Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,612)
- Faculty Publications (340)
Workers
→
- 2009
- Working Paper
Labor Regulations and European Private Equity
By: Ant Bozkaya and William R. Kerr
European nations substitute between employment protection regulations and labor market expenditures (e.g., unemployment insurance benefits) for providing worker insurance. Employment regulations more directly tax firms making frequent labor adjustments than other labor... View Details
- November 2009
- Article
What Would Peter Say?
Heeding the wisdom of Peter Drucker might have helped us avoid - and will help us solve - numerous challenges, from restoring trust in business to tackling climate change. He issued early warnings about excessive executive pay, the auto industry's failure to adapt and... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Clusters of Entrepreneurship
By: Edward L. Glaeser, William R. Kerr and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto
Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry... View Details
- Article
Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?
By: Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr
Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across cities and industries. Demographics have limited explanatory power. Overall levels of local customers and suppliers are only... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Operational Failures and Problem Solving: An Empirical Study of Incident Reporting
By: Julia Rose Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer and Michael W. Toffel
Operational failures occur in all industries with consequences that range from minor inconveniences to major catastrophes. Many organizations have implemented incident reporting systems to highlight actual and potential operational failures in order to encourage... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
By: Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver
Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Jieliang Phone Home! (A)
By: Willy Shih, Ethan Bernstein and Nina Bilimoria
At Precision Electro-Tek's mobile phone manufacturing facility in southern China, thousands of operators—bright and capable young men and (mostly) women like Jieliang Hao—are motivated to improve line productivity through small innovations for faster assembly and have... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised August 2021)
- Supplement
Jieliang Phone Home! (B)
By: Willy Shih, Ethan Bernstein and Nina Bilimoria
At Precision Electro-Tek's mobile phone manufacturing facility in southern China, thousands of operators—bright and capable young men and (mostly) women like Jieliang Hao—are motivated to improve line productivity through small innovations for faster assembly and have... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised July 2012)
- Supplement
Jieliang Phone Home! (C)
By: Willy Shih, Ethan Bernstein and Nina Bilimoria
At Precision Electro-Tek's mobile phone manufacturing facility in southern China, thousands of operators - bright and capable young men and (mostly) women like Jieliang Hao are motivated to improve line productivity through small innovations for faster assembly and... View Details
Keywords: Globalization; Compensation and Benefits; Surveys; Innovation and Invention; Management Practices and Processes; Production; Performance Productivity; Groups and Teams; Labor and Management Relations; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Manufacturing Industry; Telecommunications Industry; China
- July 2008
- Article
Crime and Punishment in the 'American Dream'
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We observe that countries where belief in the "American dream" (i.e., effort pays) prevails also set harsher punishment for criminals. We know that beliefs are also correlated with several features of the economic system (taxation, social insurance, etc). Our objective... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
This paper surveys recent empirical studies on the economic impacts of immigration. The survey first examines the magnitude of immigration as an economic phenomenon in various host countries. The second part deals with the assimilation of immigrant workers into... View Details
- April 2008
- Case
Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad
By: Michael Beer and Elizabeth Collins
In May 2007, the Engstrom Auto Mirrors plant, a relatively small supplier based in Indiana, faces a crisis. The business was in the second year of a downturn. Sales had started to decline in 2005; a year later, plant manager Ron Bent had been forced to lay off more... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Incompatible Assumptions: Barriers to Producing Multidisciplinary Knowledge in Communities of Scholarship
By: Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn
Co-locating knowledge workers from different disciplines may be a necessary but insufficient step to generating multidisciplinary knowledge. We explore the role of assumptions underlying knowledge creation within the field of organizational studies, and investigate how... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised May 2008)
- Case
Haier Hefei Electronics Co. (A)
By: Lynn Sharp Paine
The Haier Group, the first mainland Chinese company to make the Financial Times list of Asia's "most admired companies," attributes its success in large measure to the new value system it has sought to instill throughout the organization. However, when Haier takes over... View Details
- 2007
- Chapter
Disrupting Gender, Revising Leadership
By: D. E. Meyerson, R. Ely and Laura Wernick
In this chapter, we present a case study of men on two off-shore oil platforms—a workplace that has traditionally rewarded men for their masculine displays of bravado and their interactions centered on proving masculinity—in which such displays and interactions were... View Details
- 1 Jul 2007
- Conference Presentation
The Secret of Commercial Microfinance's Sustainability: Turning Social Workers into Bankers or Bankers into Social Workers? Neither
By: Julie Battilana and Silvia Dorado
Keywords: Microfinance
- June 2007
- Article
Does Employment Protection Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States
By: David H Autor, William R. Kerr and Adriana D. Kugler
Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distorting production choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiring below efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affect... View Details
Keywords: Theory; Production; Selection and Staffing; Cost; Employment; Capital; Performance Productivity; United States
- May 2007
- Article
Inner Work Life: Understanding the Subtext of Business Performance
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer
Anyone in management knows that employees have their good days and their bad days and that, for the most part, the reasons for their ups and downs are unknown. Most managers simply shrug their shoulders at this fact of work life. But does it matter, in terms of... View Details
- February 2005 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
Shinhan Financial Group (A)
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Ryan Raffaelli
Mr. Young Hwi Choi, president and CEO of Shinhan Financial Group, embarked on an unconventional post-merger integration strategy with recently acquired Chohung Bank. The strategy focused on integrating traditional operations while attending to employees' reactions to... View Details
- September 2004
- Article
Capital Controls: A Political Economy Approach
By: Laura Alfaro
This paper examines the economic consequences of political conflicts that arise when countries implement capital controls. In an overlapping-generations model, agents vote on whether to open or close an economy to capital flows. The young (workers) receive income from... View Details