Publications

2023
Working Paper

When Does Gamified Training Improve Performance? The Roles of Office and Leader Engagement

By: Ryan W. Buell, Wei Cai and Tatiana Sandino

Gamified training is a novel management control system in which companies use gamification techniques to engage and motivate employees to learn. This study empirically examines the performance consequences of gamified training using data from a natural field... View Details

Keywords: Gamified Training; Management Control Systems; Employee Engagement; Employees; Learning; Training; Motivation and Incentives; Performance

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March 2019
Technical Note

Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both—Lessons from Retail & Service Chains (Abridged)

By: Tatiana Sandino

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Standards; Employees; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Retail Industry; Service Industry

March–April 2019
Article

Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees

By: Ryan W. Buell

Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Customers; Services; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Customer Satisfaction; Behavior; Service Industry

February 2019 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Hot Chicken Takeover

By: William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman and Olivia Hull

By December 2018, entrepreneur Joe DeLoss’s fried chicken company, Hot Chicken Takeover, has opened three restaurants in Columbus, Ohio, using an unconventional employment model that helps people with criminal records get back on their feet. DeLoss is proud of the... View Details

February 2019
Teaching Note

Talent@Tencent

By: Tarun Khanna

Late in 2016, two senior human resources (HR) executives at Tencent Holdings (Tencent), China’s leading Internet services firm, are assessing the effectiveness of the company’s talent management practices in responding to Tencent’s sustained hypergrowth. Over the... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employees; Retention; Entrepreneurship; Employee Relationship Management; Web Services Industry; China

2019
Working Paper

Does Public Ownership and Accountability Increase Diversity? Evidence from IPOs

By: Rembrand Koning and John-Paul Ferguson

Does public ownership improve employment diversity? Organizational researchers theorize that increased transparency to regulators and the public should lead firms to conform to legal and social norms—but that social closure and decoupling should preserve the status... View Details

Keywords: IPO; Initial Public Offering; Employees; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; United States

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January 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Chiacchierone's Owners Chat About Tipping

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Michael S. Kaufman

The founders of a successful upscale restaurant operating with a "no-tipping" policy are faced with employee defections to tipped establishments as well as difficulty in recruiting. They must decide whether to retain or jettison their policy and determine how to deal... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Policy; Food and Beverage Industry

January–February 2019
Article

Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance

By: Claudine Gartenberg, Andrea Prat and George Serafeim

We construct a measure of corporate purpose within a sample of U.S. companies based on approximately 500,000 survey responses of worker perceptions about their employers. We find that this measure of purpose is not related to financial performance. However, high... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Purpose; Purpose; Employee Motivation; Belief Systems; Corporate Performance; Human Capital; Middle Management; Culture; Corporate Culture; Meaning; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Employees; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Performance Effectiveness

SSRN

December 2018
Article

Improving Resilience Among Employees High in Depression, Anxiety, and Workplace Distress

By: Allison L. Williams, Acacia C. Parks, Grace Cormier, Julia Stafford and A.V. Whillans

Depression and anxiety are costly for both employees and employers, in terms of direct medical costs as well as costs stemming from lost productive time and missed days at work. Resilience training has been shown to improve workplace functioning for employees, which... View Details

Keywords: Depression; Anxiety; Engagement; Resilience; Presenteeism; Employee Engagement; Mental Health; Employees; Emotions; Health; Internet and the Web; Performance Productivity

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October 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Background Note

Note on Managing Workforce Reductions

By: Ethan Bernstein and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Each individual who enters an organization will, at some point, leave. And yet most future leaders spend significantly more effort learning about recruiting than departures, despite the sensitivity and challenges associated with the latter. This note is intended to... View Details

Keywords: Layoffs; Downsizing; Workforce; Workforce Reductions; Delayering; Human Resources; Employees; Resignation and Termination; Management; Organizations; Reputation

October 2018
Case

American Family Insurance and the Artificial Intelligence Opportunity

By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson

2020
Working Paper

Incentive Power and Knowledge Sharing Among Employees: Evidence from the Field

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

There is consensus, both in the literature and in practice, about knowledge sharing within organizations being a key determinant of success. However, organizations struggle to sustain employees’ engagement in knowledge sharing. One challenge lies in the fact that,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Knowledge Sharing; Employee Driven Innovation; Innovation Appropriability; Contract Design; High-powered Incentives; Low-powered Incentives; Incentives; Pay-for-Performance; Rank-and-file; Employees; Knowledge Sharing; Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives; Creativity; Performance

2018
Chapter

Work and Workplace

By: Kai Ruggeri, Jana Berkessel, Jascha Achterberg, Gerhard M. Prinz, Alessandra Luna-Navarro, Jon M. Jachimowicz and A. V. Whillans

Work is a major part of many lives. While individual experiences with work will differ—from how long we work to what jobs we have and to what extent we enjoy them—almost everyone is affected by employment, whether they have a job or not. Decades of research in the... View Details

Keywords: Workplace; Behavioral Insights; Retirement Savings; Working Conditions; Employees; Performance; Happiness; Health; Job Search; Change

June 2018
Article

The Power of Workplace Rewards: Using Self-Determination Theory to Understand Why Reward Satisfaction Matters for Workers Around the World

By: Anais Thibault Landry and A.V. Whillans

How can workplace rewards promote employee well-being and engagement? To answer these questions, we utilized self-determination theory to examine whether reward satisfaction predicted employee well-being, job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and affective... View Details

Keywords: Workplace; Rewards; Motivation; Employees; Satisfaction; Motivation and Incentives; Welfare

June 2018
Teaching Note

Difficult Conversations and Dealing with Challenging Situations at Work

By: Boris Groysberg and Amram Migdal

Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 416-031, 416-032, 416-033, 416-034, 416-035, and 416-036. View Details

June 2018
Article

Firm Turnover and the Return of Racial Establishment Segregation

By: John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning

Racial segregation between American workplaces is greater today than it was a generation ago. This increase has happened alongside the declines in within-establishment occupational segregation on which most prior research has focused. We examine more than 40 years of... View Details

Keywords: Firm Entry; Stratification; Segregration; Entrepreneurship; Business Ventures; Employees; Diversity; Race; Segmentation; United States

May 2018
Article

Effects of an Information Sharing System on Employee Creativity, Engagement, and Performance

By: Shelley Xin Li and Tatiana Sandino

Many service organizations rely on information sharing systems to boost employee creativity to meet customer needs. We conducted a field experiment in a retail chain, based on a registered report accepted by Journal of Accounting Research, to test whether an... View Details

Keywords: Information; Knowledge Sharing; Employees; Creativity; Performance

May–June 2018
Article

Layoffs That Don't Break Your Company: Better Approaches to Workforce Transition

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta

Today layoffs have become companies’ default response to the challenges created by advances in technology and global competition. Yet research shows that job cuts rarely help senior leaders achieve their goals. Too often, they’re done for short-term gain, but the cost... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employees; Transition; Strategic Planning

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May–June 2018
Article

Structure That's Not Stifling: How to Give Your People Essential Direction—Without Shutting Them Down

By: Ranjay Gulati

Most leaders view employee freedoms and operational controls as antagonists in a tug-of-war. They tend to focus on regulating workers’ behavior, often putting a damper on commitment, innovation, and performance without realizing it. But freedom and control aren’t zero... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Mission and Purpose; Framework; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Effectiveness