Motivating People - Publications - Faculty & Research

25 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 25

creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and creativity primes promote individuals' motivation to think outside the box and that this increased motivation leads to unethical... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Career Re-Entry & Flexible Work - Alumni

The more people who know, the greater your chances of finding fresh leads, insights, and ideas. Conduct informational interviews Return to your roots and remember to conduct interviews that may not (or probably will not) lead to a job,... View Details

14 Dec 2016
HBS Seminar

Siobhan O'Mahony and Rebecca Karp, Boston University

29 Mar 2022
Book

5 Qualities That Help Companies Thrive for Decades—Even Centuries

Shetty, a cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Health, built a financially viable enterprise at scale by pioneering low-cost heart surgery for tens of thousands of low-income patients. Shetty was motivated by the widespread... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2011
Article

Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia

By: Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu

In this paper, we examine the causal relationship between group size and incentives to contribute in the setting of Chinese Wikipedia, the Chinese language version of an online encyclopedia that relies entirely on voluntary contributions. The group at Chinese Wikipedia... View Details

Keywords: Rights; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Valuation; Groups and Teams; Knowledge Sharing; Behavior; Satisfaction; Size; Government and Politics; Economics; Information Technology Industry; Hong Kong; Taiwan; Singapore

Citation

Find at Harvard

09 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation

integrated mill left the market, the price of angle iron collapsed. Once again, the minimills had to move up to the next tier of the industry in order to survive. And so on. At each stage of the minimills' climb up-market, an asymmetry of View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor & Scott D. Anthony

25 Jun 2020
Blog Post

Harvard Business School Class of 2021 Student Profiles

the value of HR to people who don’t necessarily understand it.” She decided to pursue an MBA because, “I need to meet people where they are – understanding people’s worlds is the most important thing I need... View Details

08 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

Decision Rights: Who Gives the Green Light?

late William H. Meckling note these issues: The cost of delegating decision rights to those who have the relevant information but whose motivations and goals don't align with those of the company. The cost of accurately transferring the... View Details

Keywords: by Peter Jacobs

27 Jun 2011
Research & Ideas

Recovering from the Need to Achieve

at MIT during the late 1970s. "I began to ask myself why I didn't feel more satisfied even though I'd reached these goals and experienced these milestones after graduation. I also began to read more theoretical work on motivation and... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

26 Nov 2001
Op-Ed

Why Corporate Budgeting Needs To Be Fixed

truth. It turns business decisions into elaborate exercises in gaming. It sets colleague against colleague, creating distrust and ill will. And it distorts incentives, motivating people to act in ways that... View Details

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen

16 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Can Consumers Be Saved From Their Misguided Decisions?

health, career—that an industry is evolving around motivating people to be smarter about their choices. The problem: solutions created by these researchers and other behavioral scientists, such as incentives... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Consulting; Retail

01 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

Team Success Starts with the Individual—and with Love

thrive? Carroll’s inquiry into unleashing human potential began with a well-known idea dating back to the psychologist Abraham Maslow and others: the notion that intrinsic, not just extrinsic, rewards motivate View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati; Sports

17 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Blue Skies, Distractions Arise: How Weather Affects Productivity

which you can capture whether people are cognitively distracted is to actually look at the errors they make when they are entering data," says Gino, who, as a native of Italy, was in a good position to detect transcription errors. “People... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

13 Oct 2015
First Look

October 13, 2015

not translate into a greater desire to purchase their preferred item or into an overall benefit for choice satisfaction. Time-of-day controls were used to confirm that the observed effects could not be explained by circadian influences. Thus we show that View Details

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

conventional wisdom isn’t enough to produce significant innovation; we must go further. Our thinking can too easily get confined by silos and structures that limit us to what is familiar, what we see every day, what the people around us... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

22 Apr 2002
Research & Ideas

Does Spirituality Drive Success?

spiritual guidance in crucial decisions, especially those that affect other people such as employees, he said. Levy's guidelines are: Quiet the mind. Reach deep inside. Go beyond the ego to hear the inner voice. Don't fear ambiguity; rest... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace, Sean Silverthorne & Wendy Guild

10 May 2022
Research & Ideas

Being Your Own Boss Can Pay Off, but Not Always with Big Pay

Besides, prior studies have shown that other factors motivate self-employed people more than salary. Their bottom lines are not entirely measured in dollars, Kerr says. “It’s about being your own boss,... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

11 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

A World of Difference: What Keeps Companies from Becoming More Inclusive

Frances Frei, the UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management, is an expert in the intersection of leadership and inclusion. Francesca Gino, the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration, studies how people can lead more... View Details

Keywords: by Jen McFarland Flint

06 Mar 2018
First Look

First Look at Research and Ideas, March 6, 2018

provide insights into why and how investors use reported environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. Relevance to investment performance is the most frequent motivation for use of ESG data followed by client demand and... View Details