Publications

2016
Other Teaching and Training Material

Organizational Behavior Reading: Decision Making

By: Francesca Gino, Max Bazerman and Katherine Shonk

This Reading argues that decision making is systematically flawed and introduces methods to improve decision-making effectiveness. The Essential Reading section covers the rational decision-making model and three important ideas that challenge it: Herbert Simon's... View Details

Keywords: Game Theory; Decision Making

December 1971 (Revised December 1994)
Background Note

Capital Structure Decision: Underlying Theory

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

Demonstrates hypothetically and numerically the share price valuation impact of changes in a firm's capital structure. View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Decisions

Educators

2016
Working Paper

Controlling Versus Enabling

By: Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright

Revenue sharing between principals and agents is commonly used to balance double-sided moral hazard. We provide a theory of how, when such revenue-sharing is optimal, a principal allocates control rights over decisions that either party could make. We show that the... View Details

Keywords: Control Rights; Decision Authority; Employment; Independent Contractors; Organizational Theory; Digital Platforms; Governance Controls; Ethics; Vertical Integration

SSRN

2014
Book

Managerial Accounting: Making Decisions and Motivating Performance

By: Srikant M. Datar and Madhav Rajan

Managerial Accounting: Making Decisions and Motivating Performance enables future managers and business owners to attain the core skills they need to become integral members of their company’s decision-making teams. This new program from established authors... View Details

25 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Management: Theory and Practice, and Cases

Keywords: by Richard L. Nolan; Education

Research Summary

The Impact of ABC on Managerial Decisions

In this type of research, Ratna Sarkar seeks to determine whether, in fact, new cost systems such as ABC (Activity Based Costing) have a measurable effect on managerial decisions regarding product and customer mix.

The theory of ABC is now academically established,... View Details

Article

Optimality Bias in Moral Judgment

By: Julian De Freitas and Samuel G.B. Johnson

We often make decisions with incomplete knowledge of their consequences. Might people nonetheless expect others to make optimal choices, despite this ignorance? Here, we show that people are sensitive to moral optimality: that people hold moral agents accountable... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Lay Decision Theory; Theory Of Mind; Causal Attribution; Moral Sensibility; Decision Making

Research Summary

Democratic Governance and Decision Making

By: David A. Moss

Under what conditions are public policies in a democracy determined by special interests or, alternatively, by the general interest? A good deal of academic work, particularly associated with the economic theory of regulation, suggests that special interests... View Details

January 1987
Article

Posterior Implementability in a Two-person Decision Problem

By: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont

When a decision rule is implemented using a Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism in which the messages are publicly observable, the players' information is augmented by their observation of each others' strategies. In this paper we study the set of Bayesian... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Commitment; Mechanism Design; Decision Making; Information

July 2017 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Joel L. Dawson: Eta Devices

By: Steven Rogers and Derek G. Abrams

After a successful career in research and academia, Joel Dawson decided to pursue entrepreneurship in the semiconductor industry. As one of the growing number of African-Americans in the technology field, Joel Dawson co-founded Eta Devices in 2010 based on new... View Details

Keywords: Joel Dawson; Eta Devices; Semiconductor Entrepreneurship; Decision Theory; Decision Making; Finance; Engineering; Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Semiconductor Industry; Boston

Educators

Article

Price and Quality Decisions by Self-Serving Managers

By: Marco Bertini, Daniel Halbheer and Oded Koenigsberg

We present a theory of price and quality decisions by managers who are self-serving. In the theory, firms stress the price or quality of their products, but not both. Accounting for this, managers exploit any uncertainty about the cause of market outcomes to credit... View Details

Keywords: Causal Reasoning; Self-serving Bias; Strategic Orientation; Managerial Decision-making; Price; Quality; Decision Making; Theory

October 2009
Article

Negotiation Analysis: From Games to Inferences to Decisions to Deals

By: James K. Sebenius

Exemplified by the pioneering work of Howard Raiffa and often expressed in the pages of the Negotiation Journal, the emergent prescriptive field of "negotiation analysis" progressively developed from Raiffa's early contributions to game theory and to his later... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Preparation; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Game Theory

30 Sep 2016
News

Google Is Ripe for Trump’s Sore-Loser Conspiracy Theories

October 2024
Article

Strategic Decision Making at Platform Transitions: The Case of Nokia (2010-2011).

By: Timo O. Vuori and Michael Tushman

We studied Nokia’s decision to adopt the Windows platform in 2011 to induce new theory on the emotional dynamics of incumbent firms’ strategic decision making at platform transitions. We find that platform companies’ entry into an established industry activates a... View Details

Keywords: Emotions; Technology Adoption; Corporate Strategy; Transition