Publications

24 Oct 2016
Research & Ideas

Bernie Madoff Explains Himself

between right and wrong is not sufficient to avoid falling into the behavioral traps people can face when under pressure to succeed. Answering a single question, Madoff exhibits several all-too-familiar cognitive biases, psychological... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

November 2020 (Revised March 2022)
Teaching Note

Social Salary Setting at Spiber

By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 920-050. The case tells the story of Spiber, a Japanese technology start-up company. To reflect the company’s values, the leadership team implemented a new and unique salary-setting process: each employee had the authority to choose their... View Details

Keywords: Compensation; General Management; Employee Benefits; Incentives; Motivation; Compensation and Benefits; Fairness; Motivation and Incentives; Management; Happiness; Negotiation; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Japan

Purchase

October 2012
Article

Honesty Requires Time (and Lack of Justifications)

By: Shaul Shalvi, Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer

Recent research suggests that refraining from cheating in tempting situations requires self-control, which indicates that serving self-interest is an automatic tendency. However, evidence also suggests that people cheat to the extent that they can justify their... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Cognition and Thinking

01 Sep 2023
News

Money Does Grow on (Family) Trees

disclose this to people who take the test.” Despite the potential for uprooting one’s expected family tree and the privacy and ethics concerns surrounding sharing one’s genetic code with for-profit companies, DNA testing proved popular... View Details

Keywords: April White; Illustrations by Fabio Consoli; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

01 Jun 2023
HBS Case

A Nike Executive Hid His Criminal Past to Turn His Life Around. What If He Didn't Have To?

cannot be valuable within an organization.” As his community deteriorates, Miller’s behavior spirals How did Miller end up in prison in the first place? Research shows that poverty and imprisonment are closely linked. A 2018 Brookings... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Apparel & Accessories

09 Apr 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

The Dark Side of Performance Bonuses

several years ago, is that those bank bonuses also caused loan officers to perceive reality differently—they believed those loans would succeed. It’s not just financial incentives that are under study. Employers seek to change the View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

15 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 15, 2008

the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-044.pdf See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People's Unethical Behavior Authors:Francesca Gino, Don A. Moore, and Max H. Bazerman Abstract It is common for people to be more critical of... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

January 2023
Article

The Dark Side of Machiavellian Rhetoric: Signaling in Reward-Based Crowdfunding Performance

By: Goran Calic, Rene Arseneault and Maryam Ghasemaghaei

In this study, we explore the impact of Machiavellian rhetoric on fundraising within the increasingly important context of online crowdfunding. The “all-or-nothing” funding model used by the world’s largest crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, may be an attractive... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Communication Strategy; Entrepreneurial Finance; Behavior

Register to Read

December 2019
Article

Brokers and Order Flow Leakage: Evidence from Fire Sales

By: Andrea Barbon, Marco Di Maggio, Francesco Franzoni and Augustin Landier

Using trade-level data, we study whether brokers play a role in spreading order flow information. We focus on large portfolio liquidations, which result in temporary drops in stock prices, and identify the brokers that intermediate these trades. We show that these... View Details

Keywords: Predatory Trading; Back Running; Fire Sales; Brokers; Stocks; Price; Information; Knowledge Dissemination; Ethics

October 2017 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Medicetra Medtech Company, Inc.

By: Doug J. Chung

Medicetra MedTech Company is a dental equipment distributor, and senior management is deciding whether to implement a new incentive compensation program for the sales force. For many years, Medicetra had paid salespeople only a fixed salary. Although the current plan... View Details

Keywords: Sales Compensation; Sales Force Retention; Employee Fairness; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Retention; Fairness; Performance Improvement

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Web

Standards of Conduct - Recruiting

the following recruiting standards of conduct to provide the foundation for a fair and ethical recruiting process. By using the HBS recruiting platform 12twenty to post jobs, host events, or access resume databases, you are considered a... View Details

18 Nov 2002
Research & Ideas

Where Morals and Profits Meet: The Corporate Value Shift

destroy health, wealth, and life itself. The issues span the ethical spectrum: falsified books and records, misleading communications, defective and dangerous products shipped without warnings or information, abusive View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

28 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 28

literature in behavioral ethics and moral psychology on ordinary unethical behavior. Publisher's link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154615000443 April 2015 Academy of Management... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2021
Conference Presentation

An Algorithmic Framework for Fairness Elicitation

By: Christopher Jung, Michael J. Kearns, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth, Logan Stapleton and Zhiwei Steven Wu

We consider settings in which the right notion of fairness is not captured by simple mathematical definitions (such as equality of error rates across groups), but might be more complex and nuanced and thus require elicitation from individual or collective stakeholders.... View Details

Keywords: Algorithmic Fairness; Machine Learning; Fairness; Framework; Mathematical Methods

July 2024
Article

Chatbots and Mental Health: Insights into the Safety of Generative AI

By: Julian De Freitas, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp and Stefano Puntoni

Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers. Due to the ‘black box’ nature of the algorithms, it is impossible to predict in advance how these conversations will unfold. Behavioral research provides little insight into potential safety... View Details

Keywords: Autonomy; Chatbots; New Technology; Brand Crises; Mental Health; Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Behavior; Well-being; Technological Innovation; Ethics

05 Jul 2012
What Do You Think?

Why Is Trust So Hard to Achieve in Management?

Summing Up Do Managers Take Trust for Granted? Trust is a big issue these days judging from the volume of responses to this month's column. Its importance in management is agreed on. There is a long list of behaviors that can damage it.... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Article

Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent Cultures

By: Julian De Freitas, Hagop Sarkissian, George E. Newman, Igor Grossman, Felipe De Brigard, Andres Luco and Joshua Knobe

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to... View Details

Keywords: Concepts; Social Cognition; Moral Reasoning; True Self; Culture; Misanthropy; Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Moral Sensibility

2010
Article

I May Not Agree With You, but I Trust You: Caring About Social Issues Signals Integrity

By: Julian Zlatev

What characteristics of an individual signal trustworthiness to other people? I propose that individuals who care about contentious social issues signal to observers that they have integrity and thus can be trusted. Critically, this signal conveys trustworthiness... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; Moral Sensibility; Perception; Trust