Agents - Publications - Faculty & Research

27 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

How the FBI Reinvented Itself After 9/11

enforcer be the same person, the FBI can take advantage of the plea bargain system we have in the United States,” Gulati says. “Once the agent puts that person in jail, he or she can say to the criminal, ‘OK, if you want to get out of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

01 Sep 2023
News

Money Does Grow on (Family) Trees

For 17 years, Andre Kearns (MBA 1999) has been tracing his family tree. One by one, he has added branches, grounding himself in a long and sometimes complicated lineage. Through family stories, forgotten heirlooms, and vital records, Kearns has traveled back through... View Details

Keywords: April White; Illustrations by Fabio Consoli; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

12 Apr 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Productivity Suffers When Employees Are Allowed to Schedule Their Own Tasks

Source: rawpixel Many jobs involve completing a series of sequential, independent, prearranged tasks. Physicians see patients; teachers grade papers; insurance agents process stacks of claims. In the interest of productivity, some... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

19 Jun 2012
First Look

First Look: June 19

PublicationsFood for Thought? Trust Your Unconscious When Energy Is Low Authors:Maarten Bos, Ap Dijksterhuis, and Rick B. Van Baaren Publication:Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics 5, no. 2 (May 2012) Abstract Recent studies show that a period of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

31 Mar 2008
HBS Case

JetBlue’s Valentine’s Day Crisis

the case are JetBlue's dependence on a reservations system that relies on a dispersed workforce (many agents worked flexible hours from home) and the Web—a low-cost solution that works well until thousands of passengers need to rebook at... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Air Transportation

Web

Health Care - Faculty & Research

in which agents recruited by a public health organization to sell condoms are randomly allocated to four groups. Agents in the control group are hired as volunteers, whereas View Details

Web

Skydeck - Alumni

Pasricha (MBA 2007) offers lessons from his quest for happiness How Women's Basketball Conquered Europe Bruce Levy (MBA 1977) —the first-ever agent for women's professional basketball—chronicles the sport's rise Can Neuroscience Find You... View Details

Web

Business & Environment - Faculty & Research

of big business which sought an alternative route to governmental regulations they regarded as costly and as a threat to international trade. A key agent was the International Chamber of Commerce during the 1990s. The chapter argues that... View Details

01 Nov 1999
Research & Ideas

John H. Patterson and the Sales Strategy of the National Cash Register Company, 1884 to 1922

rules of salesmanship at N.C.R. was the ability to demonstrate "sympathy [toward] ... the business and interests of the P.P. [or "Probable Purchaser"] and sincerity in presenting [the] machines to the P.P " These were skills to be honed. After an... View Details

Keywords: by Walter A. Friedman

Research Summary

Overview

By: Charlotte L. Robertson

Professor Robertson conducts research on the history of financial markets. Her book manuscript and working papers shed light on the evolution of securities markets and the relationship between finance, governance, and society. Some of the topics she pursues include:... View Details

01 Mar 2024
News

In Harmony

says. The agent wrote back, pointing out some of the manuscript’s strengths—and many of its weaknesses. Her recommendation? Put this in a drawer and start anew when you have more to say. “I took it personally; but that’s what I did. In... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; photographs by Jun Michael Park; private equity; fiction; financial crisis; leadership; Korea

16 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Advancing Black Talent: From the Flight Ramp to 'Family-Sustaining' Careers at Delta

revisited one of its long-standing talent practices. In their Airport Customer Service (ACS) division, there were two employee groups: ready reserves (part-time customer service representatives who worked more flexible hours dependent on demand) and customer service... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Air Transportation

29 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Do Employees Work Harder for Higher Pay?

In a famous scene from the film "Jerry Maguire," NFL wide receiver Rod Tidwell repeatedly screams, "Show me the money!" as his agent listens on the other end of the telephone. Intuition might tell us that showing the money motivates, and... View Details

Keywords: by Chuck Leddy & Harvard Gazette

Web

General Merchants to Commodities Brokers | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

reputation and expertise, while expanding its client base. During this period, Lehman Brothers was appointed the Fiscal Agent of Alabama. In this capacity, its first venture into municipal financing, the firm sold state bonds as way to... View Details

Research Summary

Dissertation: A Relational Perspective on Boundary Work: How Attorneys Manage Work-Life Boundaries

Many professionals struggle with managing boundaries between work and life outside of work. For decades researchers have been trying to understand this issue but we still have much to learn about it. With my dissertation, I aim to improve our understanding of... View Details

05 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Six Ways to Build Trust in Negotiations

as extreme, can diminish and even destroy trust. An offer that is explained and justified will probably preserve trust, and may enhance it. Consider the case of an author negotiating with a literary agent over the right to sell his book.... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

09 May 2017
What Do You Think?

Should Management Be Primarily Responsible to Shareholders?

But the ascendancy of agency theory—the idea that shareholders are owners of the corporation and managers their agents in a quest to maximize shareholder value—need not be one of them. Agency theory will not be a problem if we bend it to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2019
Article

Fair Algorithms for Learning in Allocation Problems

By: Hadi Elzayn, Shahin Jabbari, Christopher Jung, Michael J Kearns, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Zachary Schutzman

Settings such as lending and policing can be modeled by a centralized agent allocating a scarce resource (e.g. loans or police officers) amongst several groups, in order to maximize some objective (e.g. loans given that are repaid, or criminals that are apprehended).... View Details

Keywords: Allocation Problems; Algorithms; Fairness; Learning

Citation

Register to Read

01 Apr 2013
Research & Ideas

First Minutes are Critical in New-Employee Orientation

that provides telephone and chat support for its global customers. Traditionally, Wipro's orientation for call center employees consisted of an informational session about the company, followed by several weeks of training in which new call View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Web Services; Service; Telecommunications

Web

Curriculum - Business & Environment

full listing, click here . Turnarounds and Transformation (Spring 2025) Ranjay Gulati The focus of this course is the leader as a strategist, architect, decision maker, and change agent in a turnaround or transformation environment. This... View Details

Publications