Publications

20 May 2019
Research & Ideas

Activist CEOs Are Rising Up—and Their Customers Are Listening

When former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced earlier this year he was thinking about running for president of the United States, it wasn’t a new idea. Past CEOs seeking the White House have included Carly Fiorina, Ross Perot, Herman Cain, Steve Forbes, Mitt... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

July–August 2021
Article

Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government

By: Ryan W. Buell, Ethan Porter and Michael I. Norton

Problem definition: As trust in government reaches historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs. Academic/practical relevance: We propose that in co-productive settings like government services, peoples’ trust and... View Details

Keywords: Government Services; Behavioral Operations; Operational Transparency; Government Administration; Service Operations; Programs; Perception; Attitudes; Behavior; Trust

15 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

We Have Better Ways to Break Habits Than Willpower. Why Don't We Use Them?

doing so may expose a weakness: a lack of self-control that would make others judge them harshly, says Harvard Business School Associate Professor Julian Zlatev in a recent paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

October 2015
Article

The Relational Nature of Leadership Identity Construction: How and When It Influences Perceived Leadership and Decision-Making

By: Lisa Marchiondo, Christopher G. Myers and Shirli Kopelman

This paper empirically tests leadership identity construction theory (DeRue & Ashford, 2010), conceptually framing claiming and granting leadership as a negotiated process that influences leadership perceptions and decision-making in interdependent contexts. In Study... View Details

Keywords: Identity Construction; Leadership Development; Identity

January 2012
Article

How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work

By: Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer

Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees in four avoidable ways. This article is based on analysis of hundreds of work diaries from professionals describing everyday events that... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Creativity; Performance Productivity; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation Strategy; Performance; Strategic Planning; Leading Change; Balanced Scorecard; Mission and Purpose

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

August 2009
Article

The Reality and Myth of Sacred Issues in Negotiations

By: A. E. Tenbrunsel, K A. Wade-Benzoni, V. H. Medvec, L. Thompson and M. H. Bazerman

This paper investigates the role of sacred issues in a dyadic negotiation set in an environmental context. As predicted, when negotiators focus on sacred issues, this negatively impacts the negotiation, producing more impasses, lower joint outcomes, and more negative... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Values and Beliefs; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Conflict of Interests; Perception; Cooperation

25 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

outlined in a forthcoming paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, The Sharp Spikes of Poverty: Financial Scarcity Is Related to Higher Levels of Distress Intensity in Daily Life. Higher income amounts to lower... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Article

Seeker Beware: The Interpersonal Costs of Ignoring Advice

By: Hayley Blunden, Jennifer M. Logg, Alison Wood Brooks, Leslie John and Francesca Gino

Prior advice research has focused on why people rely on (or ignore) advice and its impact on judgment accuracy. We expand the consideration of advice-seeking outcomes by investigating the interpersonal consequences of advice seekers’ decisions. Across nine studies, we... View Details

Keywords: Advice; Advice Seeking; Expertise; Impression Management; Wisdom Of Crowds; Interpersonal Communication; Relationships; Behavior; Experience and Expertise; Perception; Judgments; Outcome or Result

2001
Book

From Heresy to Dogma: An Institutional History of Corporate Environmentalism

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

This is a pathbreaking account of how the environmental movement has led to profound changes in the perceptions and practices of large-scale corporations, as shown here in the chemical and petroleum industries. The book traces how market, social, and political... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Environmental Sustainability; Public Opinion; Social Issues

Article

Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive

By: Amelia Goranson, Ryan S. Ritter, Adam Waytz, Michael I. Norton and Kurt Gray

In people’s imagination, dying seems dreadful; however, these perceptions may not reflect reality. In two studies, we compared the affective experience of people facing imminent death with that of people imagining imminent death. Study 1 revealed that blog posts of... View Details

Keywords: Death; Language; LIWC; Positivity; Affective Forecasting; Open Materials; Perspective; Attitudes

25 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

Women make up more than half of the labor force in the United States and earn almost 60 percent of advanced degrees, yet they bring home less pay and fill fewer seats in the C-suite than men, particularly in male-dominated professions like finance and technology. This... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2022
Conference Presentation

Organizational Competition: A Catalyst for Workplace Diversity and Desires for Uniqueness

By: Samantha N. Smith, Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios and Katherine L. Milkman

Competition is prevalent in organizations. For example, people often compete against their colleagues for status and recognition in the workplace or for opportunities for advancement. Workers also compete against others to get hired into organizations in the first... View Details

Keywords: Status and Position; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior

April 2025
Article

Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Elizabeth Friedman, Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar and Xupin Zhang

Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. While past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, relatively less is known about how smiling... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Image Feature Extraction; Machine Learning; Facial Expressions; Prejudice and Bias; Nonverbal Communication; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Perception

May 2024
Article

Selfish Corporations

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Niels Gormsen and Timothy McQuade

We study how perceptions of corporate responsibility influence policy preferences and the effectiveness of corporate communication when agents have imperfect memory recall. Using a new large-scale survey of U.S. citizens on their support for corporate bailouts, we... View Details

Keywords: Public Opinion; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Policy

06 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Did You Hear What I Said? How to Listen Better

percent of the time, the listener’s and speaker’s perceptions of attention didn’t match up. About 19 percent of the time, the speaker thought the other person was listening when they weren’t. And 12 percent of the time, the speaker didn’t... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

05 Sep 2006
First Look

First Look: September 5, 2006

called into question by several significant organizational stumbling blocks. Purchase this case: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=106073 PublicationsAgency and Institutions: The Enabling Role of Individuals' View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

When CEOs Become Activists

Business, Aaron Chatterji, call “CEO activism,” in which corporate executives speak out about social or environmental issues not obviously related to their core businesses. “What prompted this research is that we kept observing instances... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology; Publishing

May 2022
Article

How Status of Research Papers Affects the Way They Are Read and Cited

By: Misha Teplitskiy, Eamon Duede, Michael Menietti and Karim R. Lakhani

Although citations are widely used to measure the influence of scientific works, research shows that many citations serve rhetorical functions and reflect little-to-no influence on the citing authors. If highly cited papers disproportionately attract rhetorical... View Details

Keywords: Metrics; Influence; Status; Citations; Science; Measurement and Metrics; Research; Perception