Worker Performance - Publications - Faculty & Research

Research Summary

Overview

Engaged with field work in East Africa, South Asia, and in several large hybrid organizations in the United States, Professor Whillans places a focus on exploring questions with strong theoretical motivation in the social psychological literature and relevant... View Details

03 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

When Showing Know-How Backfires for Women Managers

“Women experience the fear that people are going to think they’re not good at, competent in, or capable in their roles. They’re trying to perform for an audience to disprove negative stereotypes, which constrains their behavior,” Feldberg... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Retail; Consumer Products

18 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

The Cost of Leaning In

Stanford Economics Research Laboratory. In each experiment, students were divided into pairs, in which one participant played the role of a worker and the other played the role of a firm in charge of the worker’s wages. The pairs... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

09 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 9, 2019

proposals, and quality evaluations for more than 12,000 evaluator-proposal pairs. The analysis shows that solicitations offering a personal reward for top submissions boost participation rates without affecting submission quality. We show that this is due to View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

30 Sep 2019
Book

6 Steps to Building a Better Workplace for Black Employees

workers and offers advice to black employees who seek to advance in their careers. It also provides these recommendations for companies that are intent on building diverse workplaces: 1. Encourage employees to talk about race After two... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Web

The Caring Company

Address ‘Caregiving Crisis,’ Study Finds David Harrison 16 Jan 2019 | The Wall Street Journal A third of US workers have left a job due to caregiving responsibilities Corinne Purtill 18 Jan 2019 | Quartz at Work The Stealth Productivity... View Details

24 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 24, 2009

Working PapersLearn-how to Improve Collaboration and Performance Authors:Ingrid M. Nembhard, Anita L. Tucker, Richard M.J. Bohmer, Joseph H. Carpenter, and Jeffrey D. Horbar Abstract Organizational learning, a prerequisite for high... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

When Your Passion Works Against You

the right context, this intense positive energy can act like a gravitational pull that sucks in other workers to invest their time and support, ultimately contributing toward the success of the idea. “Passion, like a smile, is... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

01 Feb 2023
What Do You Think?

Will Hybrid Work Strategies Pull Down Long-Term Performance?

at prescribed times or days of the week. According to Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, who has studied remote work for years, totally remote workers constituted 15 percent of the US workforce as of early 2023, with another 30 percent... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

January 2025
Teaching Plan

Knowledge Transfer: Toyota, NUMMI, and GM

By: Willy Shih

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 625-003. New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. It was an opportunity for GM to learn about the Toyota Production System, which was quite different from the mass production... View Details

Keywords: Culture Change; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Joint Ventures; Transformation; Selection and Staffing; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Labor Unions; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Production; Labor and Management Relations; Auto Industry; Japan; United States

Citation

Purchase

Web

Building From the Bottom Up - Managing the Future of Work

and high churn for companies. As companies struggle to fill positions in the post-Covid recovery, they will need to invest in retaining and nurturing talent—especially for the lowest earners who perform the most critical tasks. Read the... View Details

12 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 12, 2019

investors speculate, even mild diagnostic distortions generate substantial bubbles. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55653 Relative Performance Transparency: Effects on Sustainable Choices By: Buell,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2016
Working Paper

Operations in the On-Demand Economy: Staffing Services with Self-Scheduling Capacity

By: Itai Gurvich, Martin Lariviere and Antonio Moreno

Motivated by recent innovations in service delivery such as ride-sharing services and work-from-home call centers, we study capacity management when workers self-schedule. Our service provider chooses capacity to maximize its profit (revenue from served customers minus... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Servers; On-demand Economy; Independent Capacity; Distributed Systems; Uber; Service Operations; Performance Capacity

Citation

SSRN

20 Dec 2022
Op-Ed

Employee Feedback: The Key to Retention During the Great Resignation

isolating at home, the remaining workers asked for KN95 masks, better testing protocols, and the right to turn away illegally unmasked customers. These requests were flatly refused—a surprising response from a company whose founder,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer

01 Feb 2001
News

What Makes a Good Leader

under pressure from my boss, and the information technology doesn't give me what I need in order to do my job, and every time I take a risk I get shot down by the performance appraisal system, obviously I'm not going to make any... View Details

Keywords: Management

24 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: Jan. 24

Publication:Organization Science (forthcoming) Abstract How workers experience and express status loss in organizations has received little scholarly attention. I conducted a qualitative study of a French high-tech company that had... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Human Behavior & Decision-Making - Faculty & Research

significantly over time; (iii) it is more pronounced in state-owned and strategic sectors; and (iv) it is negatively correlated with profitability and positively correlated with performance on political and social objectives. Exploiting... View Details

13 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions

Among the culprits contributing to the recent financial crisis were bank loan officers who approved mortgage loans that were doomed to fail. Many of these frontline workers were motivated by bonuses and other incentives to approve... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking

Web

Leadership - Faculty & Research

and access to real-time data. But less transparent work environments can yield more-transparent employees. Employees perform better when they can try out new ideas and approaches within certain zones of privacy. Organizations allow them... View Details

25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

another family issue." Conversely, workers who aren't doing their part hear about it sooner rather than later, whether it's from a manager or coworkers. "Slow movers are not meant to work at QuikTrip," says Ton. If an... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

Publications