Publications

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04 Nov 2014
News

Chefs Cook Better for Diners They Can See (or So Says This Study)

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

September 2014 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Belk: Towards Exceptional Scheduling

By: Ethan Bernstein, Saravanan Kesavan, Bradley Staats and Luke Hassall

With 24,000 staff and over 300 stores, Belk Inc. sought to replace its entirely manual labor scheduling system with an automated software solution from Reflexis. Belk hoped the upgrade would simplify scheduling, reduce time employees spent in non-customer-facing roles,... View Details

24 Mar 2022
Research & Ideas

Rituals at Work: Teams That Play Together Stay Together

Love them or hate them, team-building rituals can fortify bonds among coworkers and create the shared sense that work is more meaningful, which may be especially critical now as managers look to reconnect colleagues re-adjusting to work life after two years of COVID-19... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

May 2013
Case

Wendy Peterson

By: Linda A. Hill and Alisa Zalosh

Wendy Peterson was recently promoted to Vice President of Sales at the Plano, Texas, office of AccountBack, an accounting software and services company. To penetrate a perceived market niche, Peterson hires Fred (Xing) Wu, whose familiarity with and access to Chinese... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Conflict Management; Salesforce Management; Rank and Position; Performance Evaluation; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Accounting Industry; Texas

December 1997 (Revised October 2008)
Case

Wolfgang Keller at Konigsbrau-TAK (A)

By: John J. Gabarro

Wolfgang Keller, manager of the Ukrainian subsidiary of a German beer company, faces a managerial dilemma. His subordinate, Dmitri Brodsky, is a talented and experienced commercial director who is not meeting his goals expediently and often requires considerable... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Performance Evaluation; Management Style; Managerial Roles; Behavior; Conflict Management; Situation or Environment; Failure; Employee Relationship Management; Food and Beverage Industry; Ukraine; Germany

30 Jun 2019
Working Paper Summaries

The Comprehensive Effects of Sales Force Management: A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Selection, Compensation, and Training

Keywords: by Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim, and Byoung G. Park

26 May 2021
News

One Year after George Floyd’s Death: 6 Reflections on Corporate America’s Progress

22 Jan 2013
News

From Inside Out, Speed Your Company's Social Transformation

17 Feb 2020
News

Why Don’t Women Promote Themselves?

January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Comcast New England: A Journey of Organizational Transformation

By: Michael Beer and Anita Arun

This case describes how Kevin Casey, Comcast's New England Region general manager, transformed a low commitment and performance organization. When he took charge of this Comcast region he inherited an organization that was bureaucratic, had low customer satisfaction,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Satisfaction; Employee Relationship Management; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Performance Improvement; Telecommunications Industry; New England

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

what performance metrics are truly important and being consistent in their application. There is no point to encourage senior employees to mentor juniors, for example, but only reward them for time spent... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

May 2012
Article

Incentive Schemes, Sorting and Behavioral Biases of Employees: Experimental Evidence

By: Ian Larkin and Stephen Leider

We investigate how the convexity of a firm's incentives interacts with worker overconfidence to affect sorting decisions and performance. We demonstrate experimentally that overconfident employees are more likely to sort into a non-linear incentive scheme over a linear... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Performance; Behavior; Prejudice and Bias; Decisions; Employees; Wages

Find at Harvard

31 Jul 2019
Research & Ideas

Distressed Employees? Try Resilience Training

Every year depression affects one in every five employees and costs American businesses $210 billion in medical bills and lost productivity. In fact, for every worker with a depressive disorder, a company loses an average of 32 productive... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health

15 Mar 2024
HBS Case

Let's Talk: Why It's Time to Stop Avoiding Taboo Topics at Work

The path for advancement for the younger manager will likely happen when the boss retires, but it feels impolitic to broach that topic. “It may suggest the boss is getting too old, is beginning to experience performance decline, or that... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

March 2025 (Revised May 2025)
Case

ING Türkiye: Flexible Work in a Competitive Banking Environment

By: Ashley Whillans and Nico Schaefer

This case explores ING Türkiye’s journey toward workplace flexibility within the traditionally conservative Turkish banking sector. Beginning with early remote work experiments in 2015 and culminating in the FlexING model, by 2024 ING Türkiye had positioned itself as a... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employee Relationship Management; Working Conditions; Business or Company Management; Adaptation; Competition; Organizational Culture; Banking Industry; Turkey