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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,475)
- People (6)
- News (376)
- Research (842)
- Events (4)
- Multimedia (3)
- Faculty Publications (193)
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- 24 Jul 2017
- Research & Ideas
People Have an Irrational Need to Complete 'Sets' of Things
Credit: Martin Barraud Here’s a tip for persuading people to finish more tasks, buy more products, or donate more money: Simply present assignments, requests, or items as arbitrary sets, rather than as individual units. New research... View Details
Keywords: by Carmen Nobel
- July 2002 (Revised January 2003)
- Case
Harrah's Entertainment, Inc: Rewarding Our People
By: Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan
Marilyn Winn, head of human resources at Harrah's Entertainment, must make a recommendation to the company's president and CEO about whether the existing bonus payout program is effective at motivating employees or whether it should be revised and/or replaced. A recent... View Details
Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Human Capital; Management Style; Motivation and Incentives; Alignment; Entertainment and Recreation Industry
DeLong, Thomas J., and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan. "Harrah's Entertainment, Inc: Rewarding Our People." Harvard Business School Case 403-008, July 2002. (Revised January 2003.)
- 24 Jul 2019
- Lessons from the Classroom
Can These Business Students Motivate Londoners to Do the Right Thing?
out a new letter with an extra line, letting people know that their neighbors were ponying up, implying that they should, too: “We are writing to inform you that we have still not received your tax payment. By now, nine out of 10 View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- 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
Keywords: Conversation; Goal Pursuit; Communication; Interpersonal Communication; Goals and Objectives; Framework
Yeomans, Michael, Maurice E. Schweitzer, and Alison Wood Brooks. "The Conversational Circumplex: Identifying, Prioritizing, and Pursuing Informational and Relational Motives in Conversation." Current Opinion in Psychology 44 (April 2022): 293–302.
- 28 Jan 2019
- Research & Ideas
Forget Cash. Here Are Better Ways to Motivate Employees
what they do and appreciation for their jobs, rather than feeling extrinsically motivated by cash alone.” If you give cash, include a meaningful note For many employees, particularly younger generations, a job is not just a paycheck;... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- 04 Sep 2019
- Research & Ideas
'I Know Why You Voted for Trump' and Other Motivation Misperceptions
to choose the ecofriendly bulb, but they also reported that price was the attribute they actually cared about most. Next, another group of participants simply observed the choice that other people made: the selection of the ecofriendly... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- 07 Dec 2011
- Research & Ideas
Are Creative People More Dishonest?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In "The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest," the authors report that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative types. Furthermore,... View Details
- 06 Jan 2020
- Research & Ideas
Motivate Your High Performers to Share Their Knowledge
barriers tend to get in the way: lower-performing employees are too reticent to ask for help, or higher-performing employees are reluctant to give it. “This suggests that performance is more malleable and can be changed if you give people... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 17 Jul 2023
- Research & Ideas
Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees
In a post-pandemic business world of hybrid work and quiet quitting, companies must rethink how they motivate employees. Good incentive plans and reward structures require a careful analysis of a company’s objectives, culture, and... View Details
Keywords: by Avery Forman
- July 24, 2019
- Editorial
How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating
By: Jaewon Yoon, A.V. Whillans and Ed O'Brien
People want purposeful work, and managers know it. That’s why companies try to inspire employees with mission statements about the impact their work can have. Ikea tells employees they’re “creating a better everyday life”; Microsoft says they’re “empowering every... View Details
Yoon, Jaewon, A.V. Whillans, and Ed O'Brien. "How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating." Harvard Business Review (website) (July 24, 2019).
- 22 Oct 2019
- Research & Ideas
Use Artificial Intelligence to Set Sales Targets That Motivate
lies in finding the sweet spot between these two undesirable outcomes, and determining how compensation can motivate salespeople best. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Chung and several executives from the consulting firm... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 19 Feb 2009
- Working Paper Summaries
Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: Self-Preservation through Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting
- July 2019
- Article
I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice
By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis
People often speculate about why others make the choices they do. This paper investigates how such inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen... View Details
Keywords: Self-other Difference; Social Perception; Inference-making; Preferences; Consumer Behavior; Prediction; Prediction Error; Decision Choices and Conditions; Perception; Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction
Barasz, Kate, Tami Kim, and Ioannis Evangelidis. "I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice." Special Issue on The Cognitive Science of Political Thought. Cognition 188 (July 2019): 85–97.
- May 1996
- Background Note
The GM's Operational Challenge: Managing Through People
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Ashish Nanda
Highlights and explores how a general manager adds value to the firm at the operational level by managing through people. Discusses how assumptions about human motivation influence the employment contract that the general manager implicitly enters into with the workers... View Details
Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Contracts; Managerial Roles; Operations; Problems and Challenges; Labor and Management Relations; Motivation and Incentives; Value
Bartlett, Christopher A., and Ashish Nanda. "The GM's Operational Challenge: Managing Through People." Harvard Business School Background Note 396-400, May 1996.
- December 24, 2019
- Article
Why It's So Hard to Change People's Commuting Behavior
By: Ariella S. Kristal and A. V. Whillans
Car commuters report higher levels of stress and lower job satisfaction compared to train commuters—in large part because car commuting can involve driving in traffic and navigating tense road situations. Some employers are trying to get involved and reduce car... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; Motivating People; Time And Wellbeing; Time Stress; Commuting; Behavior; Change; Motivation and Incentives
Kristal, Ariella S., and A. V. Whillans. "Why It's So Hard to Change People's Commuting Behavior." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (December 24, 2019).
- 23 May 2016
- Research & Ideas
A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers to Pay Up
if the ultimate enforcement mechanism seems so far-fetched? “By understanding why people make mistakes, it may help you creatively design an approach to resolve these disputes” Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Hong Luo looks at... View Details
- 24 Oct 2012
- Research & Ideas
Want People to Save More? Send a Text
Dina Pomeranz's interest in helping people build a savings cushion for difficult economic times emerged during a summer internship in Cameroon, where a woman she lived with shared how worried and anxious she was about her financial... View Details
Keywords: by Kim Girard
- March 2014
- Article
Cheating More for Less: Upward Social Comparisons Motivate the Poorly Compensated to Cheat
By: Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein and Scott Rick
Intuitively, people should cheat more when cheating is more lucrative, but we find that the effect of performance-based pay rates on dishonesty depends on how readily people can compare their pay rate to that of others. In Experiment 1, participants were paid 5 cents... View Details
Keywords: Dishonesty; Social Comparison; Pay Secrecy; Motivation and Incentives; Fairness; Decision Making; Compensation and Benefits
John, Leslie K., George Loewenstein, and Scott Rick. "Cheating More for Less: Upward Social Comparisons Motivate the Poorly Compensated to Cheat." Special Issue on Behavioral Ethics. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 123, no. 2 (March 2014): 101–109.
- March 23, 2017
- Article
Incentives Don't Help People Change, but Peer Pressure Does
By: Susanna Gallani
This article summarizes the findings of a research study that examined the effectiveness of monetary and non-monetary incentives in establishing persistent organizational behavior modifications. The results of the study highlight the interplay between monetary and... View Details
Gallani, Susanna. "Incentives Don't Help People Change, but Peer Pressure Does." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (March 23, 2017).
- February 2009 (Revised August 2021)
- Supplement
Jieliang Phone Home! (B)
By: Willy Shih, Ethan Bernstein and Nina Bilimoria
At Precision Electro-Tek's mobile phone manufacturing facility in southern China, thousands of operators—bright and capable young men and (mostly) women like Jieliang Hao—are motivated to improve line productivity through small innovations for faster assembly and have... View Details
Keywords: Managing People; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Production; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity; Groups and Teams; Management Practices and Processes; Compensation and Benefits; Labor; Surveys; Decisions; Manufacturing Industry; China
Shih, Willy, Ethan Bernstein, and Nina Bilimoria. "Jieliang Phone Home! (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 609-081, February 2009. (Revised August 2021.)