Publications

Educators

06 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

How Small Wins Unleash Creativity

authors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer discuss how even seemingly humdrum events can make huge differences in employees' emotional and intellectual well-being. "There's no reason, no matter how resource-constrained an... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

06 May 2008
First Look

First Look: May 6, 2008

emotional state, which the authors call competitive arousal, often leads to bad decisions. Managers can minimize the potential for competitive arousal and the harm it can inflict by avoiding certain types of interaction and targeting the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

February 2017
Module Note

Leading Global Teams

By: Tsedal Neeley

This module aims to help students become effective leaders and members of global teams that must work together across national boundaries and toward a common goal. Students will learn to diagnose the challenges that global teams often face as well as strategies that... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Leadership; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

September 2017
Article

The Advocacy Trap: When Legitimacy Building Inhibits Organizational Learning

By: Tiona Zuzul and Amy C. Edmondson

This paper describes a relationship between legitimacy building and learning for a new firm in a nascent industry. Through a longitudinal study of a new firm in the nascent smart city industry, we found that the firm failed to make progress on important internal... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Learning; Advocacy; Organizations; Learning; Organizational Culture; Entrepreneurship

11 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 11, 2007

candidates—one of whom may be suited to the increasingly demanding CEO role. The key? Groom "inside-outsiders." These leaders view their role through the lens of someone who just bought the company—unencumbered by the cognitive and View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2014
Working Paper

Conflicts of College Conference Realignment: Pursuing Revenue, Preserving Tradition, and Assessing the Future

By: Vadim Kogan and Stephen A. Greyser

Over the past two years, conference realignment has taken a front seat in the college sports landscape. Economic incentives were too attractive to overlook for some universities. College football programs across the country have a lot at stake, because for many,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Motivation and Incentives; Higher Education; Sports; Revenue; Emotions; Sports Industry; Education Industry

30 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

Why Anger Makes a Wrongly Accused Person Look Guilty

whether an accused person has committed the offense, based on the emotions he or she expresses. Such an unfair judgment can have grave consequences, affecting the accused person’s career and even leading to job loss. "People who are... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Article

Why Doesn't Capitalism Flow to Poor Countries?

By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch

We show that capitalism is far from common around the world. Outside a small group of rich countries, heavy regulation of business, leftist rhetoric, and interventionist beliefs flourish. We relate these phenomena to the presence of corruption, with causality running... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Voting; Economic Systems; Fairness; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Emotions

19 Feb 2008
Research & Ideas

Radical Design, Radical Results

When furniture designer Herman Miller presented a prototype of its sleek, mesh Aeron chair to a consumer focus group, many asked if they could see a finished, upholstered version. Innovative product design can be a risky proposition. Yet as consumer purchases become... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Consumer Products

2024
Working Paper

Priceless: How to Create, Trade, and Protect What Matters Most

By: Debora L. Spar

This article explores the concept of the "sacred economy," a realm of human interactions and exchanges that transcends traditional market dynamics. It illustrates the emotional and relational aspects of human connections that cannot be quantified or traded like... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Relationships; Human Needs; Goods and Commodities

SSRN

October 2012
Article

The Gifts We Keep on Giving: Documenting and Destigmatizing the Regifting Taboo

By: Gabrielle S. Adams, Francis J. Flynn and Michael I. Norton

Five studies investigate whether the practice of "regifting"-a social taboo-is as offensive to givers as regifters assume. Participants who imagined regifting thought that the original givers would be more offended than givers reported feeling, to such an extent that... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Attitudes; Behavior; Research

January 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Ken Talbot—Cautionary Tale in Estate Planning

By: Christina R. Wing and Faith Lyons

In 2010, Ken Talbot, a self-made Australian billionaire, was traveling throughout Africa to bring his innovative coal technology to the continent when he perished in a plane crash. His will was originally created years prior when his estate worth was estimated to be AU... View Details

Keywords: Estate Planning; Entrepreneurship; Assets; Agreements and Arrangements; Lawsuits and Litigation; Valuation; Family and Family Relationships; Conflict Management; Australia; Africa

Educators

13 Feb 2024
HBS Seminar

Stijn van Osselaer, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

February 9, 2024
Article

Addressing Climate Change with Behavioral Science: A Global Intervention Tournament in 63 Countries

By: Madalina Vlasceanu, Kimberly C. Doell, Joseph B. Bak-Coleman, Boryana Todorova, Michael M. Berkebile-Weinberg, Amit Goldenberg, Eric Shuman and et al.

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Policy; Knowledge Sharing; Values and Beliefs

January 2015 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Mauboussin

By: Anat Keinan, Sandrine Crener and Audrey Azoulay

Mauboussin is a French jewelry brand founded in 1827 in Paris. In the 1920s, the company earned a huge notoriety for capturing the aesthetic and emotional dimension of the Art Deco movement in its design and gained a worldwide reputation for innovation and expertise in... View Details

Educators

2009
Article

Implicit Affect in Organizations

By: Sigal G. Barsade, Lakshmi Ramarajan and Drew Westen

Our goal is to integrate the construct of implicit affect—affective processes activated or processed outside of conscious awareness that influence ongoing thought, behavior, and conscious emotional experience—into the field of organizational behavior. We begin by... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Framework; Organizational Culture; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Emotions; Motivation and Incentives; Perspective

20 Mar 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, March 20, 2018

attained top positions in corporations or professional services firms. These women thrived, they found, because of three characteristics that are key to resilience: emotional intelligence, authenticity, and agility. The women were adept... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2022
Book

Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies

By: Ranjay Gulati

This book offers a compelling reassessment and defense of purpose as a management ethos, documenting the vast performance gains and social benefits that become possible when firms manage to get purpose right. Few business topics have aroused more skepticism in recent... View Details

Keywords: Purpose; Business And Society; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Performance Effectiveness; Organizational Culture

May 17, 2023
Article

Don't Let Passion Lead to Burnout on Your Team

By: Joy Bredehorst, Kai Krautter, Jirs Meuris and Jon M. Jachimowicz

Passion is often heralded as the key to a fulfilling and successful career, but the authors’ recent research suggests that it can also come at a cost: Feeling passionate about work can lead to exhaustion and even burnout. Through studies with more than 700 employees... View Details

Keywords: Burnout; Emotions; Work-Life Balance; Employees