Publications

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19 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 18

associated with excellence in certain product categories. Venezuelan chocolate maker Chocolates El Rey does little international business because consumers associate premium chocolate more with Belgium or Switzerland than with Venezuela. Companies in this View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2004
Article

Leader Behaviors and the Work Environment for Creativity: Perceived Leader Support

By: Teresa M. Amabile, Elizabeth A. Schatzel, Giovanni B. Moneta and Steven J. Kramer

This exploratory study investigated leader behaviors related to perceived leader support, encompassing both instrumental and socioemotional support. The study first established that leader support, proposed to be a key feature of the work environment for creativity,... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Leadership; Behavior; Working Conditions; Perception; Performance

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30 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

Why Anger Makes a Wrongly Accused Person Look Guilty

School professor Leslie K. John, whose paper Anger Damns the Innocent is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. In a series of experiments, John and her colleagues—Katherine DeCelles of the University of Toronto, Gabrielle... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

24 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 24, 2009

improvement collaboration. The results support our hypothesis that learn-how is positively related to organizational performance, as measured by NICUs' risk-adjusted mortality rates for 1,061 infant patients. Moreover, our data reveal... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2006
Background Note

Influencing Customer Behavior in Service Operations

By: Frances X. Frei and Amy C. Edmondson

Explores ways in which service firms can influence the behavior of their customers. Drawing from research on employee motivation and applying it to customer motivation, the note describes two levels of managerial control: instrumental control, which shapes behavior... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Governance Controls; Consumer Behavior; Service Operations; Emotions; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Service Industry

2017
Working Paper

Seeking to Belong: How the Words of Internal and External Beneficiaries Influence Performance

By: Paul Green, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats

In this paper, we examine how connecting to beneficiaries of one’s work increases performance and argue that beneficiaries internal to an organization (i.e., one’s own colleagues) can serve as an important source of motivation, even in jobs that—on the surface—may seem... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Motivation; Belongingness; Motivation; Job Design; Field Experiment; Motivation and Incentives; Strategy; Job Design and Levels

SSRN

March 2021
Supplement

Applied: Using Behavioral Science to Debias Hiring (B)

By: Ashley Whillans and Jeff Polzer

At the end of 2018, Applied faced questions of stakeholder management and scale. Glazebrook wanted clients to get rid of CVs altogether. To do this, they would have to help hiring managers and recruiters easily build task-based assessments of the skills that their... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Bias; Behavioral Science; Selection and Staffing; Prejudice and Bias; Information Technology; Competency and Skills

03 Nov 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Ideological Segregation among Online Collaborators: Evidence from Wikipedians

Keywords: by Shane Greenstein, Yuan Gu, and Feng Zhu

17 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees

rewards is good for the company,” Hall says. Do: Consider your story It’s important to frame any incentive plan in a way that’s motivating. The goal is to deepen the connection employees feel with their company in a way that’s positive... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

August 2022
Case

Rocket Learning: Evidence in Action

By: Brian Trelstad, Tomas Rosales and Malini Sen

Founders of Rocket Learning, an India-based nonprofit which focused on early childhood education (ECE), received an invitation from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL), a development research organization, to test its intervention for ECE with a... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Early Childhood Education; Nonprofit Organizations; Literacy; Values and Beliefs; Social and Collaborative Networks; Education Industry; India; Asia

November 2002 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Gary Rodkin at Pepsi-Cola North America (B)

By: David A. Thomas, Gina Carioggia and Ayesha Kanji

After assuming the position of CEO of Pepsi-Cola North America (PCNA), Gary Rodkin faces organizational problems within PCNA and external friction between PCNA and its largest bottler, the Pepsi Bottling Group. In addition to the challenge of organizational alignment,... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Leadership; Brands and Branding; Problems and Challenges; Situation or Environment; Conflict Management; Alignment; Food and Beverage Industry; North America

October 2002 (Revised July 2003)
Case

Gary Rodkin at Pepsi-Cola North America (A)

By: David A. Thomas, Gina Carioggia and Ayesha Kanji

After assuming the position of CEO of Pepsi-Cola North America (PCNA), Gary Rodkin faces organizational problems within PCNA and external friction between PCNA and its largest bottler, the Pepsi Bottling Group. In addition to the challenge of organizational alignment,... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Leadership; Brands and Branding; Problems and Challenges; Situation or Environment; Conflict Management; Alignment; Food and Beverage Industry; North America

March 2005 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Web Services Strategy

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Fernando Suarez

Microsoft and IBM have excluded Sun Microsystems from the board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an industry consortium that will shape the evolution of Web services standards. Sun managers must decide whether to join WS-I as a contributing... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Standards; Corporate Governance; Power and Influence; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry

John Gourville is the Albert J. Weatherhead, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He joined the HBS Marketing Unit in 1995 after receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in marketing and behavioral research. His most... View Details

Keywords: agribusiness; biotechnology; consumer products; health care; high technology; medical supplies; pharmaceuticals; retailing

2025
Working Paper

Better Keep the Twenty Dollars: Incentivizing Innovation in Open Source

By: Annamaria Conti, Vansh Gupta, Jorge Guzman and Maria P. Roche

Open source is key to innovation yet is assumed to be done largely through intrinsic motivation. How can we incentivize it? In this paper, we examine the impact of a program providing monetary incentives to motivate innovators to contribute to open source. The Sponsors... View Details

Keywords: Open Source; Innovation; Incentives; Financial Rewards; Crowding Out; Open Source Distribution; Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives; Technology Industry

09 Apr 2024
Book

Why Work Rituals Bring Teams Together and Create More Meaning

activity they are creating themselves, that’s a better place to start.” A workplace ritual may be as simple as always eating lunch together on a certain day or always concluding meetings by calling out a positive accomplishment by a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

February 2012
Article

A 'Core Periphery' Framework to Navigate Emerging Market Governments—Qualitative Evidence from a Biotechnology Multinational

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, James Geraghty and Tarun Khanna

We build on the emerging literature of influence-based models to study how multinational firms can navigate host governments. Our "core-periphery" framework posits that the actions that an MNC takes with actors in what we call the "periphery"—comprised of state,... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Multinational Firms and Management; Business and Government Relations; Power and Influence; Framework; Biotechnology Industry; Massachusetts; Brazil; China; Costa Rica; France; India

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06 May 2024
Research & Ideas

The Critical Minutes After a Virtual Meeting That Can Build Up or Tear Down Teams

other side of the Zoom call after we hang up?” Perlow asks. Just being aware that another group might have a different view of the meeting—reinforced by their own collective positive or negative energy—can help make everyone more... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2018
Working Paper

Status Inconsistency: Variance in One's Status Across Groups Harms Well-being but Improves Perspective-taking

By: Catarina Fernandes and Alison Wood Brooks

Most people belong to many different groups. While some people experience consistently high or low status across all of their groups, others experience wildly different levels of status in each group. In this research, we examine how status inconsistency – the degree... View Details

Keywords: Status; Social Hierarchies; Well-being; Perspective Taking; Status and Position; Groups and Teams; Satisfaction; Perspective