Publications

October 2018
Article

The Operational Value of Social Media Information

By: Ruomeng Cui, Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno and Dennis J. Zhang

While the value of using social media information has been established in multiple business contexts, the field of operations and supply chain management have not yet explored the possibilities it offers in improving firms' operational decisions. This study attempts to... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Information; Sales; Forecasting and Prediction; Social Media

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

Keywords: Conformity; Normative Social Influence; Social Networks; Field Experiment; Social and Collaborative Networks; Behavior; Attitudes; Social Media

Teaching Interest

Economic Theory

By: Jerry R. Green

Topics include social choice theory, signaling, mechanism design, general equilibrium, the core, externalities, and public goods. View Details

22 May 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Componential Theory of Creativity

Keywords: by Teresa M. Amabile

2020
Working Paper

Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used as an observation for further inductive or abductive research, but should not be treated as the result of a... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Theory Building; Induction; Decision Trees; Random Forests; K-nearest Neighbors; Neural Network; P-hacking; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis

SSRN

December 2012
Article

What Drives Corporate Social Performance? The Role of Nation-level Institutions

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

Based on Whitley's "National Business Systems" (NBS) institutional framework (Whitley 1997, 1999), we theorize about and empirically investigate the impact of nation-level institutions on firms' corporate social performance (CSP). Using a sample of firms from 42... View Details

Keywords: Environment; Environmental Performance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Institutions; Institutional Theory; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance

2022
Working Paper

Social Protection and Social Distancing During the Pandemic: Mobile Money Transfers in Ghana

By: Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, Benjamin N. Roth and Christopher Udry

We study the impact of mobile money transfers to a representative sample of low-income Ghanaians during the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement of the upcoming transfers affects neither consumption, well-being, nor social distancing. Once disbursed,... View Details

Keywords: Social Distancing; Social Welfare; Economic Relief; Health Pandemics; Poverty

Article

From Orientation to Behavior: The Interplay Between Learning Orientation, Open-mindedness, and Psychological Safety in Team Learning

By: Jean-François Harvey, Kevin J. Johnson, Kathryn S. Roloff and Amy C. Edmondson

Do teams with motivation to learn actually engage in the behaviors that produce learning? Though team learning orientation has been found to be positively related to team learning, we know little about how and when it actually fosters team learning. It is obviously not... View Details

Keywords: Emergent States; Goal Orientation; Open-mindedness; Psychological Safety; Team Learning; Teams; Groups and Teams; Learning; Goals and Objectives

22 Mar 2017
Blog Post

3 Lessons I Learned as a Social Enterprise Summer Fellow

I came to HBS with an interest in social impact but without any specific career convictions. Over the past year, the Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI) has been especially influential in guiding my career... View Details

06 Apr 2017
Blog Post

3 Lessons I Learned as a Social Enterprise Summer Fellow

I came to HBS with an interest in social impact but without any specific career convictions. Over the past year, the Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI) has been especially influential in guiding my career... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

April 2023
Article

Learning Down to Train Up: Mentors Are More Effective When They Value Insights from Below

By: Ting Zhang, Dan Wang and Adam D. Galinsky

Although mentorship is vital for individual success, potential mentors often view it as a costly burden. To understand what motivates mentors to overcome this barrier and more fully engage with their mentees, we introduce a new construct, learning direction, which... View Details

Keywords: Mentoring; Learning Direction; Interpersonal Communication; Learning; Leadership Development

Web

Machine Learning for Social Impact | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

2020
Conference Presentation

Learning in Social Environments with Curious Neural Agents

By: M. Sano, J. De Freitas, N. Haber and D. L. K. Yamins

December 2001 (Revised May 2003)
Background Note

Queueing Theory

By: V.G. Narayanan and George Batta

Explains the assumptions behind and the insights from a simple queueing model. View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Theory; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Motivation and Incentives; Service Delivery

Educators

2019
Chapter

Problem, Person, and Pathway: A Framework for Social Innovators

By: Julie Battilana, Brittany Butler, Marissa Kimsey, Johanna Mair, Christopher Marquis and Christian Seelos

As the appetite for learning about social innovation intensifies, how can we better prepare practitioners for the work of addressing the world’s pressing social problems at the relevant scale? This chapter presents the “3P” framework that we developed to help address... View Details

Keywords: Social Innovation; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Issues; Change; Problems and Challenges

06 Apr 2020
Working Paper Summaries

A General Theory of Identification

Keywords: by Iavor Bojinov and Guillaume Basse

October 2021
Article

Changing Gambling Behavior through Experiential Learning

By: Shawn A. Cole, Martin Abel and Bilal Zia

This paper tests experiential learning as a debiasing tool to reduce gambling in South Africa, through a randomized field experiment. The study implements a simple, interactive game that simulates the odds of winning the national lottery through dice rolling.... View Details

Keywords: Debiasing; Experiential Learning; Behavioral Economics; Financial Education; Learning; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Behavior; Decision Making

March 2020
Article

Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-family Narrative as a Social Defense Against 24/7 Work Culture

By: Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid

It is widely accepted that the conflict between women’s family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is incomplete: men also experience it and nevertheless... View Details

Keywords: 24/7 Work Culture; Hegemonic Narrative; Social Defense; Work-family Conflict; Systems-psychodynamic Theory; Work-Life Balance; Personal Development and Career; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Organizational Culture