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July–August 2025
Article

How to Identify the Perfect Cofounder

By: Julia Austin

One of the first and most important decisions entrepreneurs make is whether to go it alone or bring on cofounders. Many investors favor startups with multiple founders, believing that a team reduces business risk by diversifying skills, sharing responsibilities, and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Partners and Partnerships; Experience and Expertise

February 2019
Article

Pettiness in Social Exchange

By: Tami Kim, Ting Zhang and Michael I. Norton

We identify and document a novel construct—pettiness, or intentional attentiveness to trivial details—and examine its (negative) implications in interpersonal relationships and social exchange. Seven studies show that pettiness manifests across different types of... View Details

Keywords: Relationships; Personal Characteristics; Perception; Societal Protocols

2018
Working Paper

Expressive Voting and Its Cost: Evidence from Runoffs with Two or Three Candidates

By: Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud

In French parliamentary and local elections, candidates ranked first and second in the first round automatically qualify for the second round, while a third candidate qualifies only when selected by more than 12.5 percent of registered citizens. Using a fuzzy RDD... View Details

Keywords: Expressive Voting; Strategic Voting; Regression Discontinuity Design; French Elections; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; France

Research Summary

Overview

By: Rob Markey

Most companies' leaders declare their commitment to delivering value to customers. Many have adopted language such as "customer-centric" or "customer-obsessed." Companies that consistently earn top marks for customer loyalty in their industry deliver total shareholder... View Details

Keywords: Customer Base Analysis; Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Experience; Customer Loyalty; Service Profit Chain; Management Accounting; Project Evaluation And Resource Allocation; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Valuation; Customer Focus and Relationships

05 Jun 2007
First Look

First Look: June 5, 2007

accounts with no fees, no tiered interest rates, and no minimums. In industries where squeezing value from customers is commonplace, companies that dismantle these harmful practices and design a transparent, value-creating offer can head... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Research Summary

Creating and Consuming Brand Meaning

By: Jill J. Avery

This vibrant stream explores how managers build meaning into their brands through narrative stories, and nurture, leverage, and maintain meaning over time. It also explores how consumers use this meaning embedded in brands to construct their identities and live their... View Details

March 2021
Article

Deliberately Prejudiced Self-driving Vehicles Elicit the Most Outrage

By: Julian De Freitas and Mina Cikara

Should self-driving vehicles be prejudiced, e.g., deliberately harm the elderly over young children? When people make such forced-choices on the vehicle’s behalf, they exhibit systematic preferences (e.g., favor young children), yet when their options are unconstrained... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Autonomous Vehicles; Driverless Policy; Moral Outrage; Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Transportation; Policy

Article

Positioning Brands Against Large Competitors to Increase Sales

By: Neeru Paharia, Jill Avery and Anat Keinan

We explore the effect of having a large dominant competitor and show the conditions under which focusing on a competitive threat, rather than hiding it, can actually help a brand. We demonstrate through lab and field studies that highlighting a large competitor's size... View Details

Keywords: Brands; Brand Management; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States

Fall 2013
Article

Shifts in U.S. Federal Reserve Goals and Tactics for Monetary Policy: A Role for Penitence?

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper considers some of the large changes in the Federal Reserve's approach to monetary policy. It shows that, in some important cases, critics who were successful in arguing that past Fed approaches were responsible for mistakes that caused harm succeeded in... View Details

Keywords: Central Banking; Policy; United States

2009
Working Paper

Opening Up or Shutting Down? The Effects of Multiple Identities on Problem Solving

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan

Across three studies, I investigate the distinct effects of multiple identity conflict and enhancement within people on two crucial aspects of resolving problems with others: integrative behavior and openness. The results of two studies support the hypotheses that... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Problems and Challenges; Behavior; Conflict Management; Identity; Integration

28 Aug 2008
Working Paper Summaries

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

Keywords: by Dolly Chugh, Katherine L. Milkman & Max H. Bazerman

Article

The Feeling of Not Knowing It All

By: Haiyang Yang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

How do consumers assess their mastery of knowledge they have learned? We explore this question by investigating a common knowledge consumption situation: encountering opportunities for further learning. We argue and show that such opportunities can trigger a... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Consumption; Consumption Of Learning; Judgment Of Knowledge; Feeling Ofknowing; Confidence In Knowledge; WYSIATI; FONKIA; Knowledge Acquisition; Learning; Perception

22 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

The Immigrant Technologist: Studying Technology Transfer with China

Assistant Professor William R. Kerr teaches the required first-year MBA course, The Entrepreneurial Manager, in addition to Executive Education courses at Harvard Business School. One of his core research areas is the role of immigrant entrepreneurs and scientists for... View Details

Keywords: Re: William R. Kerr; Technology; Computer

2022
Chapter

Corporate Misconduct’s Relevance to Society through Everyday Misconduct

By: Eugene Soltes

Terms like "corporate misconduct" and "white-collar crime" typically bring to mind major scandals like Enron or Bernie Madoff. This popular perception overlooks another important—and in fact much more typical—type of deviance: "everyday misconduct." Everyday misconduct... View Details

Keywords: Research; Crime and Corruption; Society

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Research Summary

Business Ethics

By: Joshua D. Margolis

Joshua Margolis is interested in how individuals can exercise leadership in the face of competing ethical and economic responsibilities, and how organizations can enable them to do that. In particular, how can managers and companies simultaneously advance... View Details

June 2005 (Revised January 2007)
Case

Equator Principles, The: An Industry Approach to Managing Environmental and Social Risks

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Aldo Sesia

In June 2003, 10 leading international banks adopted new voluntary guidelines, called the Equator Principles, to promote sustainable development in project finance. In recent years, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had raised issues about the lenders'... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Policy; Project Finance; Standards; Projects; Commercial Banking; Non-Governmental Organizations

Educators

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The authors explore the effects of having a large dominant competitor and show conditions under which focusing on a competitive threat, rather than hiding it, can actually help a brand. Through lab and field studies, the authors demonstrate that highlighting a large... View Details

August 2023
Article

Do Rating Agencies Behave Defensively for Higher Risk Issuers?

By: Samuel B. Bonsall IV, Kevin Koharki, Pepa Kraft, Karl A. Muller III and Anywhere Sikochi

We examine whether rating agencies act defensively toward issuers with a higher likelihood of default. We find that agencies' qualitative soft rating adjustments are more accurate as issuers' default risk grows, as evidenced by the adjustments leading to lower Type I... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating Agencies; Soft Rating Adjustments; Default; Credit; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Institutions; Risk Management

Article

If You're Going to Do Wrong, at Least Do It Right: Considering Two Moral Dilemmas at the Same Time Promotes Moral Consistency

By: Netta Barak-Corren, Chia-Jung Tsay, Fiery Cushman and Max Bazerman

We study how people reconcile conflicting moral intuitions by juxtaposing two versions of classic moral problems: the trolley problem and the footbridge problem. When viewed separately, most people favor action in the former and disapprove of action in the latter,... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Problems and Challenges; Conflict and Resolution