Publications

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April 2022
Case

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

"Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The case identifies six distinct phases in the... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Gender; Management; Employees; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Equity; United States

Educators

March 2010 (Revised December 2012)
Background Note

A 'Rich-vs.-King' Approach to Term Sheet Negotiations

By: Noam Wasserman, Furqan Nazeeri and Kyle Anderson

This note offers a new approach to venture capital term-sheet negotiations, with actionable steps based on insights from Professor Wasserman's "Rich-vs.-King" approach to founder decisions. A core thesis of this note is that trying to negotiate all terms in a term... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Framework; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Motivation and Incentives; Financial Services Industry

Educators

October 1999
Case

Royal Dutch/Shell in Transition (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine

After the Brent Spar episode and the 1995 events in Nigeria, Shell undertakes an intensive review of its values and business principles. At the same time, it conducts the largest multi-stakeholder consultation in its history in an effort to better understand society's... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Transformation; Environmental Accounting; Energy Industry

Educators

March 2018
Article

Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical Behavior

By: Jackson G. Lu, Julia J. Lee, F. Gino and Adam D. Galinsky

Air pollution is a serious problem that influences billions of people globally. Although the health and environmental costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and... View Details

Keywords: Pollutants; Behavior; Moral Sensibility; Crime and Corruption

05 Feb 2009
Research & Ideas

In Praise of Marketing

marketing is not a profession. Second, marketing is not a science. Unlike accounting or the law, marketing is not a profession. Anyone can call himself or herself a marketer. The absence of entry barriers allows for greater creativity,... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Advertising

01 Jun 2023
HBS Case

A Nike Executive Hid His Criminal Past to Turn His Life Around. What If He Didn't Have To?

street-to-prison cycle that had ravaged his youth. He had passed a high school equivalency test and had earned a college degree, and by that point could envision a bright future as a budding accountant at Arthur Andersen, the firm he... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Apparel & Accessories

01 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 1, 2007

FDI increase when we account for the quality of FDI. Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-072.pdf The Price of Capital: Evidence from Trade Data Authors:Laura Alfaro and Faisal Z. Ahmed Abstract In this paper we use... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2012
Article

Racial Colorblindness: Emergence, Practice, and Implications

By: Evan P. Apfelbaum, Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers

We examine the pervasive endorsement of racial colorblindness-the belief that racial group membership should not be taken into account or even noticed-as a strategy for managing diversity and intergroup relations. Despite research demonstrating that race is perceived... View Details

Keywords: Management; Strategy; Law; Practice; Race; Research; Social Issues; Diversity

07 Feb 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Earnings Management from the Bottom Up: An Analysis of Managerial Incentives Below the CEO

Keywords: by Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Julie Wulf

2012
Article

Do Voters Demand Responsive Governments? Evidence from Indian Disaster Relief

By: Shawn Cole, Andrew Healy and Eric Werker

Using rainfall, public relief, and election data from India, we examine how governments respond to adverse shocks and how voters react to these responses. The data show that voters punish the incumbent party for weather events beyond its control. However, fewer voters... View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; System Shocks; Natural Disasters; Policy; Motivation and Incentives; Public Opinion; India

Article

Third-Party Punishment as a Costly Signal of High Continuation Probabilities in Repeated Games

By: Jillian J. Jordan and David G. Rand

Why do individuals pay costs to punish selfish behavior, even as third-party observers? A large body of research suggests that reputation plays an important role in motivating such third-party punishment (TPP). Here we focus on a recently proposed reputation-based... View Details

Keywords: Direct Reciprocity; Evolution; Dispersal; Cooperation; Trust; Reputation; Game Theory

December 2022
Article

Fostering Perceptions of Authenticity via Sensitive Self-Disclosure

By: Li Jiang, Leslie K. John, Reihane Boghrati and Maryam Kouchaki

Leaders’ perceived authenticity—the sense that leaders are acting in accordance with their “true self”—is associated with positive outcomes for both employees and organizations alike. How might leaders foster this impression? We show that sensitive self-disclosure, in... View Details

Keywords: Authenticity; Weaknesses; Self-disclosure; Leaders; Impression Management; Leadership Style; Motivation and Incentives

08 Dec 2022
HBS Case

The War in Ukraine and Nestlé’s Moral Dilemma: Stay or Leave Russia?

Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, faced a difficult choice last February as Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine, and the 24/7 news and social media cycle amplified the company’s every move. CEO Mark Schneider was... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

Article

Financial Shame Spirals: How Shame Intensifies Financial Hardship

By: Joe J. Gladstone, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Adam Eric Greenberg and Adam D. Galinsky

Financial hardship is an established source of shame. This research explores whether shame is also a driver and exacerbator of financial hardship. Six experimental, archival, and correlational studies (N = 9,110)—including data from customer bank account histories and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Hardship; Financial Decision-making; Shame; Guilt; Personal Finance; Financial Condition; Decision Making; Emotions

Forthcoming
Article

Imagining the Future: Memory, Simulation and Beliefs

By: Pedro Bordalo, Giovanni Burro, Katherine B. Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer

How do people form beliefs about novel risks, with which they have little or no experience? Motivated by survey data on beliefs about Covid we collected in 2020, we build a model based on the psychology of selective memory. When a person thinks about an event,... View Details

Keywords: Expectations; Memory; COVID-19 Pandemic; Risk and Uncertainty; Cognition and Thinking

Article

Pseudo-Set Framing

By: Kate Barasz, Leslie John, Elizabeth A. Keenan and Michael I. Norton

Pseudo-set framing—arbitrarily grouping items or tasks together as part of an apparent “set”—motivates people to reach perceived completion points. Pseudo-set framing changes gambling choices (Study 1), effort (Studies 2 and 3), giving behavior (Field Data and Study... View Details

Keywords: Framing Effects; Gestalt Psychology; Judgment; Judgments; Decision Making; Perception; Behavior

26 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

High-Stakes Decision Making: The Lessons of Mount Everest

mountain, Everest has never been a cakewalk: 148 people have lost their lives attempting to reach the summit since 1922. Newspaper and magazine articles and books—most famously, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael A. Roberto

Article

The Pitfalls of Pricing Algorithms: Be Mindful of How They Can Hurt Your Brand

By: Marco Bertini and Oded Koenigsberg

More and more companies are relying on pricing algorithms to maximize profits. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning enables real-time price adjustments based on supply and demand, competitors’ activities, delivery schedules, and so forth. But... View Details

Keywords: Algorithmic Pricing; Dynamic Pricing; Price; Change; Information Technology; Brands and Branding; Perception; Consumer Behavior

2022
Working Paper

Overreaction and Diagnostic Expectations in Macroeconomics

By: Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer

We present the case for the centrality of overreaction in expectations for addressing important challenges in finance and macroeconomics. First, non-rational expectations by market participants can be measured and modeled in ways that address some of the key challenges... View Details

Keywords: Overreaction; Rational Expectations; Macroeconomics; Market Participation; Social Psychology