Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(635)
- Faculty Publications (81)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
By: Roberto Verganti, Luca Vendraminelli and Marco Iansiti
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is affecting the scenario in which innovation takes place. What are the implications for our understanding of design? Is AI just another digital technology that, akin to many others, will not significantly question what we know about... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Collusion in Brokered Markets
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Richard Lowery
The U.S. residential real estate agency market presents a puzzle for economic theory: commissions on real estate transactions have remained high for decades even though entry is frequent and costs are low. We model the real estate agency market, and other brokered... View Details
- June–July 2019
- Article
A Methodology for Operationalizing Enterprise IT Architecture and Evaluating Its Modifiability
By: Robert Lagerström, Alan MacCormack, David Dreyfus and Carliss Y. Baldwin
Recent contributions to information systems theory suggest that the primary role of a firm’s information technology (IT) architecture is to facilitate, and therefore ensure the continued alignment of a firm’s IT investments with a constantly changing business... View Details
- May–June 2019
- Article
U-Shaped Conformity in Online Social Networks
By: Monic Sun, Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu
We explore how people balance their needs to belong and to be different from their friends by studying their choices of a virtual-house wall color on a leading Chinese social-networking site. The setting enables us to randomize both the popular color and the adoption... View Details
- August 2018
- Article
Creative Sparks or Paralysis Traps? The Effects of Contradictions on Creative Processing and Creative Products
By: Goran Calic and Sébastien Hélie
Paradoxes are an unavoidable part of work life. The unusualness of attempting to simultaneously satisfy contradictory imperatives can result in creative outcomes that simultaneously satisfy both imperatives by inducing search for, and selection of, novel and useful... View Details
- September 2017
- Article
The Real Effects of Capital Controls: Firm-Level Evidence from a Policy Experiment
By: Laura Alfaro, Anusha Chari and Fabio Kanczuk
Emerging-market governments adopted capital control taxes to manage the massive surge in foreign capital inflows in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Theory suggests that the imposition of capital controls can drive up the cost of capital and curb... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Class Matters: The Role of Social Class and Organizational Sector in High-Achieving Women's Legitimacy Narratives
By: Judith A. Clair, Rachel D. Arnett, Katherine Chen, Beth K. Humberd and Kathleen L. McGinn
While prior research recognizes that women struggle to maintain legitimacy for their successes and that self-narratives play a key role in building such legitimacy, theory provides limited insight into how women build legitimacy through their self-narratives. Our... View Details
- August 2017
- Article
A Formal Theory of Strategy
What makes a decision strategic? When is strategy most important? This paper formally studies these questions, starting from a (functional) definition of strategy as “the smallest set of choices to optimally guide (or force) other choices.” The paper shows that this... View Details
- 2017
- Other Article
Designing an Agile Software Portfolio Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Performance
By: Alan MacCormack and Robert Lagerstrom
The modern industrial corporation encompasses a myriad of different software applications, each of which must work in concert to deliver functionality to end-users. However, the increasingly complex and dynamic nature of competition in today’s product-markets dictates... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Digital Agility: The Impact of Software Portfolio Architecture on IT System Evolution
By: Alan MacCormack, Robert Lagerström, Martin Mocker and Carliss Y. Baldwin
The modern industrial firm increasingly relies on software to support its competitive position. However, the uncertain and dynamic nature of today’s global marketplace dictates that this software be continually evolved and adapted to meet new business challenges. This... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-Family Narrative as a Social Defense Against the 24/7 Work Culture
By: Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid
It is widely accepted that the conflict women experience between family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is partial at best: men, too, experience... View Details
- July 16, 2016
- Article
A Game Theoretic Model for Resource Allocation Among Countermeasures with Multiple Attributes
By: Elisabeth C. Paulson, Igor Linkov and Jeffrey Keisler
We study a strategic, two-player, sequential game between an attacker and defender. The defender must allocate resources amongst possible countermeasures and across possible targets. The attacker then chooses a type of threat and a target to attack. This paper proposes... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
"Level II" Negotiation Strategies: Advance Your Interests by Helping to Solve Their Internal Problems
Many negotiators have constituencies that must formally or informally approve an agreement. Traditionally, it is the responsibility of each negotiator to manage the internal conflicts and constituencies on his or her own side. Far less familiar are the many valuable... View Details
- Article
Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics
By: Thomas Astebro, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda and Roberto A. Weber
There is a growing body of evidence that many entrepreneurs seem to enter and persist in entrepreneurship despite earning low risk-adjusted returns. This has lead to attempts to provide explanations—using both standard economic theory and behavioral economics—for why... View Details
- Summer 2014
- Article
When Does a Platform Create Value by Limiting Choice?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Hanna Halaburda
We present a theory for why it might be rational for a platform to limit the number of applications available on it. Our model is based on the observation that even if users prefer application variety, applications often also exhibit direct network effects. When there... View Details
Keywords: Platform Governance; Direct Network Effects; Indirect Network Effects; Complements; Tragedy Of The Commons; Equilibrium Selection; Coordination; Foresight; Strategy; Value Creation; Digital Platforms; Balance and Stability; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Network Effects
- 2014
- Working Paper
Better Deals Through Level II Strategies: Advance Your Interests by Helping to Solve Their Internal Problems
Many negotiators have constituencies that must formally or informally approve an agreement. Traditionally, it is the responsibility of each negotiator to manage the internal conflicts and constituencies on his or her own side. Far less familiar are the many valuable... View Details
- March 2014
- Article
Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details
- October 2013
- Article
How Much to Make and How Much to Buy? An Analysis of Optimal Plural Sourcing Strategies
By: Phanish Puranam, Ranjay Gulati and Sourav Bhattacharya
While many theories of the firm seek to explain when firms make rather than buy, in practice, firms often make and buy the same input—they engage in plural sourcing. We argue that explaining the mix of external procurement and internal sourcing for the same input... View Details
- September–October 2013
- Article
Discretion Within Constraint: Homophily and Structure in a Formal Organization
By: Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart and Michael Tushman
Homophily in social relations results from both individual preferences and selective opportunities for interaction, but how these two mechanisms interact in large, contemporary organizations is not well understood. We argue that organizational structures and geography... View Details
- November 2012
- Article
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management