Publications

July – August 2008
Article

Leaders in Denial

By: Richard S. Tedlow

Henry Ford's stubborn refusal to admit the changeability of consumer demand allowed Chrysler and GM to horn in on his market. Half a century later the whole U.S. auto industry made the same mistake: Enter the Japanese. But denial comes in many forms, as Sears, Digital... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Leadership; Demand and Consumers; Auto Industry; United States

25 Aug 2017
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: After Charlottesville, Where Does a CEO's Responsibility Lie?

Leaders of publicly held companies are required to exercise their best judgment in pursuit of the interests of the business, and this gives them enormous flexibility to make whatever choice they see fit. This a test that cannot be... View Details

Keywords: by Gautam Mukunda

28 Nov 2012
What Do You Think?

Should Pay-for-Performance Compensation be Replaced?

incentives in influencing desired effort, especially if they are routinely expected and aimed at managers who may be relatively insensitive to added monetary awards. Any effort to inject long-term thinking into pay for performance requires some amount of View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Forthcoming
Article

People Overestimate How Harshly They Are Evaluated for Disengaging from Passion Pursuit

By: Zachariah Berry, Brian J. Lucas and Jon M. Jachimowicz

The call to pursue one’s passion is ubiquitous advice, and prior research highlights the many upsides to doing so. To pursue one’s passion sustainably, people need to try different pursuits— and critically, drop those that are not tenable for them. However,... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Attitudes; Perception; Judgments; Behavior; Goals and Objectives

February 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

GE's Growth Strategy: The Immelt Initiative

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Follows the actions of GE CEO, Jeff Immelt, as he implements a growth strategy for the $150 billion company in a tough business environment. In four years, he reinvigorates GE's technology, expands its services, develops a commercial focus, pushes developing countries,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Judgments; Global Strategy; Leadership Style; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Structure

Educators

Article

The Performer's Reactions to Procedural Injustice: When Prosocial Identity Reduces Prosocial Behavior

By: Adam M. Grant, Andrew Molinsky, Joshua D. Margolis, Melissa Kamin and William Schiano

Considerable research has examined how procedural injustice affects victims and witnesses of unfavorable outcomes, with little attention to the “performers” who deliver these outcomes. Drawing on dissonance theory, we hypothesized that performers' reactions to... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Judgments; Fairness; Outcome or Result; Behavior; Identity; Power and Influence

14 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Difficulties for Women Bridging Racial, Generational, and Global Divides

one reader in the comments section of Oprah.com. "Oprah—you should be ashamed of yourself!" “Let's replace our judgment with curiosity” Among scholars, it's called "intersectionality"—the obvious yet complex idea that gender interacts... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

20 Sep 2004
Research & Ideas

How Consumers Value Global Brands

developing countries like China and India as they are in developed countries in Europe. What we didn't find was anti-American sentiment that colored judgments about U.S.-based global brands. Since American companies dominate the... View Details

Keywords: by Douglas B. Holt, John A. Quelch & Earl L. Taylor

11 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: ’Entrepreneurship and Multinationals’

both the pace of globalization in today's world, and the reappearance of multiple critics. This book is motivated by the belief that it is important to provide robust historical evidence on which to inform opinions and judgment about both... View Details

Keywords: Re: Geoffrey G. Jones

23 Nov 1999
Research & Ideas

Bringing the Environment Down to Earth

environmental problem affect their judgment of the scientific evidence that identifies the problem. Pulling the wool over your own eyes may convince you that you've averted disaster. In the long run, however, the fact that you can't see... View Details

Keywords: by Forest Reinhardt

September 2023
Article

Judging Foreign Startups

By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Rembrand Koning and Tarun Khanna

Can accelerators pick the most promising startup ideas no matter their provenance? Using unique data from a global accelerator where judges are randomly assigned to evaluate startups headquartered across the globe, we show that judges are less likely to recommend... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship And Strategy; Global Strategy; Entrepreneurial Financing; Innovation; International; Entrepreneurship; Judgments; Business Startups; Geographic Location; Growth and Development Strategy

June 1992
Article

Reversals of Preference in Allocation Decisions: Judging an Alternative Versus Choosing Among Alternatives

By: M. H. Bazerman, G. F. Loewenstein and S. B. White

Keywords: Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments

2008
Working Paper

The Artful Dodger: Answering the Wrong Question the Right Way

By: Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton

What happens when people try to "dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? In four online studies using paid participants, we show that listeners can fail to detect dodges when speakers answer similar—but objectively... View Details

Keywords: Communication Strategy; Interpersonal Communication; Judgments; Perception

August 1981
Case

West Point: The Cheating Incident (C)

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger

An outline of the Secretary of the Army's decision in the matter of the 1976 cheating scandal at West Point. View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Ethics; Judgments; Government Administration; Public Administration Industry; Education Industry

Educators

13 Jun 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, June 13

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52729 May 2017 Judgment and Decision Making Is Saving Lives Your Task or God's? Religiosity, Belief in God, and Moral Judgment By: Barak-Corren, Netta, and Max... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

When Dreaming Is Believing: The (Motivated) Interpretation of Dreams

By: Carey K. Morewedge and Michael I. Norton

This research investigated laypeople's interpretation of their dreams. Participants from both Eastern and Western cultures believed that dreams contain hidden truths (Study 1) and considered dreams to provide more meaningful information about the world than similar... View Details

Keywords: Anchoring; Attribution; Dreams; Motivated Reasoning; Unconscious Thought; Communication Intention and Meaning; Judgments; Values and Beliefs; Information; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Motivation and Incentives

July 1996 (Revised July 2009)
Background Note

Antitrust and Competitive Strategy from the 1990s to 2008 (Condensed)

Describes U.S. antitrust policy, including major judicial decisions and their impact on competitive strategy. Omits information on the history of antitrust policy and on the specific prohibitions of the various acts. View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Policy; Laws and Statutes; Monopoly; Business and Government Relations; Competitive Strategy; United States

Educators

2022
Chapter

Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning Toward the Greater Good

By: Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls employed the ‘veil of Ignorance’ as a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial thinking. By imagining the choices of decision-makers who are blind to biasing information, one might see more clearly the organizing... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making