Publications

October 2000 (Revised December 2000)
Exercise

Participant and Leader Behavior: Group Decision Simulation (A)

This series provides the instructions for a group decision-making simulation in which students experience four different methods for leading a group decision process. In the simulation, all students work in groups, with one person designated as the team leader. All... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Decision Making

2019
Article

Structural Balance Emerges and Explains Performance in Risky Decision-Making

By: Omid Askarisichani, Jacqueline N. Lane, Francesco Bullo, Noah E. Friedkin, Ambuj K. Singh and Brian Uzzi

Polarization affects many forms of social organization. A key issue focuses on which affective relationships are prone to change and how their change relates to performance. In this study, we analyze a financial institutional over a two-year period that employed 66... View Details

Keywords: Polarization; Structural Balance; Performance; Groups and Teams; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making

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1965
Article

Group Decision Making: A Report of an Experimental Study

By: Joseph L. Bower

When a group of people must decide on some one action, such as where shall we go out to dinner, or in an investment club which stock shall we buy, how do the individual members come to a decision that affords the best resolution of the question at hand for the group as... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Decision Making; Conflict Management

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Article

The Role of Conflict in Economic Decision-Making Groups: Some Empirical Results

By: Joseph L. Bower

Keywords: Conflict and Resolution; Economics; Decision Making; Groups and Teams; Information

16 Jun 2023
Blog Post

Improve Decision-Making in Hiring: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

time and resources into this important work. Review Job Descriptions Job descriptions have always been an important element of the hiring process. They serve as a marketing tool to attract candidates and the language used can unconsciously tell people or View Details

Keywords: All Industries

Web

Improve Decision-Making in Hiring: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them - Recruiting

Insights & Advice 16 Jun 2023 Improve Decision-Making in Hiring: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them Becca Carnahan & Christopher Moore Author HBS Team tag All Industries All Locations Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging Recruiting Advice... View Details

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Bright Ideas: The Creative Power of Groups

fruition. The typical pitfalls encountered in group decision-making are all too familiar. Who hasn't witnessed, for instance, the silence around a conference table as meeting participants turn suddenly... View Details

Keywords: by Laurie Joan Aron

18 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

Better by the Bunch: Evaluating Job Candidates in Groups

Geen, and HBS Professor Max H. Bazerman. "This project integrates my prior work on using joint decision-making to create more ethical decisions with Iris's long-standing expertise in developing strategies to promote gender... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

Article

Cut from the Same Cloth: Similarly Dishonest Individuals Across Countries

By: Heather E. Mann, Ximena Garcia-Rada, Lars Hornuf, Juan Tafurt and Dan Ariely

Norms for dishonest behaviors vary across societies, but whether this variation is related to differences in individuals’ core tendencies toward dishonesty is unknown. We compare individual dishonesty on a novel task across 10 participant samples from five countries... View Details

Keywords: Morality; Decision-making; Dishonesty; Cultural Psychology; Country; Decision Making; Culture

Teaching Interest

Organizational Behavior

Each of us maintains a set of beliefs and general assumptions about humans and their behavior, and those assumptions form the foundation for our beliefs about what motivates individuals; about how individuals make decisions; and about the ways in which the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Leadership; Motivation And Incentives; Decision-making; Culture

18 Nov 2019
Video

Adi Godrej

Adi Godrej, Chair of India-based consmer products Godrej Group, explains how the Group seeks to retain local managers when it makes corporate acquisitions outside India, and avoids centralization of... View Details

March 1982 (Revised April 1989)
Background Note

Industrial Buyer Behavior

May be used as background material for courses in industrial marketing and industrial procurement. Surveys the economic, behavioral, and organizational influences that shape buying decision-making in corporations and other institutions. Also describes the kinds of... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Marketing; Decision Making

Educators

05 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

Sometimes, the loudest, most confident voice in the room might indeed be the best decision-maker. Other times, the person who understands that they don’t know the answer—and therefore holds back in a discussion—may be wiser. Whether View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

01 Jan 2005
News

04 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Is Government Just Stupid? How Bad Decisions Are Made

to which special-interest groups have corrupted the legislative process. The world's great fishing basins are in decline. New England's proportion of the world fishing harvest is down by ninety percent. Although the warning signs were... View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman, Jonathan Baron & Katherine Shonk

November 2014
Article

Evidence on Self-Stereotyping and the Contribution of Ideas

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman

We use a lab experiment to explore the factors that predict an individual's decision to contribute her idea to a group. We find that contribution decisions depend upon the interaction of gender and the gender stereotype associated with the decision-making domain:... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizations; Gender

February 2024
Article

Representation and Extrapolation: Evidence from Clinical Trials

By: Marcella Alsan, Maya Durvasula, Harsh Gupta, Joshua Schwartzstein and Heidi L. Williams

This article examines the consequences and causes of low enrollment of Black patients in clinical trials. We develop a simple model of similarity-based extrapolation that predicts that evidence is more relevant for decision-making by physicians and patients when it... View Details

Keywords: Representation; Racial Disparity; Health Testing and Trials; Race; Equality and Inequality; Innovation and Invention; Pharmaceutical Industry

04 Feb 2010
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Way to Make Careful Decisions?

instead concentrate on ways to make our own decision-making processes more transparent to others and to ourselves. Edward Hare put it this way: "Openness and honesty are the sunlight that's needed to make decision making as effective... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

February 2003 (Revised August 2004)
Case

Flextronics: Deciding on a Shop Floor System for Producing the Microsoft Xbox

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Jim McCusker must guide a group decision-making process aimed at getting input and buy-in from key people in California, Mexico, and Austria to choose a shop floor IT system for Flextronics. McCusker is Flextronics' account manager for the Microsoft Xbox project.... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Geographic Location; Problems and Challenges; Leadership; California; Mexico; Austria

Educators