Strategic Advantage

Moreover, moral and ethical considerations may decisively influence how the law is applied. As a result, purely technical legal advice is often inadequate. CEOs should be looking for lawyers with wisdom and the courage to push back if... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Legal Services

14 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 14, 2015

(2) structure-oriented approaches that redesign specific incentives, tasks, and decisions to reduce temptations to cheat in the environment. This paper explores how these approaches can change behavior. We argue that integrating both... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 Feb 2023
Op-Ed

Building an Inclusive Workplace? Prepare to Shield It from Economic Fears

you’re not accustomed to reflection, it might feel weird, like you’re wasting time. But you would be wrong. In fact, reflection helps leaders make better decisions faster. Leaders must constantly assess a dynamic environment to gain... View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and Nicole Gilmore

09 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations

ignores their defending drive to avoid significant losses of their capital, and often their satisfaction from simply being associated with a distinguished and interesting firm. The relation between firms and their suppliers, to be sound... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

22 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Companies Can Expand Their Talent Pool by Giving Ex-Convicts a Second Chance

if restricting background checks might backfire, especially if employers resort to racial stereotypes to guess who might have a criminal record—and avoid hiring those people. So the researchers conducted field experiments involving the... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

04 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

The Business of Life

and he's up front about that in How Will You Measure Your Life? But in explaining the value of applying academic theories, the book avoids a religious bent, thanks in part to coauthor Allworth's avowed atheism. "That was tough,"... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

02 Dec 2010
What Do You Think?

Making Right Choices: Art or Science?

make your decisions nonreversible; regret less; control expectations; and learn to love constraints in order to cope with uncertainty and avoid depression." Now the genre includes another book, which... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

24 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 24

connected to the Internet. Transfers usefully move resources from lowest- to highest-valuation networks, but transfers tend to cause socially costly growth in the Internet's routing table. We propose a market rule that avoids excessive... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Strategy and the Internet

best practice, its rivals tend to copy it quickly. Best practice competition eventually leads to competitive convergence, with many companies doing the same things in the same ways. Customers end up making decisions based on price,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter

03 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Dealing with the ‘Irrational’ Negotiator

and Bazerman observe, negotiation geniuses are made, not born. Excerpt from Negotiation Genius What appears to be genius actually reflects careful preparation, an understanding of the conceptual framework of negotiation, insight into how one can View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra & Max H. Bazerman

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

decision, but to guide and mentor the team through the decision process. You may interview candidates at this stage, too, but I suggest this be to help a junior manager resolve concerns they have about the candidate or probe more deeply... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

30 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 30, 2008

behind using reserves as a means to avoid the negative effects of crisis: why don't sovereign countries reduce their sovereign debt instead? To study the joint decision of holding sovereign debt and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Jun 2015
Research & Ideas

The Surprising Benefits of Oversharing

should be leery of the sound of silence." As another example of this phenomenon, Luca points to movie studios that, when they know they have a flop on their hands, withhold movie previews from critics to avoid bad reviews during the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

17 Jun 2011
HBS Case

KFC’s Explosive Growth in China

was Su's early decision to downsize his own career. Originally hired to cover the northern Asia-Pacific region, he departed from the usual managerial growth path of taking on larger geographic assignments and instead argued that he should... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Food & Beverage

28 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

How Leaders Can Navigate Politicized Conversations and Inspire Collaboration

negativity into an already tense conversation. Try to avoid explanatory words like “because” and “therefore.” These phrases, common in debate, sound argumentative and condescending. In addition to these strategies, the researchers found... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

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