Publications

2021
Article

Don't Get It or Don't Spread It: Comparing Self-interested versus Prosocial Motivations for COVID-19 Prevention Behaviors

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Erez Yoeli and David Rand

COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6,850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for fostering prevention behavior intentions. We... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Prevention; Prosocial Motivation; Health Pandemics; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives

February 2021
Article

How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice

By: Ryan W. Buell and Basak Kalkanci

Amid growing calls for transparency and social and environmental responsibility, companies are employing different strategies to improve consumer perceptions of their brands. Some pursue internal initiatives that reduce their negative social or environmental impacts... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Operations; Corporate Social Responsibility; Operational Transparency; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Operations; Environmental Sustainability; Consumer Behavior; Perception

SSRN

13 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Experimental Researcher Helps Improve Health Care in Zambia

"We can't solve the challenges of global health without deeply understanding what motivates customer and provider behavior," she said. And field experiments make that possible. View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Health

2025
Working Paper

Pushing the Envelope: The Effects of Salary Negotiations

By: Zoë B. Cullen, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

Salary negotiations are a widespread phenomenon that can shape key labor market outcomes, such as welfare and inequality. We provide novel empirical and theoretical insights into the causes and consequences of salary negotiations. We conducted two field experiments... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Negotiation; Policy; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Welfare

Register to Read

03 Jul 2015
Blog Post

What is HBS Bridges?

new beginnings and new adventures. But whereas at the start of my HBS experience I had looked around at a room full of strangers, now I looked around and saw countless friends. And here we were all together, having come full circle;... View Details

19 Mar 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Overcoming the Stress of ‘Englishnization’

experienced a status loss under the mandate, she found, regardless of their level of English fluency. "There's this universal experience of status diminution when people compare their native/formally trained language to this new... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

Jeffrey T. Polzer

Jeff Polzer is the UPS Foundation Professor of Human Resource Management in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He studies how people collaborate in teams and across organizational networks to accomplish their individual and collective... View Details

October 2021
Article

Changing Gambling Behavior through Experiential Learning

By: Shawn A. Cole, Martin Abel and Bilal Zia

This paper tests experiential learning as a debiasing tool to reduce gambling in South Africa, through a randomized field experiment. The study implements a simple, interactive game that simulates the odds of winning the national lottery through dice rolling.... View Details

Keywords: Debiasing; Experiential Learning; Behavioral Economics; Financial Education; Learning; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Behavior; Decision Making

Blog

What Black Executives Really Want

executives face fall into three interconnected buckets. Black executives have a sense of isolation, they don't feel they can bring their true selves to work, and they experience a loss of confidence. Other marginalized or underrepresented... View Details

25 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

10 Reasons Customers Might Resist Windows 8

School, and a leader in the field of change management. "Even in an era where young techies are looking to get the hottest and latest, people are resistant to change," she says. Microsoft's launch of the new operating system... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Computer; Consumer Products

20 Jun 2012
Lessons from the Classroom

Teaching Leadership: What We Know

wide range of settings have experimented with a dizzying array of pedagogical approaches. Upon closer scrutiny, it is clear that some of us have been largely teaching about leadership (informing our students about the View Details

Keywords: by Scott A. Snook, Rakesh Khurana & Nitin Nohria; Education

2013
Book

Porte à porte: Reconquérir la démocratie sur le terrain

By: Guillaume Liégey, Arthur Muller and Vincent Pons

From January to May 2012, campaign activists supporting François Hollande knocked at five millions doors, making this door-to-door effort the largest in Europe to date. This project was formed by Guillaume Liégey, Arthur Muller, and Vincent Pons, who had met at the... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Political Elections; United States; Europe

Purchase

Article

When Feeling Skillful Impairs Coordination in a Lottery Selection Task

By: Anna Dorfman, Yoella Bereby-Meyer and Simone Moran

Choosing a major field of study to secure a good job after graduation is a tacit coordination problem that requires considering others' choices. We examine how feeling skillful, either induced (Experiment 1) or measured (Experiment 2), affects coordination in this type... View Details