Publications

2023
Working Paper

Firm Purpose and Problem Wickedness: A Review of the Academic Literature

By: Caroline Adelson, Charlotte Kuller, Cate Tompkins, Ellora Sarkar, Samantha Price and Marco Iansiti

Our understanding of the firm’s role in society has evolved greatly over the past 70 years, with more recent years seeing a sharp rise in interest for how firms can contribute more than profits to society – that is, have a purpose beyond profits. Businesses engaged in... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Problems and Challenges

Article

Inaccurate Group Meta-Perceptions Drive Negative Out-Group Attributions in Competitive Contexts

By: J. Lees and M. Cikara

Across seven experiments and one survey (n = 4,282), people consistently overestimated out-group negativity towards the collective behaviour of their in-group. This negativity bias in group meta-perception was present across multiple competitive (but not cooperative)... View Details

Keywords: Intergroup Competition; Psychology; Political Polarization; Judgment And Decision-making

01 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Good Leadership Is an Act of Kindness

of confusion and burnout. Teams are failing to meet deadlines and executives tell me they see an increase in petty conflicts and a parallel... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson

17 Aug 2021
Op-Ed

Dispensing Justice: The Case for Legalizing Cannabis Nationally

neighborhoods. Communities with flourishing illicit cannabis markets suffer a host of associated problems, including high incarceration rates (often exacerbated by prosecutorial bias), violence as the primary means of dispute resolution... View Details

Keywords: by Ashish Nanda and Tabatha Robinson

27 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

Corporate Values and Employee Cynicism

chance of identifying and fixing problems in the making. Employees can help prevent their own—sometimes unwarranted—disenchantment by questioning their knee-jerk responses to leader actions that seem hypocritical. They can consider the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

May 1991
Article

Presidential Commitment and the Veto

By: Daniel E. Ingberman and Dennis Yao

A president's power to veto is widely recognized as an important weapon in the struggle with Congress over legislation. In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of the veto weapon with a simple model of presidential powers that incorporates informal institutional... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Laws and Statutes; Financial Markets; Value; Taxation; Conflict and Resolution; Research; Performance Effectiveness; Legal Services Industry

Find at Harvard

23 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Partnering and the Balanced Scorecard

improvement programs kept failing. Meliones created a leadership team with representatives from each of the three employee groups to redefine the mission and to develop a Balanced Scorecard that incorporated two apparently View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

12 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Entrepreneurship and Multinationals Drive Globalization

is that developing appropriate organizational structures and strategies to manage political risks can bring substantive benefits. However, in the event of a major military conflict or a revolution, even the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics; Manufacturing; Consumer Products; Pharmaceutical

2013
Working Paper

Inequality and Decision Making: Imagining a New Line of Inquiry

By: David Moss, Anant Thaker and Howard Rudnick

The substantial increase in inequality in the United States over the past three decades has provoked considerable debate, with some analysts characterizing rising inequality as among the greatest threats facing the nation and others dismissing it as little more than a... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Income; Decision Making; Government and Politics; Economics; United States

SSRN

December 2016
Case

Public Mission, Private Funding: The University of California, Berkeley

By: William C. Kirby and Joycelyn W. Eby

UC Berkley, long known as one of the leading public universities in both the U.S. and the world, has seen turbulent times recently. While student enrollment and costs have increased steadily in recent years, the school, which has been fiercely proud of its public... View Details

Educators

June 2022
Case

Mossadeq’s Gambit: The US, UK, and Iranian Oil Nationalization

By: Jeremy Friedman and Jingyu Liu

Many of the West’s political problems in the Middle East and in Iran in particular can be traced to the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh by military forces supported by the American CIA and the British MI6 in August 1953. Mossadegh, at the head of a... View Details

Keywords: Neo-imperialism; History; Conflict Management; War; Globalized Economies and Regions; Natural Resources; National Security; Government and Politics; Globalized Markets and Industries; Middle East; Iran

Educators

November 2012 (Revised January 2018)
Teaching Note

Chris and Alison Weston (A), (B), (C)

By: Sandra J. Sucher

Teaching Note for Chris and Alison Weston(A), (B) and (C) cases. View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Conflict of Interests; Value; United States

2017
Article

Refugees Misdirected: How Information, Misinformation and Rumors Shape Refugees’ Access to Fundamental Rights

By: Melissa Carlson, Laura Jakli and Katerina Linos

The global refugee regime represents one of the few generous commitments governments offer to outsiders. Indeed, few persons fleeing armed conflict actually claim international protection upon first arriving in Europe, even though the benefits of legal protection are... View Details

Keywords: Refugees; Knowledge Dissemination; Trust; Risk and Uncertainty; Rights; Europe

05 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

Is the Business World Finally Ready for the Wisdom of Shibusawa?

Eiichi Shibusawa continues to gain influence in Japan—even though he died almost a century ago. Japan’s government announced earlier this year that the 19th century business leader would be the face on 10,000 yen ($90) bank notes—the highest value denomination in... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones and Rei Morimoto; Financial Services; Retail

November 2024
Article

Preference Externality Estimators: A Comparison of Border Approaches and IVs

By: Xi Ling, Wesley R. Hartmann and Tomomichi Amano

This paper compares two estimators—the Border Approach and an Instrumental Variable (IV) estimator—using a unified framework where identifying variation arises from “preference externalities,” following the intuition in Waldfogel (2003). We highlight two dimensions in... View Details

Keywords: Econometrics; Casual Inference; Marketing; Economics; Advertising; Mathematical Methods

01 Nov 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Male Circumcision and AIDS: The Macroeconomic Impact of a Health Crisis

Keywords: by Eric D. Werker, Amrita Ahuja & Brian Wendell

2010
Working Paper

Disagreement about the Team's Status Hierarchy: An Insidious Obstacle to Coordination and Performance

By: Heidi K. Gardner

Hierarchies are pervasive in groups, generally providing clear guidelines for the dominance and deference behaviors that members are expected to show based on their relative ranks. But what happens when team members disagree about where each member ranks on the... View Details

Keywords: Performance Effectiveness; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Conflict and Resolution; Perception; Status and Position; Cooperation