Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(461)
- Faculty Publications (200)
- November 2022
- Article
My Boss' Passion Matters as Much as My Own: The Interpersonal Dynamics of Passion Are a Critical Driver of Performance Evaluations
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Andreas Wihler and Adam D. Galinsky
Companies often celebrate employees who successfully pursue their passion. Academic research suggests that these positive evaluations occur because of the passion percolating inside the employee. We propose that supervisors are also a key piece of this puzzle:... View Details
- October 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Century Bank: Closing Time?
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Bill Kwon
Barry Sloane, second-generation Chairman, President, and CEO of his family’s bank, Century Bank, weighed whether to sell to Eastern Bank. As a small regional bank, Century faced a number of challenging trends, such as digitization and market share decline in the coming... View Details
Keywords: Family Office; Business Exit; Banking; Family; Massachusetts; Boston; United States; Acquisition; Business Exit or Shutdown; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; Interpersonal Communication; Decision Making; Finance; Banks and Banking; Risk and Uncertainty; Emotions; Banking Industry; Boston; Massachusetts; United States
- October 2022
- Article
Underestimating Counterparts' Learning Goals Impairs Conflictual Conversations
By: Hanne K. Collins, Charles A. Dorison, Francesca Gino and Julia A. Minson
Given the many contexts in which people have difficulty engaging with views that disagree with their own— from political discussions to workplace conflicts—it is critical to understand how conflictual conversations can be improved. Whereas previous work has focused on... View Details
- Article
The C-Suite Skills That Matter Most
By: Raffaella Sadun, Joseph B. Fuller, Stephen Hansen and PJ Neal
Landing a job as a CEO today is no longer all about industry expertise and financial savvy. What companies are really seeking are leaders with strong social skills. That’s what the authors discovered after analyzing nearly 7,000 job descriptions for C-suite roles.... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Passing the Mic: Career and Firm Outcomes of Executive Interactions
By: Wei Cai, Ethan Rouen and Yuan Zou
We exploit a unique feature of conference calls to study one type of interaction among executives—directly inviting colleagues to respond to analysts’ questions. We find that the frequency of initiating interaction is positively associated with an executive’s ability,... View Details
- Article
The Conversational Circumplex: Identifying, Prioritizing, and Pursuing Informational and Relational Motives in Conversation
By: Michael Yeomans, Maurice E. Schweitzer and Alison Wood Brooks
The meaning of success in conversation depends on people’s goals. Often, individuals pursue multiple goals simultaneously, such as establishing shared understanding, making a favorable impression, and persuading a conversation partner. In this article, we introduce a... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Social Interactivity in Live Video Experiences Reduces Loneliness
By: Benjamin T. Kaveladze, Robert R. Morris, Rosa Victoria Dimitrova-Gammeltoft, Amit Goldenberg, James J. Gross, Judd Antin, Melissa Sandgren and Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt
Background: Loneliness, especially when chronic, can substantially reduce one's quality of life. However, positive social experiences might help to break cycles of loneliness by promoting more prosocial cognitions and behaviors. Internet-mediated live video... View Details
- Article
Managing a Polarized Workforce: How to Foster Debate and Promote Trust
By: Julia A. Minson and Francesca Gino
One of the toughest challenges leaders face is managing diverse perspectives—and given heightened tensions over politics and movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, that’s more difficult today than ever before. At the same time, productive disagreement and... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Exploring the Relationship between Team Diversity, Psychological Safety and Team Performance: Evidence from Pharmaceutical Drug Development
By: Henrik Bresman and Amy C. Edmondson
Breakthrough performance in teams requires pooling diverse perspectives and expertise. To realize the potential of diversity, communicating and translating across differences is essential. However, left to their own devices, diverse teams tend to underperform, in part... View Details
- Article
The Errors of Experts: When Expertise Hinders Effective Provision and Seeking of Advice and Feedback
By: Ting Zhang, Kelly Harrington and Elad Sherf
To be effective, experts need to simultaneously develop others (i.e. provide advice and feedback to novices) and advance their own learning (i.e. seek and incorporate advice and feedback from others). However, expertise, and the state of efficacy associated with it,... View Details
- October 2021
- Article
Communicating Resource Scarcity and Interpersonal Connection
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Anne V. Wilson, Ashley V. Whillans and Michael I. Norton
Consumers often cite insufficient time or money as an excuse for rejecting social invitations. We explore the effectiveness of these excuses in preserving interpersonal relationships. Six studies—including perceptions of couples planning their wedding—demonstrate that... View Details
- Article
Elevate Employees, Don't Eliminate Them
By: Ryan W. Buell
The last major global shock—the 2008 recession—led to what economists call a “jobless recovery” as companies found they could get by with fewer employees. But post-pandemic, the author writes, managers should focus on changing employees’ roles instead. He has five key... View Details
- 2021
- Article
Reflections: Voice and Silence in Workplace Conversations
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Tijs Besieux
We highlight conversations at work as an arena of change. Drawing on and extending the psychological safety literature, we offer a new framework to distinguish between productive and unproductive forms of both voice and silence. The framework’s four... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy
By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons
We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Virtual Water Coolers: A Field Experiment on the Role of Virtual Interactions on Organizational Newcomer Performance
Designing management practices to better onboard organizational newcomers working remotely is a key priority for firms. We report results from a randomized field experiment conducted at a large global firm that estimates the performance effects of different types of... View Details
- May 2021
- Article
Choice Architecture in Physician–patient Communication: A Mixed-methods Assessment of Physicians' Competency
By: J. Hart, K. Yadav, S. Szymanski, A. Summer, A. Tannenbaum, J. Zlatev, D. Daniels and S.D. Halpern
Background: Clinicians’ use of choice architecture, or how they present options, systematically influences the choices made by patients and their surrogate decision makers. However, clinicians may incompletely understand this influence.... View Details
- Article
Emotional Acknowledgment: How Verbalizing Others' Emotions Fosters Interpersonal Trust
By: Alisa Yu, Justin M. Berg and Julian Zlatev
People often respond to others’ emotions using verbal acknowledgment (e.g., “You seem upset”). Yet, little is known about the relational benefits and risks of acknowledging others’ emotions in the workplace. We draw upon Costly Signaling Theory to posit how emotional... View Details
- May 2021
- Article
Making Doctors Effective Managers and Leaders: A Matter of Health and Well-Being
By: Lisa Rotenstein, Robert S. Huckman and Christine K. Cassel
The COVID-19 crisis has forced physicians to make daily decisions that require knowledge and skills they did not acquire as part of their biomedical training. Physicians are being called upon to be both managers—able to set processes and structures—and leaders—capable... View Details
- 18 Feb 2021
- Interview
Amy Edmondson: Are You Missing One of Your Most Important Jobs as a Manager?
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Chris Clearfield
During our conversation, we talked about:
• The renewed interest in the concept of psychological safety
• J.D. Thompson’s notion of “reciprocal coordination needs”
• How knowledge work does not produce objective or mechanical... View Details
• The renewed interest in the concept of psychological safety
• J.D. Thompson’s notion of “reciprocal coordination needs”
• How knowledge work does not produce objective or mechanical... View Details
- September 7, 2020
- Article
Remote Networking as a Person of Color
By: Laura Morgan Roberts and Anthony J. Mayo
In remote work situations, where people cannot rely on impromptu elevator conversations or water cooler chats with coworkers, the answer isn’t to turn inward. In fact, the need for networking is even more important. In particular, our interactions with people whose... View Details