Compensation Design - Publications - Faculty & Research

Research Summary

Political Risk, Foreign Intervention and International Arbitration

The Empire Trap: America's Attempts to Protect Property Rights Overseas, 1898-2008, is a history of the U.S. government's attempts to protect the property rights of American investors when they venture outside the boundaries of the United... View Details

28 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Profit Power of Corporate Culture

real wages have not been increasing, although compensation often falls rather low on the list of things that employees seek out of the employment "deal." Q: What is the culture cycle? A: The culture cycle begins with the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Blog

Eight Steps to Board Success for Female Executives

A few years ago, HBS Executive Education unveiled the program Women on Boards: Succeeding as a Corporate Director, designed to introduce executives to the process of joining a corporate board. Since that first session, hundreds of female... View Details

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Breaking the Code of Change

vacancies he had created needed to sign on to his philosophy: that shareholder value was the single objective to which a corporation should dedicate itself. To focus executives single-mindedly on shareholder interests, he used financial incentives, mainly stock... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer & Nitin Nohria

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

product designs because she was out fundraising or handling 27 other fires. Here’s how to avoid this: As early as you can in your company’s lifetime, articulate your company’s True North and product guardrails, and evangelize it like... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

06 Jul 2023
News

Lessons from Major League Baseball's Game-Changing Innovations

numbers, and—in most games—umpires don't miss any calls on the field. And today, that expanded instant replay system is only employed once every other game. "We designed the system based on the data and not based on the perception,"... View Details

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

relations with the remaining workforce and the press. This process becomes much more complicated when management's compensation is tied to the financial success of the restructuring through stock options and other incentive compensation.... View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

Web

Professional Development - Alumni

organizations designed to help experienced executives expand their global perspective and lead at a higher level. HBS Online Online courses, led by award-winning faculty, to help you master essential business concepts. Tools & Training... View Details

28 Mar 2024
News

Rooms with a View

Alexander Mirza (MBA 1997) has spent two decades in the hospitality industry, opening and growing major hotel brands, including Hilton, Starwood, and Caesars, with locations around the world. And with each new project, Mirza faced the same primary challenge. “It didn’t... View Details

Keywords: April White; photos by Christina Gandolfo; Hospitality

16 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restaurant Revolution: How the Industry Is Fighting to Stay Alive

band together to lobby for government support, the concerns of restaurant owners and the unique realities and concerns of their industry remain largely unaddressed by government programs designed to help small businesses. Two months into... View Details

Keywords: by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery; Food & Beverage

10 May 2012
Working Paper Summaries

The Flattened Firm—Not as Advertised

Keywords: by Julie Wulf

17 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 17

accruals. We find that the association between high-powered incentives and earnings manipulation varies by both type of incentive pay and position. Our findings have important policy implications and suggest that compensation committees... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

25 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 25

decisions about resources, performance measurement, and compensation are made. Cases & Course MaterialsAffinity Plus (A) Harvard Business School Case 209-026 The executive team at Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union has pushed the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2023
Article

Incentive Effects of Subjective Allocations of Rewards and Penalties

By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin

We examine the incentive effects of subjectivity in allocating tournament-based rewards and punishments. We use data from a company where reward and punishment decisions are based on a combination of objective metrics and subjective performance assessments. Rankings... View Details

Keywords: Subjectivity; Tournament-based Incentives; Rewards; Penalties; Expectancy Theory; Employees; Compensation and Benefits; Management; Decisions; Performance; Measurement and Metrics

Citation

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21 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Why Artificial Intelligence Isn't a Sure Thing to Increase Productivity

to make sure applications propose truly novel ideas, and not designs or techniques previously used in other patents—known as prior art. “That means searching through hundreds of thousands of documents,” says Choudhury. The office aims to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology; Information

05 Jul 2006
What Do You Think?

How Important Is “Executive Intelligence” for Leaders?

performance of an organization has long been debated, and the debate has focused most recently on the controversy over compensation for CEOs. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton cite studies that maintain that no more than 10 percent of the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

22 Oct 2019
Research & Ideas

Use Artificial Intelligence to Set Sales Targets That Motivate

lies in finding the sweet spot between these two undesirable outcomes, and determining how compensation can motivate salespeople best. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Chung and several executives from the consulting firm... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2008
Chapter

Life-Cycle Funds

By: Luis M. Viceira

The U.S. retirement system has experienced a substantial transformation in recent years. It has evolved from a system in which employees relied mainly on Social Security and professionally managed defined benefit (DB) pension plans sponsored by their employers to... View Details

Keywords: Retirement; Personal Finance; Investment Funds; Compensation and Benefits; United States