Social Tools - Publications - Faculty & Research

04 Jan 2017
What Do You Think?

How Much Bureaucracy is a Good Thing in Government and Business?

bureaucracies do have decision-making responsibilities. Dean Dastvar put it this way: “Bureaucracy, in some form, is not necessarily an evil but rather a tool which can be refined generation after generation There is a need for reform so... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett

10 Feb 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Investing in Improvement: Strategy and Resource Allocation in Public School Districts

Keywords: by Stacey Childress; Education

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

structure Significantly lower Although some of the factors—like comfort with uncertainty and the ability to identify opportunities—seemed like obvious markers for entrepreneurial success, the study built a statistically reliable and valid View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

07 Jul 2021
Book

Good News for Disgraced Companies: You Can Regain Trust

new book The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It, Sucher and her coauthor, HBS research associate Shalene Gupta, highlight those social media examples along with a global list of companies that have either... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

09 Apr 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

The Dark Side of Performance Bonuses

iPhoto Companies continually test ways to incent employees to perform more effectively, often turning to worker-motivation tools such as bonuses, “up or out” employee ranking tournaments, and employee of the month rewards. Behavioral... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

March 2012
Article

The Incentive Bubble

By: Mihir Desai

The past three decades have seen American capitalism quietly transformed by a single, powerful idea—that financial markets are a suitable tool for measuring performance and structuring compensation. Stock instruments for managers, high-powered incentive contracts for... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Financial Markets; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Governance; Equality and Inequality; Human Capital; United States

Citation

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07 Mar 2023
HBS Case

ChatGPT: Did Big Tech Set Up the World for an AI Bias Disaster?

suggests some of the bias in AI could be mitigated by including people from historically marginalized communities in its design. “The people who will really, really know how tools are being used are refugees or incarcerated people or... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Technology

13 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

What Would It Take to Unlock Microfinance's Full Potential?

In the 50 years since modern microfinance was introduced as a tool to fight poverty, institutions have distributed hundreds of millions of loans to people in developing countries. Such loans are repaid at rates often as high as 98... View Details

Keywords: by Jen McFarland Flint; Financial Services

04 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Need to Solve a Problem? Take a Break From Collaborating

Got a problem? Throw some collaboration software at it. It's a common strategy among today's managers: Organizations spend a lot of money on technology that enables employees to tackle problems collectively. Hence, the market is rife with connectivity View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Video Game; Web Services

23 Apr 2024
In Practice

Getting to Net Zero: The Climate Standards and Ecosystem the World Needs Now

With each month clocking record-breaking temperatures across the planet, this Earth Day reflected the renewed urgency of regulators and businesses to find climate-change solutions. The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently adopted new rules that will mandate... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

29 Jan 2013
First Look

First Look: Jan. 29

research agenda to systematically address the social welfare implications of financial innovation. To complement existing empirical and theoretical methods, we propose that scholars examine case studies of systemic (widely adopted)... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

06 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

Cheese Moving: Effecting Change Rather Than Accepting It

"The problem is not that the mouse is in the maze, but that the maze is in the mouse." What does that mean? A: What is often holding us back from achieving greater success is not real limitations, but that we have internalized environmental pressures, View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

10 Apr 2007
First Look

First Look: April 10, 2007

deforestation campaign in order to make its supply chain more socially and environmentally responsible. Purchase this case: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=907414 Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.: An... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

20 Aug 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Using Investor Relations Proactively

top of things in a more interlinked environment will be asking for more, and more targeted, financial communication. They are gradually becoming more attentive to companies that position themselves as ecological and socially responsible... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

April 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Anthropic: Building Safe AI

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

In late 2024, Anthropic, a leading AI safety and research company, achieved a significant breakthrough with computer use capabilities that allowed AI to interact with computers like humans. Co-founded by former OpenAI employees and known for its generative AI... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business Growth and Maturation; Corporate Strategy; Technology Industry; United States

Citation

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06 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

Updating a Classic: Writing a Great Business Plan

sector and social entrepreneurs. Q: You wrote in the original article that most business plans "waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to the information that really matters to intelligent investors." Still true... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

24 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 24, 2018

overlook our most powerful tool for effecting change: our own thoughts. Through a variety of exercises called Think Keys, Zaltman guides the reader through the mind’s most important unconscious and conscious dynamics. Zaltman has used... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

10 Dec 2021
Research & Ideas

Truth Be Told: Unpacking the Risks of Whistleblowing

the necessary tools to encourage people to come forward with information? Jonas Heese: Our research focuses on specific legislation known as the False Claims Act, which was the first cash-for-information whistleblower law in the world. It... View Details

Keywords: by April White

18 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

When Bias Creeps into AI, Managers Can Stop It by Asking the Right Questions

going on. At the very least, our algorithm provides a simple tool to empower managers to do just that, then it can also help them eliminate or reduce that bias if they want to do so. Ascarza: At the end of the day, it is the firm that... View Details