Signaling - Publications - Faculty & Research

16 Dec 2019
Research & Ideas

Taking on the Taboos That Keep Women Out of India's Workforce

powerful. Despite numerous advances in the Indian economy, reduced birth rates, higher levels of female education, and other promising signals (this year saw the highest-ever number of women elected to Indian Parliament) the number of... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

30 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Recruiters: Highlight Your Company’s Diversity, Not Just Perks and Pay

Why diverse organizations are attractive The researchers sent follow-up questions to ask why applicants value diversity information. “Many indicate that such information was useful because it signals the quality of the company, highlights... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

Students are invited to walk in the shoes of the CIO and become active participants in making these decisions and creating new knowledge about IT leadership through classroom discussion and debate. We want to send the signal that this is... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 May 2000
Research & Ideas

The Simple Economics of Open Source

universities, where it was freely available; they are able to build on knowledge they already possess. And, two, programmers welcome the opportunity, made possible by open source, to customize and de-bug projects, either for personal use or to make their job easier at... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Technology

08 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

Knowing What Your Boss Earns Can Make You Work Harder

both of which helped signal how much effort individuals were putting into their job. They also studied compensation at all levels, including senior executives. Workers were surveyed on how much they thought, on average, peers and managers... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

25 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Beauty Entrepreneur Madam Walker

a particular identity. And there's a piece of this in Madam Walker's decision to buck the tide in how African Americans were known by whites. This was about signaling her own self-respect and that for other African Americans" by... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Beauty & Cosmetics

20 Oct 2010
Op-Ed

Export Competitiveness: Reversing the Logic

be designed, it does not ignore the important role that exports play in the growth process. And there is also a significant overlap in terms of the individual policies that are suggested. Exports are an important diagnostic tool that can help View Details

Keywords: by Christian Ketels

03 Dec 2020
Research & Ideas

Cut Payroll Costs with Transparency, Fairness, and Compassion

people don't know what to expect—I think for CEOs to come out and say, 'We are going to give up our pay,' it's a signal that they are sharing the pain." TJX Companies announced its CEO and chair would have their base salaries reduced for... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott

04 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Smart Cities are Complicated and Costly: Here's How to Build Them

Chombosan Much promotion of smart cities assumes that municipalities will take a proactive, top-down, technology-first approach to urban progress. Thus far, these initiatives look for some forward-thinking city official (or immensely deep-pocketed private investor) to... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction; Green Technology

26 May 2003
Research & Ideas

When Silence Spells Trouble at Work

prevalent in organizations. ... How easy it is for a boss to send a powerful signal that a worker should be quiet. —Leslie A. Perlow Silence often starts when we choose not to confront a difference. Given the dissimilarities in our... View Details

Keywords: by Leslie A. Perlow

04 Jun 2001
What Do You Think?

What’s the Future of the Subscription Model?

customers. Any company pursuing the subscription model by taking its customers for granted should be pursuing another model." Another view is that Internet companies will return to the subscription model given their signal lack of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

17 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

Can Autonomous Vehicles Drive with Common Sense?

human driving but not others, such as sending a more explicit signal that the AV is about to stop. “The solution is not to make AVs quickly accelerate through a crosswalk, as humans often do,” says De Freitas. More broadly, although... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Auto

08 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

Building Effective R&D Capabilities Abroad

Kobe-Osaka region—the second-largest regional market in Japan and one that offered educational institutions with high-quality scientists—Lilly would send a signal to the medical community there that the company was committed to the needs... View Details

Keywords: by Walter Kuemmerle

13 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

Science: The Unlikely Frontier for New Business Ideas

curate and share knowledge between the corporate and academic worlds better, so that managers don’t have to decipher the ever-expanding corpus of journal articles, Krieger says. “Managers need more than just a search engine for scientific articles; they need maps and... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

24 May 2022
Research & Ideas

Career Advice for Minorities and Women: Sharing Your Identity Can Open Doors

identities in their emails, city councilors were about 25 percent more likely to respond to the queries than when they didn’t. In a second study, about 1,200 undergraduate students received a request for research help from “Demarcus Rivers,” a fictitious graduate... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

22 Feb 2021
Book

Reaching Today's Omnichannel Customer Takes a New Sales Strategy

Selling is changing, but broad generalizations and false dichotomies about ecommerce, big data, and other trends—hallmarks of current sales advice—are keeping business leaders from making sound decisions, says Frank Cespedes, author of a new book that aims to separate... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

20 Feb 2017
Research & Ideas

Having No Life is the New Aspirational Lifestyle

and both were rated above Trader Joe’s. “Whole Foods may be the more luxurious experience, but Peapod signals your time is so valuable you can’t afford to waste it,” says Keinan. In another study, a woman wearing a Bluetooth headset was... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

12 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

When Design Enables Discrimination: Learning from Anti-Asian Bias on Airbnb

society, it’s not my problem.’ It is your problem as a leader. You need to take steps to make sure you're contributing to solutions rather than to problems.” You Might Also Like: How Racial Bias Taints Customer Service: Evidence from 6,000 Hotels Gender Bias Complaints... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds; Technology; Travel

18 Feb 2019
Book

What’s Really Disrupting Business? It’s Not Technology

tried to prevent customers from showrooming. They considered changing the barcodes on products to make them hard to search for online. The company even tried to use signal jammers, like the ones they use to keep prison inmates from using... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Beauty & Cosmetics; Insurance; Service; Retail

04 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors

problems, taking money from friends and family may send a negative signal about the startup's prospects, especially if the startup is beyond the early launching stage. One serial entrepreneur observed that founders who fail to raise... View Details

Keywords: by Noam Wasserman

Publications