Publications

Teaching Interest

Organizational Behavior

Each of us maintains a set of beliefs and general assumptions about humans and their behavior, and those assumptions form the foundation for our beliefs about what motivates individuals; about how individuals make decisions; and about the ways in which the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Leadership; Motivation And Incentives; Decision-making; Culture

March 2011 (Revised June 2012)
Case

Office of Technology Transfer - Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences

By: Willy Shih, Sen Chai, Kamen Bliznashki and Courtney Hyland

Gordon Zong is trying to teach Chinese universities and research institutes how to do effective technology transfer and IP licensing, but he is trying to do it in an environment with weak property rights and an underdeveloped support infrastructure. As the managing... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Patents; Knowledge Management; Law Enforcement; Business and Government Relations; Research and Development; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; China

01 Dec 2011
What Do You Think?

Thinking Slow: An Argument for Bureaucracy?

decision. Good leaders know when to think slow. All of us need mechanisms for helping us to know. Some elements of bureaucracy can be included among the devices. But, as Ganesh Ramakrishnan said, " we probably (need) to enrich the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

13 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Improving Public Health for the Poor

School of Public Health, Project Antares aims to create a system for devising commercial incentives that provide affordable public health initiatives, or "interventions" in healthcare parlance.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

March 2018
Case

GiveDirectly

By: John Beshears, Joshua Schwartzstein, Tiffany Y. Chang and Brian J. Hall

How should nonprofits design compensation systems to attract and retain talent? GiveDirectly is a respected charitable organization with an unconventional approach. Instead of spending on traditional aid programs in areas such as health care and food access in... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofits; Charity; Effective Altruism; International Aid; Compensation; Goals; Bonuses; Incentives; GiveDirectly; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Recruitment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

April 2006
Case

Adrian Ivinson at the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair

By: Robert Steven Kaplan and Ayesha Kanji

Adrian Ivinson is the director of Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair (HCNR), a not-for-profit research center at the Harvard Medical School (HMS). The center was started in late 2000 with a gift of $37.5 million from an anonymous donor. Its mandate was to... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Power and Influence; Organizational Culture; Research and Development; Nonprofit Organizations; Motivation and Incentives; Change Management; Alignment; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Health Industry; Massachusetts

10 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Government Policy

"A certain efficiency exists in the market when it comes to which businesses get off the ground.” "Thanks to this unusually detailed data, we can determine for each individual what fraction of their colleagues were entrepreneurs... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

30 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Market Makers Bid for Success

of FairMarket, which provides online auction services for a variety of merchant and community sites. Meakem is the founder and CEO of FreeMarkets, which creates business-to-business online auctions for... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Web Services; Technology

January 2013
Case

Luotang Power: Variances Explained

By: Robert Simons and Craig Chapman

The general manager of Luotang Power, a coal-fired power plant located in central China, reviews annual results before a meeting with the board of directors. He thought the company performed well during the year and both plant availability and fuel economy had improved... View Details

Keywords: China; Financial Statements; Management Accounting; Variance Analysis; Environmental Regulations; Incentives; Electric Power Generation; Contracts; Valuation; Energy Generation; Accounting; Performance Evaluation; Energy Industry; China

Winter 2013
Article

Corporate Governance Reform and Executive Incentives: Implications for Investments and Risk-Taking

By: Daniel Cohen, Aiyesha Dey and Thomas Lys

We investigate the mechanism through which the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) was associated with changes in corporate investment strategies. We document that the passage of the governance regulations in SOX was followed by a significant decline in pay‐performance... View Details

Find at Harvard

July 2012 (Revised February 2017)
Teaching Note

Dovernet

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This is the teaching note for Dovernet (HBS No. 112-061) View Details

Keywords: Execution; Management Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Performance Goals; Incentives; Strategy

29 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Do Disasters Rally Support for Climate Action? It's Complicated.

Environmental disasters like wildfires can ignite awareness of climate change and boost eco-friendly politicians’ careers. But do voters perceive a tradeoff between environmental policies and local economic growth? In Brazil, home to a majority of the Amazon tropical... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

2022
Conference Presentation

Workplace Competition and the Desire for Uniqueness

By: Samantha N. Smith, Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios and Katherine L. Milkman

Across four preregistered studies (n=3,202), we find that intra-group competition increases people’s willingness to join groups where they will be underrepresented along a given identity dimension (e.g., area of specialization, political affiliation). Via mediation and... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Culture

2014
Working Paper

Sharing Design Rights: A Commons Approach for Developing Infrastructure

By: Nuno Gil and Carliss Y. Baldwin

This study empirically investigates the relationship between design structure and organization structure in the context of new infrastructure development projects. Our research setting is a capital program to develop new school buildings in the city of Manchester, UK.... View Details

Keywords: Design; Buildings and Facilities; Education