Publications

Educators

15 Mar 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Backhanded Compliments: How Negative Comparisons Undermine Flattery

Keywords: by Ovul Sezer, Alison Wood Brooks, and Michael I. Norton

2025
Book

Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves

By: Alison Wood Brooks

We all struggle with difficult conversations, but we're often not very good at easy ones either. Though we do it all the time, conversation is one of the most complex, demanding, and delicate of all human tasks, rife with possibilities for misinterpretation and... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication

September 20, 2019
Editorial

Why Asking for Advice Is More Effective Than Asking for Feedback

By: Jaewon Yoon, Hayley Blunden, Ariella S. Kristal and A.V. Whillans

Conventional wisdom says you should ask your colleagues for feedback. However, research suggests that feedback often has no (or even a negative) impact on our performance. This is because the feedback we receive is often too vague—it fails to highlight what we can... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Advice; Advice Seeking; Feedback Culture; Advice Taking; Interpersonal Communication

Read Now

June 1979
Background Note

Developing Skill in Listening

By: Arthur N. Turner

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication

01 Jun 1999
News

Moir Donelson

for the ticket, explaining to his friend: "This man has a business to run, and you are stealing from him." Similarly, during a pro-Reaganomics discussion in his BGIE class, Donelson spoke about the pain his community experienced as a... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

11 Sep 2018
News

Bringing Government Up to Code

the foundations of our social safety net—making it easier, for example, for people to apply for food assistance or for probation officers to communicate with their parolees. On today's episode of Skydeck, Ingersoll talks with contributor... View Details

October 1982
Supplement

Fiber-Optics Industry (F)

By: Michael E. Porter and John R. Wells

Keywords: Communications Industry; Communications Industry

January 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

AT&T Managing Technological Change and the Future of Telephone Operators in the 20th Century

By: Daniel P. Gross and William R. Kerr

By the 1930s, AT&T dominated the American phone industry, serving 10 million telephones and employing over 100,000 switchboard operators. But beginning in the mid-1910s, the company began changing from manually operated switchboards to mechanical switching systems that... View Details

Keywords: AT＆T; Bell Telephone; Phone Lines; Phone Operators; Mechanical Switching; Layoffs; Technological Change; Transition; History; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Disruption; Change Management; Communications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

Educators

January 2004
Article

Cross-country Technological Adoption: Making the Theories Face the Facts

By: Diego Comin and Bart Hobijn

We examine the diffusion of more than twenty technologies across twenty-three of the world's leading industrial economies. Our evidence covers major technology classes such as textile production, steel manufacture, communications, information technology,... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Development Economics; Human Capital; Government and Politics; Trade; Production; Information Technology; Communications Industry; Communications Industry

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21 Jun 2022
News

Banquet Brings Latino Alumni Back Together; Dallas Club Marks 75 Years with a Look Ahead

as well as admitted students and some in the application process. It was a chance for us to reconnect and for the new students to learn more about the Latino community at HBS. It was fantastic.” HBS Latino Alumni Association Banquet... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

11 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Sexual Harassment: What Employers Should Do Now

reviews, should never be conducted by one person alone. “Think about it. Every major corporation does not have the CEO interviewed alone. There’s always a corporate communications person and others in the room,” she says. “How hard would... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

December 2015
Case

Difficult Conversations and Dealing with Challenging Situations at Work: The Friend Who Asked for Feedback

By: Boris Groysberg and Ann Leamon

Keywords: Feedback; Organization Behavior; Interpersonal Communication; Organizations

Educators