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- August 2020
- Article
Workplace Knowledge Flows
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
We conducted a field experiment in a sales firm to test whether improving knowledge flows between coworkers affects productivity. Our design allows us to compare different management practices and to isolate whether frictions to knowledge transmission primarily reside... View Details
- July 2020
- Supplement
Instabeat—Crossing the Finish Line
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Nicole Tempest Keller and Alpana Thapar
Lebanese entrepreneur Hind Hobeika was just 21 years old when she launched her startup, Instabeat, which had developed the first real-time bio-feedback device for swimmers to monitor and improve their performance. It had been an extremely testing 10-year journey to... View Details
- Article
Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives
By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler
Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are... View Details
- July–September 2020
- Article
Innovation Contest: Effect of Perceived Support for Learning on Participation
By: Olivia Jung, Andrea Blasco and Karim R. Lakhani
Background: Frontline staff are well positioned to conceive improvement opportunities based on first-hand knowledge of what works and does not work. The innovation contest may be a relevant and useful vehicle to elicit staff ideas. However, the success of the... View Details
- June 2020 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Deloitte's Pixel (A): Consulting with Open Talent
By: Michael L. Tushman, John Winsor and Kerry Herman
Deloitte Consulting’s General Manager Balaji Bondili, head of Pixel, considers how best to grow Deloitte Consulting’s use of open (on-demand) talent, as consulting companies and their clients face transformative change in the way client engagements and projects get... View Details
- May 8, 2020
- Article
Lead Your Team Into a Post-Pandemic World
By: Hubert Joly
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has tested leaders, especially as it relates to how they lead their workers. As the crisis goes on, many that the author has spoken with have begun to frame it around three distinct phases: The Shelter-in-Place Phase, the Re-opening... View Details
- May 6, 2020
- Article
We Shouldn't Wait for a Breakthrough in the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Gary P. Pisano
The ultimate solutions to the COVID-19 crisis may be big breakthroughs in building massive test and trace capacity and developing vaccines and drug remedies. But in the meantime, we should not ignore the potential cumulative impact of the many small things we already... View Details
- Article
The Impact of Penalties for Wrong Answers on the Gender Gap in Test Scores
By: Katherine B. Coffman and David Klinowski
Multiple-choice exams play a critical role in university admissions across the world. A key question is whether imposing penalties for wrong answers on these exams deters guessing from women more than men, disadvantaging female test-takers. We consider data from a... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Changing Ingroup Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the U.S.
By: Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini
How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new outgroup change the ingroup's perceptions of other outgroups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of... View Details
Keywords: In-group-out-group Relations; Immigration; Race; Attitudes; Boundaries; Prejudice and Bias
- April 2020 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Singapore: 'Facing Challenges Together'
Since its expulsion from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore had transformed itself from a third world island nation into a vibrant city-state with one of the highest levels of GDP per capita in the world. However, sluggish demand among Singapore's major trade partners began... View Details
Keywords: Savings; Productivity Growth; Productivity; Economic Institutions; Economic Development; Government And Business; Government Policy; Economic Policy; Country Analysis; Investment And Savings; Institutions; Economic Growth; Macroeconomics; Development Economics; Investment; Government and Politics; Trade; Policy; Research and Development; Analysis; Economics; Business and Government Relations; Asia; Singapore; Southeast Asia
- 2020
- Working Paper
Costly External Financing and Monetary Policy Transmission: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
By: Emily Williams
I provide new evidence that large and small banks have different external financing costs, which generates cross sectional variation in a deposits market pricing power channel of monetary policy transmission. I do so by exploiting a natural experiment using anti-trust... View Details
- April 2020
- Article
Field Comparisons of Incentive-Compatible Preference Elicitation Techniques
By: Shawn A. Cole, A. Nilesh Fernando, Daniel Stein and Jeremy Tobacman
Knowledge of consumer demand is important for firms, policy makers, and economists. One common tool for incentive-compatible demand elicitation, the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism, has been widely used in laboratory settings but rarely evaluated for... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Hunting for Talent: Firm-Driven Labor Market Search in the United States
By: Ines Black, Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
This article analyzes the phenomenon of firm-driven labor market search—or outbound recruiting—where recruiters are increasingly “hunting for talent” rather than passively relying on workers to search for and apply to job vacancies. Our research methodology leverages... View Details
- March 30, 2020
- Article
Why Is the U.S. Behind on Coronavirus Testing?
By: Stefan Thomke
Coronavirus testing is needed to address the uncertainty in making decisions about patient treatment, resource allocation, policy, and so much more. Answers to questions such as “When should we relax social distancing measures—and for whom?” or “How many ventilators... View Details
- March 2020
- Technical Note
Intrapreneurship: Leading Innovation Efforts in Established Organizations
By: Karen G. Mills and Annie Dang
“Intrapreneurship” is the use of entrepreneurial management techniques within established companies to create new environments that foster innovation. Mature firms have consistently faced risk of elimination from competitors, shifting consumer preferences, and... View Details
- March 24, 2020
- Article
A Time to Lead with Purpose and Humanity
By: Hubert Joly
In these unprecedented times, corporate leaders are being put to the test. Many just last summer had signed the Business Roundtable Statement of Purpose that committed their companies to serving all stakeholders. The pandemic is the first test of these principles. The... View Details
- March 24, 2020
- Article
Delayed Negative Effects of Prosocial Spending on Happiness
By: Armin Falk and Thomas Graeber
Does prosocial behavior promote happiness? We test this longstanding hypothesis in a behavioral experiment that extends the scope of previous research. In our Saving a Life paradigm, every participant either saved one human life in expectation by triggering a targeted... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
Dexai Prepares to Put 'Alfred' to the Test
By: Lena G. Goldberg, Michael S. Kaufman and Joseph A. Paul
- March 2020
- Case
Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander... View Details
Keywords: Influencer Marketing; Monetization; Female Ceo; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Influencers; Influencer; Direct-to-consumer; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Marketing Communications; Consumer Products Industry; Financial Services Industry; Advertising Industry; London; United Kingdom; United States; Europe; North America
- March–April 2020
- Article
Avoid the Pitfalls of A/B Testing
By: Iavor I. Bojinov, Guillaume Sait-Jacques and Martin Tingley
Online experiments measuring whether “A,” usually the current approach, is inferior to “B,” a proposed improvement, have become integral to the product-development cycle, especially at digital enterprises. But often firms make serious mistakes in conducting these... View Details