Publications

12 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Publish or Perish: What the Research Says About Productivity in Academia

report by the American Association of University Professors showing that during the past three decades, academic employment in the US has shifted away from tenured positions—which tend to bring higher salaries and job security—toward... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Education

05 Sep 2023
Book

Failing Well: How Your ‘Intelligent Failure’ Unlocks Your Full Potential

necessarily means experiencing failures along the way, Edmondson says. Taking this approach may be especially important now, as employers struggle to retain talent and boost employee morale in workplaces that were completely reshaped by... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

23 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Keep Employees Productive: Support Caregivers

report guides organizations in supporting work-life balance for caregivers. Fuller finds that there are strong incentives to support these employees with benefits; payoffs include lower turnover and less absenteeism. Instead of urging people to show up more, an View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

2023
Working Paper

Remote Work across Jobs, Companies, and Space

By: Stephen Hansen, Peter John Lambert, Nick Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Raffaella Sadun and Bledi Taska

The pandemic catalyzed an enduring shift to remote work. To measure and characterize this shift, we examine more than 250 million job vacancy postings across five English-speaking countries. Our measurements rely on a state-of-the-art language-processing framework... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Hybrid Work; Work From Home (WFH); Pandemic; Labor Market; Job Search; Job Design and Levels; Trends

September 2019
Technical Note

Care Economy in the U.S. (Primer)

By: Joseph B. Fuller, William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman and Carl Kreitzberg

This case describes how caregiving responsibilities influence American employees, firms, and the broader economy. It details how sociodemographic trends in the late 20th century transformed the way that Americans balance their personal and professional lives, analyzing... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Talent and Talent Management; Demographics; Labor; Health Care and Treatment; Family and Family Relationships; Strategy; Management; United States

2016
Working Paper

Food Stamp Entrepreneurs

By: Gareth Olds

This paper explores how eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamps Program) affects firm formation. Using a variety of identification strategies, I show that expanded SNAP eligibility in the mid-2000s... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Welfare or Wellbeing

Read Now

April 2002
Case

Contingent Workforce Planning at Motorola, Inc.

Details the rationale for and design of a unique organizational response by Motorola to the challenges of contingent staffing at its semiconductor facility in Austin, Texas. The new outsourcing strategy is built on principles of supply chain management and business... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Semiconductor Industry; Texas

April 2021
Teaching Note

Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd.

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

Within 20 years of launch, entrepreneur Wang Yanquing had built Wuxi Lead into the world’s largest manufacturer of equipment for manufacturing capacitors, lithium-ion batteries, and fuel cells.
The first big choice an entrepreneur faces is what sector to... View Details

Keywords: Lithium-ion Batteries; Industry Dynamics; Entrepreneurial Journey; Entrepreneurship; Markets; Strategy; Decision Making; Manufacturing Industry; China

05 May 2022
HBS Case

College Degrees: The Job Requirement Companies Seek, but Don't Really Need

Employers struggling to find workers during the current labor shortage might want to rethink their hiring criteria by taking a new look at job candidates who lack college degrees. American employers have... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

2024
Working Paper

A Gender Backlash: Does Exposure to Female Labor Market Participation Fuel Gender Conservatism?

By: Paula Rettl, Diane Bolet, Catherine E. De Vries, Simone Cremaschi, Tarik Abou-Chadi and Sergi Pardos-Prado

The growing participation of women in the labor market has marked a significant societal transformation, coinciding with the rise of gender conservatism and far-right support. We study whether the economic consequences of labor market feminization and gender backlash... View Details

Keywords: Gender Bias; Gender Equality; Gender Inclusivity; Politics; Political Backlash; Political Culture; Conservatism; Gender; Government and Politics; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Labor

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2021
Working Paper

Status and Mortality: Is There a Whitehall Effect in the United States?

By: Tom Nicholas

Do white collar workers with lower social status in the occupational hierarchy die younger? The influential Whitehall studies of British civil servants identified a strong inverse relationship between employment rank and mortality, but we do not know if this effect... View Details

Keywords: Mortality; Status; Socioeconomic Determinants Of Health

December 2001
Background Note

Reporting on Agribusiness in the 21st Century

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Anne M Fitzgerald

Agriculture is not what it used to be. Neither is coverage of the industry by news organizations. A century ago, about 40% of the U.S. population lived on the farm, and one in three U.S. jobs was tied to agriculture. It made sense for daily newspapers to cover farming... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Newspapers; Media; Perception; Change; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

2023
Working Paper

Global Harms, Local Profits: How the Uneven Costs of Natural Disasters Affect Support for Green Political Platforms

By: Silvia Pianta and Paula Rettl

The emergence of green constituencies enables climate action. Conventional wisdom holds that first-hand experience with natural disasters helps build green coalitions by increasing the salience of the costs of environmental degradation. Focusing on fires in Brazil,... View Details

Keywords: Climate Impact; Politics; Environmental Issues; Environmental Protection; Economic Analysis; Economic Behavior; Economic Geography; Economy; Economics; Climate Change; Environmental Management; Political Elections; Natural Disasters; Green Technology; Environmental Sustainability; Latin America; Brazil

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March 2001 (Revised April 2002)
Case

Ginzel et al v. Kolcraft Enterprises et al (A)

By: Michael A. Wheeler

Examines the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of an infant who died after a portable crib collapsed. The manufacturer, Kolcraft, licensed the Playskool brand name from the co-defendant, Hasbro Industries. Raises difficult questions about what the two... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Product; Negotiation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Lawsuits and Litigation; Legal Liability; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; United States

11 Apr 2024
In Practice

Why Progress on Immigration Might Soften Labor Pains

School experts discuss the current quandary and potential policy and corporate solutions. William Kerr: Untangling migration and employment The immigration system to the United States is very complex. We have many people coming at many... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

15 Mar 2024
HBS Case

Let's Talk: Why It's Time to Stop Avoiding Taboo Topics at Work

about weight,” says Wing. Instead, Wing says, the company must decide whether to reduce benefits—hurting many subscribers who need the medication—or foot the bill. It would be better, Wing says, if employers could speak with their... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

14 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Working Moms Are Mostly Thriving Again. Can We Finally Achieve Gender Parity?

and mixed news,” says McGinn, the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration at HBS. Women have seen employment gains, while some gender roles have remained firmly entrenched thanks to outdated household norms and workplace... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

25 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Being a Team Player: Why College Athletes Succeed in Business

Persistence. Teamwork. Grit and grace in victory and defeat. Intercollegiate varsity sports may build such skills that employers prize—and that later propel former players into management roles faster than their classmates, suggests a... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

March 2016
Article

Where in the World are the Workers? Cultural Underrepresentation in I-O Research

By: Christopher G. Myers

Few would dispute that the nature of work, and the workers who perform it, has evolved considerably in the 70 years since the founding of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) as the American Psychological Association's (APA's) Division 14,... View Details

Keywords: Global Organizations; Research; Industrial Organization; Organizations; Globalization