Publications

SSRN

2024
Working Paper

The Wade Test: Generative AI and CEO Communication

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Bart S. Vanneste and Amirhossein Zohrehvand

Can generative artificial intelligence (AI) transform the role of the CEO by effectively automating CEO communication? This study investigates whether AI can mimic a human CEO and whether employees’ perception of the communication’s source matter. In a field... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; AI and Machine Learning; Perception; Communication

December 2019
Article

It Helps to Ask: The Cumulative Benefits of Asking Follow-up Questions

By: Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Julia A. Minson and Francesca Gino

In a recent article published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP; Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson, & Gino, 2017), we reported the results of 2 experiments involving “getting acquainted” conversations among strangers and an observational field... View Details

Keywords: Question-asking; Conversation; Communication; Relationships; Interpersonal Communication

22 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

Name Your Price. Really.

of experiments—including a field experiment where she posed with students as snack bar employees—Santana found that by subtly manipulating the environment, sellers can dramatically change what some buyers... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

10 May 2016
First Look

May 10, 2016

Decline and Encarta's Emergence By: Greenstein, Shane Abstract—The experience of Encyclopædia Britannica provides the canonical example of the decline of an established firm at the outset of the digital age. Competition from Microsoft’s... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

06 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Women MBAs at Harvard Business School

School: 1962-2012," the case delves into the experiences of alumnae and alumni over the past 50 years, both inside and outside the classroom, as Dean Nitin Nohria considers what HBS might be like 10 years from now, when his young... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

2016
Working Paper

Pivoting Isn't Enough: Principled Pragmatism and Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures

By: Rory McDonald and Cheng Gao

New technology ventures often experience deviations from their original plans that oblige them to reorient in pursuit of better fit between their evolving products and target customers. Yet research is largely silent on how entrepreneurs explain and justify their... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Reorientation; Technology Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Product Development Processes; Organizational Adaptation; Qualitative Methods (General); Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Communication; Entrepreneurship; Alignment; Innovation and Invention; Product Development

2010
Working Paper

Disagreement about the Team's Status Hierarchy: An Insidious Obstacle to Coordination and Performance

By: Heidi K. Gardner

Hierarchies are pervasive in groups, generally providing clear guidelines for the dominance and deference behaviors that members are expected to show based on their relative ranks. But what happens when team members disagree about where each member ranks on the... View Details

Keywords: Performance Effectiveness; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Conflict and Resolution; Perception; Status and Position; Cooperation

25 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University

competition, but because they are are cheaper and easier to use. In The Innovative University, Christensen and Henry J. Eyring take the idea of disruptive innovation to the field of higher education, where new online institutions and... View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen & Henry J. Eyring; Education

25 Aug 2015
First Look

First Look Tuesday

both theories of vicarious learning, as well as the practice of learning from others' experiences in organizations. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49499 Blinded by Experience: Prior Experience,... View Details

14 Mar 2013
Working Paper Summaries

No Taxation without Information: Deterrence and Self-Enforcement in the Value Added Tax

Keywords: by Dina Pomeranz

Winter 2016
Article

Analytics for an Online Retailer: Demand Forecasting and Price Optimization

By: Kris J. Ferreira, Bin Hong Alex Lee and David Simchi-Levi

We present our work with an online retailer, Rue La La, as an example of how a retailer can use its wealth of data to optimize pricing decisions on a daily basis. Rue La La is in the online fashion sample sales industry, where they offer extremely limited-time... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Price; Forecasting and Prediction; Revenue; Sales; Retail Industry

2015
Book

What Great Service Leaders Know and Do: Creating Breakthroughs in Service Firms

By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser and Leonard A. Schlesinger

Based on decades of collective field experiences, the authors present anecdotal evidence in support of eight things that great service leaders know and do. Great service leaders know that (1) leading a breakthrough service is different, and they take steps to ensure... View Details

Keywords: Management; Leadership; Service Operations; Service Delivery

Purchase

20 Sep 2016
First Look

September 20, 2016

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51619 forthcoming American Economic Journal: Applied Economics Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment By: Edelman,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Setting the Stage: A Young Scholar at HBS

understand the transition I mentioned earlier. We can't begin to comprehend why and how banks began to develop financial services for middle-class Americans in the first place. I see this eclectic approach to my topic as reflecting changes taking place in the View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard; Banking; Financial Services

2020
Working Paper

Targeting for Long-Term Outcomes

By: Jeremy Yang, Dean Eckles, Paramveer Dhillon and Sinan Aral

Decision makers often want to target interventions so as to maximize an outcome that is observed only in the long term. This typically requires delaying decisions until the outcome is observed or relying on simple short-term proxies for the long-term outcome. Here we... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Marketing; Optimization; Churn Management; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Policy; Learning; Outcome or Result

March 2013
Article

Breaking Them in or Eliciting Their Best? Reframing Socialization around Newcomers' Authentic Self-expression

By: Daniel M. Cable, Francesca Gino and Brad Staats

Socialization theory has focused on enculturating new employees such that they develop pride in their new organization and internalize its values. Drawing on authenticity research, we propose that the initial stage of socialization leads to more effective employment... View Details

Keywords: Socialization; Authenticity; Self-Expression; Best Self; Outsourcing; Employee Retention; Organizational Culture; Retention; Identity; Customer Satisfaction

11 Jun 2007
Lessons from the Classroom

Teaching the Next Generation of Energy Executives

You may think that being an energy executive—especially a manager in a leading oil company—might be the easiest job around. Just flip the production switch, and watch gas prices head toward $4 a gallon. But students enrolled in Harvard Business School professor Forest... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Energy; Utilities

Article

Megastudies Improve the Impact of Applied Behavioural Science

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Dena Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Pepi Pandiloski, Yeji Park, Aneesh Rai, Max Bazerman, John Beshears, Lauri Bonacorsi, Colin Camerer, Edward Chang, Gretchen Chapman, Robert Cialdini, Hengchen Dai, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ayelet Fishbach, James J. Gross, Samantha Horn, Alexa Hubbard, Steven J. Jones, Dean Karlan, Tim Kautz, Erika Kirgios, Joowon Klusowski, Ariella Kristal, Rahul Ladhania, Jens Ludwig, George Loewenstein, Barbara Mellers, Sendhil Mullainathan, Silvia Saccardo, Jann Spiess, Gaurav Suri, Joachim H. Talloen, Jamie Taxer, Yaacov Trope, Lyle Ungar, Kevin G. Volpp, Ashley V. Whillans, Jonathan Zinman and Angela L. Duckworth

Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens’ decisions and outcomes. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time... View Details

Keywords: Policy Making; Behavioral Science; Behavior; Change; Decision Making; Policy