Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,504)
- Faculty Publications (676)
- Article
From Wealth to Well-Being? Money Matters, but Less than People Think
By: Lara B. Aknin, Michael I. Norton and Elizabeth W. Dunn
While numerous studies have documented the modest (though reliable) link between household income and well-being, we examined the accuracy of laypeople's intuitions about this relationship by asking people from across the income spectrum to report their own... View Details
- Article
Investor Activism and Takeovers
By: Robin Greenwood and Michael Schor
Recent work documents large positive abnormal returns around the time that a hedge fund announces its activist intentions with a publicly listed firm. We show that these returns are largely explained by the ability of activists to force target firms into a takeover: In... View Details
- Article
When Dreaming Is Believing: The (Motivated) Interpretation of Dreams
By: Carey K. Morewedge and Michael I. Norton
This research investigated laypeople's interpretation of their dreams. Participants from both Eastern and Western cultures believed that dreams contain hidden truths (Study 1) and considered dreams to provide more meaningful information about the world than similar... View Details
- 2008
- Book
On Competition
By: M. E. Porter
Competition is one of society's most powerful forces for making things better in many fields of human endeavor. The study of competition and the creation of value, in their full richness, have preoccupied me for several decades. Competition is pervasive, whether it... View Details
- November 2008
- Article
Getting off the Hedonic Treadmill, One Step at a Time: The Impact of Regular Religious Practice and Exercise on Well-Being
By: Daniel Mochon, Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely
Many studies have shown that few events in life have a lasting impact on subjective well-being because of people's tendency to adapt quickly; worse, those events that do have a lasting impact tend to be negative. We suggest that while major events may not provide... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised August 2009)
- Case
VMware, Inc., 2008
By: David B. Yoffie, Andrei Hagiu and Michael Slind
Paul Maritz took the helm of VMware in July 2008, just as the company confronted a radically new competitive environment. Since its founding in 1998, VMware had been the leading provider of virtualization software. Now it faced the kind of threat that every software... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
Marc Abrahams: Annals of an Improbable Entrepreneur
By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind
Marc Abrahams was a media entrepreneur who specialized in science humor. In 2008, he sought to boost the scale and monetization potential of his business. That business, called Improbable Research, encompassed a magazine (Annals of Improbable Research), a high-profile... View Details
- September 2008
- Class Lecture
Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
By: Michael L. Tushman and Charles O'Reilley
Executives who return from campus-based executive programs ready to make changes often find employees resistant to new ideas. The Leading Change and Organizational Renewal multimedia resource was created to ease transitions and empower the teacher as leader. This... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Artful Dodger: Answering the Wrong Question the Right Way
By: Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton
What happens when people try to "dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? In four online studies using paid participants, we show that listeners can fail to detect dodges when speakers answer similar—but objectively... View Details
- July 2008 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
elBulli: The Taste of Innovation
By: Michael I. Norton, Julian Villanueva and Luc Wathieu
Ferran Adrià, chef at elBulli, the highest-ranked restaurant in the world for two consecutive years, faces two related decisions. First, Adrià and his team must continue to develop new and different dishes for the ground-breaking cuisine at elBulli to guarantee a... View Details
- July 2008 (Revised February 2009)
- Case
(PRODUCT) RED (A)
By: Youngme E. Moon, Michael I. Norton and David Chen
Describes the launch and initial results of the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, a social marketing initiative conceived by U2's Bono and Bobby Shriver to combat AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The company licensed the (RED) brand to partner companies, which initially included Gap,... View Details
- July – August 2008
- Article
Help Employees Give Away Some of That Bonus
By: Michael I. Norton and Elizabeth W. Dunn
Employees who spend some or all of their bonuses on others-thereby creating what the authors call a "prosocial" workplace-are happier as a result. Managers can enhance that effect by providing opportunities to share the wealth. View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
I Read Playboy for the Articles: Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences
By: Zoe Chance and Michael I. Norton
When people behave in ways that might appear selfish, prejudiced or perverted, they engage in a host of strategies designed to justify questionable behavior with rational excuses: “I hired my son because he's more qualified”; “I promoted Ashley because she does a... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Wellsprings of Creation: How Perturbation Sustains Exploration in Mature Organizations
By: David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats, Michael L. Tushman and David M. Upton
Organizations struggle to balance simultaneous imperatives to exploit and explore, yet theorists differ as to whether exploitation undermines or enhances exploration. The debate reflects a gap: the missing mechanism by which organizations break free of old routines and... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Cook Composites and Polymers Co.
By: Deishin Lee, Michael W. Toffel and Rachel Gordon
This case describes how a company improves resource efficiency and process quality in its manufacturing process by developing a waste by-product into a new product. The case describes how CCP cleans production equipment between batches using styrene, which becomes a... View Details
- Article
The Causes and Consequences of Industry Self-Policing
By: Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Innovative regulatory programs are encouraging firms to police their own regulatory compliance and voluntarily disclose, or "confess," the violations they find. Despite the "win-win" rhetoric surrounding these government voluntary programs, it is not clear why... View Details
- 2008
- Report
Survey Questionnaire on Environmental Management Practices: Summary of Results by Industry and Practices
By: Magali Delmas and Michael W. Toffel
This document provides a summary of the results of a survey on Environmental Management Practices (EMP) conducted by the University of California at Santa Barbara during October and November 2003. The survey was sent to 3255 facilities in 8 industrial sectors: pulp,... View Details
- May 2008 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: Interdisciplinary Cancer Care
By: Michael E. Porter and Sachin H. Jain
In 2006, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center was an internationally leading institution for cancer care, education, and research. Since 1996, it had successfully reorganized itself from a cancer hospital that was physically organized around clinical... View Details
- April 2008
- Case
TerraCog Global Positioning Systems: Conflict and Communication on Project Aerial
By: Michael Beer and Sunru Yong
TerraCog, a successful privately held high-tech firm that develops GPS (global positioning system) and similar products for consumer markets, has recently been caught off-guard by a competitor's new product that makes novel use of satellite imagery. When TerraCog... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Meetings; Decision Making; Group Dynamics; Human Resource Management; Conflict; Information Technology; Leadership; Conflict Management; Competition; Groups and Teams; Organizational Culture; Human Resources; Communication; Decision Choices and Conditions; Crisis Management; Technology Industry
- April 2008
- Case
Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (A)
By: Paul W. Marshall, Michael Shih-ta Chen and Keith Chi-ho Wong
In late November 2000, Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., the once-monopolized telecom operator owned by the Taiwanese government, was on its way to privatization. Mr. C.K. Mao, Chairman of the company, who headed the job only three months earlier, after its prior chairman... View Details