Publications

14 Aug 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 14, 2018

forthcoming Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth By: Edmondson, Amy C. Abstract—The Fearless Organization offers practical... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

21 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The New Math of Customer Relationships

It's the E=MC2 of customer loyalty. Deeply satisfied employee = deeply satisfied customer = lifelong profit. Harvard Business School professor emeritus Jim Heskett and professor Earl Sasser have pursued this seemingly simple equation in books including Service... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

16 Dec 2013
HBS Case

D’O: Making a Michelin-Starred Restaurant Affordable

For restaurateurs, receiving a Michelin star can be a mixed blessing. Certainly it's a rare and celebrated honor—the French company bestows its one-, two-, and three-star ratings only to a select few restaurants worldwide. However, a star begets expectations of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel & Joanie Tobin; Food & Beverage

Article

Believe Me, I Have No Idea What I Am Talking About: The Effects of Source Certainty on Consumer Involvement and Persuasion

By: Uma R. Karmarkar and Zakary L. Tormala

This research explores the effect of source certainty-that is, the level of certainty expressed by a message source-on persuasion. The authors propose an incongruity hypothesis, suggesting that source certainty effects depend on perceived source expertise. In three... View Details

Keywords: Research; Experience and Expertise; Risk and Uncertainty; Consumer Behavior; Performance Expectations; Interests; Power and Influence

June 2010
Article

Change for Change's Sake

By: Freek Vermeulen, Phanish Puranam and Ranjay Gulati

No one disputes that firms have to make organizational changes when the business environment demands them. But the idea that a firm might want change for its own sake often provokes skepticism. Why inflict all that pain if you don't have to? That is a dangerous... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Innovation and Invention; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Creativity; Power and Influence; Adaptation

June 1990 (Revised October 1991)
Case

Lake Pleasant Bodies Case (A)

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.

Presents a classic dilemma in legal ethics--the conflict between an attorney's obligations as an attorney, in this case to protect a client's confidentiality, and his or her own moral obligations as a person. An attorney must decide how to respond to the father of a... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Moral Sensibility; Questionnaires; Attorney and Client Relationships; Social Psychology; Conflict Management; Legal Services Industry

Educators

14 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Getting Down to the Business of Creativity

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Inauguration Day, 1933 Creativity, a quality more traditionally associated with artistic endeavors, has been slow to find... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Fashion; Entertainment & Recreation

21 Nov 2005
Research & Ideas

Making Credibility Your Strongest Asset

Negotiation is a breeze if you're selling a unique product or service that others desperately need: Just sit back and let the bidding begin. Likewise, if you're a buyer in a buyer's market, getting a bargain is a snap. But what happens when lots of other people are... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Wheeler

24 May 2004
Research & Ideas

The Watsons: IBM’s Troubled Legacy

The world's fair in New York City at the end of the depression decade was a big deal. Planning began in 1935. The fairgrounds covered 1,216.5 acres in what had been a garbage dump in Queens. By opening day, April 30, 1939, the moonscape that had been Flushing Meadows... View Details

Keywords: by Richard S. Tedlow

2025
Working Paper

Productivity Beliefs and Efficiency in Science

By: Fabio Bertolotti, Kyle R. Myers and Wei Yang Tham

We develop a method to estimate producers’ productivity beliefs in settings where output quantities and input prices are unobservable, and we use it to evaluate allocative efficiency in the market for science. Our model of researchers’ labor supply shows that their... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Perception; Research

September 2023
Exercise

Irrationality in Action: Decision-Making Exercise

By: Alison Wood Brooks, Michael I. Norton and Oliver Hauser

This teaching exercise highlights the obstacle of biases in decision-making, allowing students to generate examples of potentially poor decision-making rooted in abundant and unwanted bias. This exercise has two parts: a pre-class, online survey in which students... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making

November 2022
Article

The Psychosocial Value of Employment: Evidence from a Refugee Camp

By: Reshmaan Hussam, Erin M. Kelley, Gregory Lane and Fatima Zahra

Employment may be important to wellbeing for reasons beyond its role as an income source. This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial value of employment in refugee camps in Bangladesh. We involve 745 individuals in a field experiment with three arms: a... View Details

Keywords: Psychosocial Wellbeing; Employment; Refugees; Well-being

Article

A Megastudy of Text-Based Nudges Encouraging Patients to Get Vaccinated at an Upcoming Doctor's Appointment

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Mitesh S. Patel, Linnea Gandhi, Heather N. Graci, Dena M. Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Modupe Akinola, John Beshears, Jonathan E. Bogard, Alison Buttenheim, Christopher F. Chabris, Gretchen B. Chapman, James J. Choi, Hengchen Dai, Craig R. Fox, Amir Goren, Matthew D. Hilchey, Jillian Hmurovic, Leslie K. John, Dean Karlan, Melanie Kim, David Laibson, Cait Lamberton, Brigitte C. Madrian, Michelle N. Meyer, Maria Modanu, Jimin Nam, Todd Rogers, Renante Rondina, Silvia Saccardo, Maheen Shermohammed, Dilip Soman, Jehan Sparks, Caleb Warren, Megan Weber, Ron Berman, Chalanda N. Evans, Christopher K. Snider, Eli Tsukayama, Christophe Van den Bulte, Kevin G. Volpp and Angela L. Duckworth

Many Americans fail to get life-saving vaccines each year, and the availability of a vaccine for COVID-19 makes the challenge of encouraging vaccination more urgent than ever. We present a large field experiment (N = 47,306) testing 19 nudges delivered to patients via... View Details

Keywords: Vaccination; COVID-19; Nudge; Influenza; Field Experiment; Health; Communication Strategy; Behavior

December 2016
Article

The Effects of Endowment Size and Strategy Method on Third Party Punishment

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Katherine McAuliffe and David G. Rand

Numerous experiments have shown that people often engage in third-party punishment (3PP) of selfish behavior. This evidence has been used to argue that people respond to selfishness with anger, and get utility from punishing those who mistreat others. Elements of the... View Details

Keywords: Third-party Punishment; Norm-enforcement; Strategy Method; Economic Games; Cooperation; Emotions; Fairness

May 2020
Article

To Be or Not to Be Your Authentic Self? Catering to Others' Expectations and Interests Hinders Performance

By: Francesca Gino, Ovul Sezer and Laura Huang

When approaching interpersonal first meetings (e.g., job interviews), people often cater to the target’s interests and expectations to make a good impression and secure a positive outcome such as being offered the job (pilot study). This strategy is distinct from other... View Details

Keywords: Authenticity; Catering; Honesty; Selection; Impression Management; Interpersonal Communication; Behavior; Performance

April 2020
Article

CEO Behavior and Firm Performance

By: Oriana Bandiera, Stephen Hansen, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

We measure the behavior of 1,114 CEOs in six countries parsing granular CEO diary data through an unsupervised machine learning algorithm. The algorithm uncovers two distinct behavioral types: "leaders" and "managers." Leaders focus on multi-function, high-level... View Details

Keywords: CEOs; Management; Behavior; Organizations; Performance; Analysis

2017
Working Paper

Displaced Loyalties: The Effects of Indiscriminate Violence on Attitudes Among Syrian Refugees in Turkey

By: Kristin Fabbe, Chad Hazlett and Tolga Sinmazdemir

How does violence during conflict affect the political attitudes of civilians who leave the conflict zone? Using a survey of 1,384 Syrian refugees in Turkey, we employ a natural experiment owing to the inaccuracy of barrel bombs to examine the effect of having one's... View Details

Keywords: Syria; Turkey; Refugees; War; Attitudes; Syria; Turkey

SSRN

2015
Working Paper

Are CEOs Born Leaders? Lessons from Traits of a Million Individuals

By: Renée Adams, Matti Keloharju and Samuli Knüpfer

What makes a CEO? We merge data on the traits of more than one million Swedish males, measured at age 18 in a mandatory military enlistment test, with data on their service as a CEO of any Swedish company decades later. CEOs have higher cognitive and non-cognitive... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; Management Teams

SSRN

2014
Article

Morality Rebooted: Exploring Simple Fixes to Our Moral Bugs

By: Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino and Max Bazerman

Ethics research developed partly in response to calls from organizations to understand and solve unethical behavior. Departing from prior work that focused mainly on examining the antecedents and consequences of dishonesty, we examine two approaches to mitigating... View Details

Keywords: Corruption; Dishonesty; Unethical Behavior; Interventions; Structure; Values; Behavior; Ethics; Moral Sensibility