Workers - Publications - Faculty & Research

12 Feb 2016
Op-Ed

The Real Jobs Tragedy in the US: We've Lost the Skills

domestic skills market is far more relevant to the future of American workers than potential job losses through expanded trade with other Pacific-rim nations. Signs of distress The long-term structural decline of American jobs began well... View Details

Keywords: by Joe Fuller and Matt Sigelman; Manufacturing; Electronics

03 Feb 2016
What Do You Think?

How Do You Hire an 'Impostor'?

In Hiring, Should We Give Self-Confidence a Greater Weight Than Humility? Summing Up A respondent to this month’s column, Joel, provided the question for this summary. As he asked, "should we be focusing on hiring people who exude more confidence than their... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

03 Nov 2015
First Look

November 3, 2015

job test scores or grant managers discretion in making hiring decisions. We implement our test in the context of the introduction of a valuable job test across 15 firms employing low-skill service sector workers. Our results suggest that firms can improve View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2019
Working Paper

Biometric Monitoring, Service Delivery and Misreporting: Evidence from Healthcare in India

By: Thomas Bossuroy, Clara Delavallade and Vincent Pons

Developing countries increasingly use biometric identification technology in hopes of improving the reliability of administrative information and delivering social services more efficiently. This paper exploits the random placement of biometric tracking devices in... View Details

Keywords: Biometric Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Analytics and Data Science; Quality; Performance Improvement; India

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01 Jan 2020
What Do You Think?

Why Not Open America's Doors to All the World’s Talent?

Laurence Dutton SUMMING UP How Should America Admit Talented Workers of the World? The notion of attracting talented workers to the United States deserves support, especially at times when the unemployment... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

Research Summary

Overview

I am currently a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator of five field-based randomized controlled trials, each of which examines the management of lay health workers in developing countries, with an eye toward generating theoretical insights and policy guidance on how... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Policy; Health; Human Resources; Africa; India; United States

Research Summary

Overview

I am currently a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator of five field-based randomized controlled trials, each of which examines the management of lay health workers in developing countries, with an eye toward generating theoretical insights and policy guidance on how... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Policy; Health; Human Resources; Africa; India; United States

April 2021
Article

Work-From-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographical Flexibility

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi and Barbara Larson

An emerging form of remote work allows employees to work-from-anywhere, so that the worker can choose to live in a preferred geographic location. While traditional work-from-home (WFH) programs offer the worker temporal flexibility, work-from-anywhere (WFA) programs... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Flexibility; Work-from-anywhere; Remote Work; Telecommuting; Geographic Mobility; USPTO; Employees; Geographic Location; Performance Productivity

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2023
Working Paper

The International Price of Remote Work

By: Agostina Brinatti, Alberto Cavallo, Javier Cravino and Andres Drenik

We study how the price of remote work is determined in a globalized labor market using data from a large web-based job platform, where workers from around the world compete for remote jobs. Despite the global nature of the platform, we find that remote wages are higher... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Exchange Rates; Purchasing Power Parity; Offshoring And Outsourcing; Macroeconomics; Developing Countries and Economies; Wages; Trade; Globalization; Marketplace Matching; Currency Exchange Rate; Service Industry; Web Services Industry; Technology Industry

Research Summary

Information and Control in Modern Manufacturing

Ratna Sarkar's research in management accounting focuses on the effect of information and incentives on performance. She has investigated the role of worker empowerment, training and inventory in modern manufacturing settings and her findings suggest that these... View Details

August 2013
Article

The Timing of Pay

By: Christopher Parsons and E. Van Wesep

There exists large and persistent variation in not only how, but when employees are paid, a fact unexplained by existing theory. This paper develops a simple model of optimal pay timing for firms. When workers have self-control problems, they under-save... View Details

Keywords: Payday Lending; Hyperbolic Discounting; Self-control Problems; Pay Frequency; Payday Loan Legislation; Paycheck Frequency; Time Inconsistency; Wages; Behavior; Employee Relationship Management

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23 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

The Open Office Revolution Has Gone Too Far

SolStock As of this July, what do Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Associate Professor Ethan Bernstein have in common? They’ve all published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Bernstein’s new paper, The Impact of the ‘Open’ Workspace on Human... View Details

Keywords: Re: Ethan S. Bernstein

May 2022
Article

The Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Communication Patterns

By: Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeff Polzer and Raffaella Sadun

We explore the impact of COVID-19 on employees’ digital communication patterns through an event study of lockdowns in 16 large metropolitan areas in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Using de-identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270... View Details

Keywords: Meetings; Email; COVID-19 Pandemic; Communication Technology; Health Pandemics; Time Management

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2022
Working Paper

Is Hybrid Work the Best of Both Worlds? Evidence from a Field Experiment

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Christos A. Makridis and Kyle Schirmann

Hybrid work is emerging as a novel form of organizing work globally. This paper reports causal evidence on how the extent of hybrid work—the number of days worked from home relative to days worked from the office—affects work outcomes. Collaborating with an... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Work; Remote Work; Work-from-home; Field Experiment; Employees; Geographic Location; Performance; Work-Life Balance

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Research Summary

Overview

I am currently a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator of five field-based randomized controlled trials, each of which examines the management of lay health workers in developing countries, with an eye toward generating theoretical insights and policy guidance on how... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Policy; Health; Human Resources; Africa; India; United States

08 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

How to Hire a Millennial

General Electric isn’t moving to Boston’s waterfront for the views, however breathtaking they may be. In the increasingly fierce battle for millennial talent, GE’s decision to uproot its long-time headquarters from suburban Connecticut is nothing less than a... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Fuller

09 Aug 2006
Research & Ideas

Career Advancement Without Experience

A worker seeks fulfillment in a new job involving expanded skills and responsibilities. The dilemma: Without prior experience in the field, how can she prove her capability to a potential employer? The challenge is even more daunting for... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Motion Pictures & Video; Technology

March 2011
Supplement

BOOKOFF Corporation in 2007

By: Hirotaka Takeuchi and Yoshinori Fujikawa

A visionary founder appoints a former part-time worker and homemaker as his successor in order to keep the corporate culture he created intact. View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Dissemination; Leadership; Management Succession; Organizational Culture; Strategy

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