Publications

Article

MIT Roundtable on Corporate Risk Management

By: Robert C. Merton

Against the backdrop of financial crisis, a distinguished group of academics and practitioners discusses the contribution of financial management and innovation to corporate growth and value, along with the pitfalls and unintended consequences of such innovation.... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Market Participation; Finance; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Value; Distribution; Capital Structure; Risk Management; Business Ventures; Business Model; Strategy

2015
Article

Beliefs About the True Self Explain Asymmetries Based on Moral Judgment

By: George E. Newman, Julian De Freitas and Joshua Knobe

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about (a) what a person values, (b) whether a person is happy, (c) whether a person has shown weakness of will, and (d) whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend... View Details

Keywords: Concepts; Social Cognition; Moral Reasoning; True Self; Values; Weakness Of Will; Blame; Values and Beliefs; Identity; Moral Sensibility; Happiness

March 2020
Article

Is This My Group or Not? The Role of Ensemble Coding of Emotional Expressions in Group Categorization

By: Amit Goldenberg, Timothy D. Sweeny, Emmanuel Shpigel and James J. Gross

When exposed to others’ emotional responses, people often make rapid decisions as to whether these others are members of their group or not. These group categorization decisions have been shown to be extremely important to understanding group behavior. Yet, despite... View Details

Keywords: Categorization; Ensemble Coding; Summary Statistical Perception; Social Cognition; Emotions; Perception; Groups and Teams

February 2016
Article

Unearned Status Gain: Evidence from a Global Language Mandate

By: Tsedal Neeley and Tracy Dumas

Theories of status rarely address unearned status gain—an unexpected and unsolicited increase in relative standing, prestige, or worth, attained not through individual effort or achievement, but from a shift in organizationally valued characteristics. We build theory... View Details

Keywords: Status and Position; Equality and Inequality; Spoken Communication; Organizations; Japan; United States

September 2007
Article

(Noisy) Communication

By: Bharat Anand and Ron Shachar

Communication is central to many settings in marketing and economics. A focal attribute of communication is miscommunication. We model this key characteristic as a noise in the messages communicated, so that the sender of a message is uncertain about its perception by... View Details

Keywords: Communication Intention and Meaning; Interpersonal Communication; Cost vs Benefits; Marketing Communications; Performance Improvement; Mathematical Methods

07 Feb 2017
Research & Ideas

The Right Way to Cry in Front of Your Boss

final experiment asked participants to choose a partner for a collaborative project that could earn them a financial bonus. They read three descriptions: the narrator hiding distress in front of colleagues; the narrator showing distress in front of colleagues and View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

06 Dec 2016
First Look

December 6, 2016

American economic development, Slavery's Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2024
Working Paper

Modest Victims: Victims Who Decline to Broadcast Their Victimization Are Seen As Morally Virtuous

By: Nathan Dhaliwal, Jillian J. Jordan and Pat Barclay

What do people think of victims who conceal their victimhood? We propose that the decision to not broadcast that one has been victimized serves as a costly act of modesty—in doing so, one is potentially forgoing social support and compensation from one’s community. We... View Details

Keywords: Public Opinion; Mathematical Methods; Communication; Perception; Reputation

Article

Turbulent Stability of Emergent Roles: The Dualistic Nature of Self-Organizing Knowledge Co-Production

By: Ofer Arazy, Johaness Daxenberg, Hila Lifshitz - Assaf, Oded Nov and Irene Gurevych

Increasingly, new forms of organizing for knowledge production are built around self-organizing co-production community models with ambiguous role definitions. Current theories struggle to explain how high-quality knowledge is developed in these settings and how... View Details

Keywords: Wikipedia; Knowledge Production; Organizational Structure; Knowledge; Information Publishing

27 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique?

executives in the West? There are important differences. Are differences attributable to different cultures or to different stages of corporate development? But first, what are we talking about? Roles in organizations involve more than... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

2022
Conference Presentation

Organizational Competition: A Catalyst for Workplace Diversity and Desires for Uniqueness

By: Samantha N. Smith, Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios and Katherine L. Milkman

Competition is prevalent in organizations. For example, people often compete against their colleagues for status and recognition in the workplace or for opportunities for advancement. Workers also compete against others to get hired into organizations in the first... View Details

Keywords: Status and Position; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior

08 Mar 2021
In Practice

COVID Killed the Traditional Workplace. What Should Companies Do Now?

A year ago, COVID-19 forced many companies to send employees home—often with a laptop and a prayer. Now, with COVID cases subsiding and vaccinations rising, the prospect of returning to old office routines appears more possible. But will employees want to flock back to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

01 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Dying to Lead: How Reaching the Top Can Kill You Sooner

London in the 1960s. The Whitehall researchers attributed shorter life expectancies among lower-level civil servants, who tended to die at younger ages than their bosses, to the psychological stress of working in subordinate positions.... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

02 Nov 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Resolving Information Asymmetries in Markets: The Role of Certified Management Programs

Keywords: by Michael W. Toffel

04 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 4

this specific institutional framework. The analysis shows that up to 17% of the independents' employment decline between 1998 and 2004 can be attributed to the regulatory reform. Download the paper:... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Article

Maimonides' Ladder: States of Mutual Knowledge and the Perception of Charitability

By: Julian De Freitas, Peter DiScioli, Kyle A. Thomas and Steven Pinker

Why do people esteem anonymous charitable giving? We connect normative theories of charitability (captured in Maimonides’ Ladder of Charity) with evolutionary theories of partner choice to test predictions on how attributions of charitability are affected by states of... View Details

Keywords: Charity; Reciprocity; Partner Choice; Common Knowledge; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Knowledge; Perception

2009
Working Paper

Broadening Focus: Spillovers, Complementarities and Specialization in the Hospital Industry

By: Jonathan R. Clark and Robert S. Huckman

The long-standing argument that focused operations outperform others stands in contrast to claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. The performance benefits of focus are typically attributed to reduced complexity, lower uncertainty, and the development... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Performance Capacity; Diversification; Health Industry