Publications

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

2009
Working Paper

Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior

By: Lalin Anik, Lara B. Aknin, Michael I. Norton and Elizabeth W. Dunn

While lay intuitions and pop psychology suggest that helping others leads to higher levels of happiness, the existing evidence only weakly supports this causal claim: Research in psychology, economics, and neuroscience exploring the benefits of charitable giving has... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Research; Behavior; Happiness; Motivation and Incentives

October–December 2023
Article

A Practical Guide to Conversation Research: How to Study What People Say to Each Other

By: Michael Yeomans, Katelynn Boland, Hanne K. Collins, Nicole Abi-Esber and Alison Wood Brooks

Conversation—a verbal interaction between two or more people—is a complex, pervasive, and consequential human behavior. Conversations have been studied across many academic disciplines. However, advances in recording and analysis techniques over the last decade have... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Analytics and Data Science; Research

03 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Is the Future of MBA Education?

do to train knowledgeable, principled, and skilled leaders. Against this backdrop of problems, business schools are poised to take advantage of exciting opportunities to cooperate and innovate, argue HBS professors Srikant M. Datar and David A. Garvin and View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

February 1985 (Revised September 1988)
Case

Caterpillar Tractor Co.

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Describes the structure and evolution of the earth moving equipment industry worldwide in the post war era, particularly focusing on developments in the 1960s and 1970s. Describes Caterpillar's strategy in becoming the dominant worldwide competitor (industry market... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

Educators

09 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Unilever—A Case Study

The issue of control is examined, as is the related question of the "stickiness" of knowledge within large international firms. The discussion draws on a case study of the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods manufacturer Unilever, which... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation; Food & Beverage; Manufacturing; Retail

March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Technical Note

Technical Note: The Traits of Entrepreneurs

By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

Why do some entrepreneurs succeed and others do not? Are there personality traits that lead someone to become an entrepreneur? Although many questions still remain, there has been significant research on the “entrepreneurial personality.” This note provides an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Innovation; Personality; Personality Traits; Risk Preference; Big Five; Locus Of Control; Success; Entrepreneurship; Personal Characteristics

Educators

Teaching Interest

Information in Financial Markets (Econ 970, Spring 2016)

Second-year undergraduate course covering various aspects of information propagation in financial markets. The course is divided into four units. We begin by covering canonical pricing anomalies that illustrate the importance of information distribution and... View Details

2020
Chapter

Consensual Assessment

By: B. A. Hennessey, J. S. Mueller and T. M. Amabile

Over time, the field of creativity research has seen a gradual shift away from an almost exclusive emphasis on the creative person towards a more balanced inquiry that centers both on individual difference issues and questions about the nature of creative products and... View Details

Keywords: Consensual Assessment Technique; Product Creativity; Creativity; Research

14 Jul 2009
First Look

First Look: July 14

innovation in which an innovator uses several research inputs to invent a new good. These inputs, in turn, must be invented before they can be used by the final innovator. As a consequence, the degree of patent protection affects the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

24 Jun 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Accounting Data, Market Values, and the Cross Section of Expected Returns World

Keywords: by Charles C.Y. Wang; Accounting

2022
Working Paper

Beliefs About Giving Across Contexts

By: Christine L. Exley, John-Henry Pezzuto and Marta Serra-Garcia

A rich literature investigates prosocial behavior by exploiting a variety of methods, the validity of which has been debated. While this literature has compared behavior inside and outside of the laboratory, an open question is how participants view prosocial behavior... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Values and Beliefs

12 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

When Experts Play It Too Safe: Innovation Lessons from a NASA Experiment

the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at HBS, and LISH research scientist Michael Menietti; as well as George Washington University’s Zoe Szajnfarber and Jason Crusan. “Given that these types of decisions can... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Aerospace

September–October 2019
Article

How Purchase Probability Scales Can Shed Light on Consumer Purchase Intentions

By: Rene Befurt and Alvin J. Silk

Market researchers generally, and survey experts specifically, study consumers to learn about their behavior: What are consumers’ opinions, attitudes, thoughts, and actions at the various stages of the buying process? Especially in litigation cases, these and other... View Details

Keywords: Purchase Intentions; Buying Process; Consumer Behavior; Surveys

2024
Article

The Sociology of Entrepreneurship Revisited

By: Tristan Botelho, Ranjay Gulati and Olav Sorensen

Over the last two decades, the sociology of entrepreneurship has exploded as an area of academic inquiry. Most of this research has been focused on understanding the environmental conditions that promote entrepreneurship and processes related to the initial formation... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Entrepreneurship; Business Ventures

Find at Harvard

April 2015
Article

Self-serving Justifications: Doing Wrong and Feeling Moral

By: Shaul Shalvi, F. Gino, Rachel Barkan and Shahar Ayal

Unethical behavior by "ordinary" people poses significant societal and personal challenges. We present a novel framework centered on the role of self-serving justification to build upon and advance the rapidly expanding research on intentional unethical behavior of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Moral Sensibility

Find at Harvard

19 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

What Makes Employees Trust (vs. Second-Guess) AI?

When an algorithm recommends ways to improve business outcomes, do employees trust it? Conventional wisdom suggests that understanding the inner workings of artificial intelligence (AI) can raise confidence in such programs. Yet, new View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

August 2022
Case

In-Q-Tel: Innovation On A Mission

By: Joshua Lev Krieger and Josh Lerner

In 2022, the leaders of In-Q-Tel (IQT) considered what was next for the unique mission-driven organization. Since 1999, IQT had one mission: to be the most sophisticated source of strategic technical knowledge and capabilities to the U.S. government and its allies. IQT... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; National Security; Technological Innovation; Research; Geopolitical Units; Risk Management; Recruitment; Growth and Development Strategy; Venture Capital; Knowledge Management; Information Industry; Banking Industry

Educators