Publications

SSRN

January 2022
Article

Why is Corporate Virtue in the Eye of The Beholder? The Case of ESG Ratings

By: Dane Christensen, George Serafeim and Anywhere Sikochi

Despite the rising use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, there is substantial disagreement across rating agencies regarding what rating to give to individual firms. As what drives this disagreement is unclear, we examine whether a firm’s ESG... View Details

Keywords: ESG Ratings; Rating Agency Disagreement; ESG Disclosure; Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure

Julie Battilana is the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and the Alan L. Gleitsman Professor of Social Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, where she is also the founder and faculty... View Details

March 2019
Article

A Structural Analysis of the Role of Superstars in Crowdsourcing Contests

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Param Singh and Anindya Ghose

We investigate the long-term impact of competing against superstars in crowdsourcing contests. Using a unique 50-month longitudinal panel data set on 1677 software design crowdsourcing contests, we illustrate a learning effect where participants are able to improve... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing Contests; Superstar Effect; Bayesian Learning; Utility; Economics Of Information System; Dynamic Structural Model; Dynamic Programming; Markov Chain; Monte Carlo; Learning; Competition; Performance Improvement

2017
Working Paper

Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

By: Diwas S. KC, Bradley R. Staats, Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino

How individuals manage, organize, and complete their tasks is central to operations management. Recent research in operations focuses on how under conditions of increasing workload, individuals can increase their service time, up to a point, to complete work more... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Productivity

SSRN

20 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think

steps individuals and organizations can take to make decisions that are truly in line with their own ethical views? A: Organizations can monitor how they are creating institutions, structures, and incentives that increase the likelihood... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2009
Other Unpublished Work

When Weak Ties and Social Alternatives Benefit Organizational Commitment: Evidence from Wikipedia

This study examines the social mechanisms reinforcing participant commitment to collaborative work. Previous literature largely fails to acknowledge the wider context of individual workplace commitments, or suggests that multiple concurrent work and life commitments... View Details

Keywords: Social and Collaborative Networks

October 2014 (Revised June 2016)
Case

MasterCard: Driving Financial Inclusion

By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Natalie Kindred

MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga was investing significant time and attention to increase financial inclusion among individuals with historically no access to banking or financial services in countries around the world with large underserved populations. The effort included... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Financial Services; Financial And Social Return; Financial Inclusion; Strategic Management; South Africa; Nigeria; Ajay Banga; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; South Africa; Nigeria

Educators

2017
Performance & Appearance

Hair Penalties and Other Organizational Sins: Racism Disguised as Professionalism

Ruru Hoong

Ruru Hoong is a PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard & HBS, on the academic job market AY 2025-26.

Her research interests span artificial intelligence, digital economics, privacy, and social media, primarily focusing on the (i) optimal design and integration... View Details

Article

Does 'Could' Lead to Good? On the Road to Moral Insight

By: Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino and Joshua D. Margolis

Dilemmas featuring competing moral imperatives are prevalent in organizations and are difficult to resolve. Whereas prior research has focused on how individuals adjudicate among these moral imperatives, we study the factors that influence when individuals find... View Details

Keywords: Moral Insight; Ethical Dilemma; Could Mindset; Divergent Thinking; Moral Sensibility; Creativity; Decision Choices and Conditions

Register to Read

May 2022
Article

Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts

By: Shawn A. Cole, Benjamin Iverson and Peter Tufano

This paper studies the adoption and impact of prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer lottery-like payouts to individual account holders in lieu of interest. Using microlevel data from a bank in South Africa, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Banking; Savings; Prize-linked Savings; Lottery; Household; Personal Finance; Saving; Banks and Banking

Spring 2014
Article

What Impact? A Framework for Measuring the Scale & Scope of Social Performance

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan

Organizations with social missions, such as nonprofits and social enterprises, are under growing pressure to demonstrate their impacts on pressing societal problems such as global poverty. This article draws on several cases to build a performance assessment framework... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Performance Evaluation

November 2006 (Revised May 2007)
Background Note

Developing Leaders

By: Boris Groysberg and Amanda Cowen

Provides an overview of leadership development for the manager charged with developing a single individual or corporate leadership program. Introduces a framework for understanding the components of developmental experiences and then applies it to a range of... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Programs

Educators

December 2022 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Akooda: Charging Toward Operational Intelligence

By: Christopher Stanton and Mel Martin

The Akooda case describes the challenges confronting founder and CEO Yuval Gonczarowski (MBA ‘17) in 2022 as he attempts to boost sales. Launched in November 2020, Akooda was an AI company that mined 20 different sources of digital data, from tools like Slack, Google... View Details

Keywords: Data Mining; Productivity; Monitoring; Data Analysis; AI and Machine Learning; Knowledge Management; Operations; Problems and Challenges; Employee Relationship Management; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Information Industry; Boston; Israel

Educators

12 Sep 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Liability Structure in Small-Scale Finance: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Keywords: by Fenella Carpena, Shawn Cole, Jeremy Shapiro & Bilal Zia

March 2025
Article

Is Personal Identity Intransitive?

By: J. De Freitas and L. J. Rips

There has been a call for a potentially revolutionary change to our existing understanding of the psychological concept of personal identity. Apparently, people can psychologically represent people, including themselves, as multiple individuals at the same time. Here... View Details

Keywords: Identity; Judgments

2008
Working Paper

Cost of External Finance and Selection into Entrepreneurship

By: Ramana Nanda

This paper examines the extent to which the positive relationship between personal wealth and entry into entrepreneurship is due to financing constraints. I exploit a tax reform and use unique micro-data from Denmark to study how exogenous changes in the cost of... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Cost; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Human Capital; Wealth; Denmark