Publications

24 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

Passion at Work Is a Good Thing—But Only If Bosses Know How to Manage It

Who wouldn't want to work for a company that values passion? And what employer wouldn't seek an employee who’s deeply passionate about their work? But, here's the rub, according to recent research from Harvard Business School: Employees and employers can have... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

29 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

Are You Paying a Tip--or a Bribe?

Few people see a relationship between tipping and bribing. But consider this: In places where people tip heavily, bribes are more likely to exchange hands as well. Research shows that there's actually a fine line between the socially... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

28 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

How Leaders Can Navigate Politicized Conversations and Inspire Collaboration

published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in July 2020. She co-authored the study with recent doctoral graduate Michael Rosenblum and Assistant Professor Juliana Schroeder, both of the University of California, Berkeley. A... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

03 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

How to Succeed With Your New Boss

to shape your boss's perceptions of what can and should be achieved. Aim for good marks from those whose opinions your boss respects. This is an aspect of building supportive internal coalitions. Your boss may have pre-existing... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Watkins

08 Sep 2015
First Look

September 8, 2015

and women alike rated power as one of the main consequences of professional advancement. Our findings reveal that men and women have different perceptions of what the experience of holding a high-level position will be like, with... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

February 2025
Article

Seeing the Whole: Configurational Cognition and New Venture Resource Mobilization

By: Goran Calic, François Neville, Santi Furnari and C. S. Richard Chan

Research is scant on how multiple venture attributes combine as “whole packages” of signals (or cognitive configurations) in resource holders’ eyes, shaping a venture’s ability to mobilize resources. Drawing on a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 1,395 crowdfunding... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Mission and Purpose; Entrepreneurship; Communication; Perception

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

11 Mar 2019
Research & Ideas

Branding Sells Cereal, Handbags, and Vacations. Can It Sell a Country?

overcome decades of TV footage of soldiers and tanks that linger in the mind. To Harvard Business School marketing professor Elie Ofek, it’s more proof that influencing long-held perceptions about a region requires more strategic... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Tourism

April 2021 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Project Restart: Deciding the Future of English Football

By: Nour Kteily and Deepak Malhotra

In March 2020, the English Premier League football (soccer) season was suspended partway through due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two months later the season remained in limbo, with a looming deadline to decide whether to attempt to complete the season or curtail it—and... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Sports; Health Pandemics; Decision Making; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Motivation and Incentives; Outcome or Result; Perception; Negotiation; Sports Industry; United Kingdom

Educators

03 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty on Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa

members—Deepak Malhotra, an authority on negotiation strategy; Noel Maurer, an expert on the politics and economics of the energy business; and Magnus Thor Torfason, an authority on how behavior is influenced by the social structures of... View Details

Keywords: Re: Deepak Malhotra; Energy; Utilities

February 2019
Article

Bounded Ethicality and Ethical Fading in Negotiations: Understanding Unintended Unethical Behavior

By: McKenzie Rees, Ann E. Tenbrunsel and Max Bazerman

The business scandals in the past several decades led to the rising importance of ethics as a topic central to management scholarship. Behavioral scientists in particular were attracted to the topic in far greater numbers, and the study of ethical decision-making... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Behavior; Negotiation; Situation or Environment; Perception

May 2022
Case

Thinking Outside the Wine Box (A): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign

By: Tomomichi Amano, Elie Ofek, Mengjie Cheng and Amy Klopfenstein

This case provides an overview of “Franz for Life,” an advertising campaign that independent advertising agency Mekanism created and executed to revitalize the brand image of Franzia, a low-cost boxed wine. For several years, Franzia’s popularity declined among... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Digital Marketing; Social Marketing; Marketing Communications; Product Positioning; Food and Beverage Industry; Advertising Industry; United States

Educators

09 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity

Conflicts in Social Environment Undermine Creativity, a paper published this month in the Academy of Management Journal. Multicultural teams may need managerial nurturing to overcome frictions. Photo: iStockPhoto "A lot of times when we... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

13 Jun 2022
Research & Ideas

Extroverts, Your Colleagues Wish You Would Just Shut Up and Listen

pandemic-related stress. Teams are often reconnecting through online platforms like Zoom where it can be harder to read social cues. “When you're engaging with an extrovert in conversation, they may be gregarious, they may be outgoing,... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

11 Oct 2016
First Look

October 11, 2016

social sector, and it can guide businesses in bringing together the various actors in their ecosystems to help remedy some of the world's most urgent problems. In the process, companies will find economic opportunities that their... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

05 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 5

those that return instantaneous results—even when those results are identical. In five experiments that simulate service experiences in the domains of online travel and online dating, we demonstrate the impact of the labor illusion on service value perceptions,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2024
Article

The Effect of Configural Processing on Mentalization

By: Katrina Fincher, Ting Zhang, Asteya Percaya, Adam Galinsky and Michael W. Morris

Eight studies (N = 2,561) reveal that how we perceptually process a person’s face affects our capacity to understand their mind. Studies 1A and B indicate this relationship functions via two separate pathways: (a) indirectly by increasing our sensitivity to the... View Details

Keywords: Perception; Cognition and Thinking

February 2009
Article

Just Because I'm Nice, Don't Assume I'm Dumb

By: Amy Cuddy

We often judge colleagues on the basis of their perceived warmth and competence, finding clues to these qualities in stereotypes rooted in race, gender, or nationality. Many of our decisions about fellow workers are thus premised on faulty data—harming judged and... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Perception; Nationality; Race; Judgments; Competency and Skills; Gender

2022
Working Paper

The Gender Gap in Confidence: Expected But Not Accounted For

By: Christine L. Exley and Kirby Nielsen

We investigate how the gender gap in confidence affects the views that evaluators (e.g., employers) hold about men and women. If evaluators fail to account for the confidence gap, it may cause overly pessimistic views about women. Alternatively, if evaluators expect... View Details

Keywords: Confidence; Experiments; Gender; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Performance Evaluation; Analysis