Publications

February 2004 (Revised April 2005)
Exercise

Necessary Evils: A Diagnostic Exercise

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Andrew Molinsky

Central to the work of leaders and professionals are tasks that entail harming one party to deliver benefits or advance valued and worthy goals. Sometimes a person must, as part of his or her job, perform an act that causes emotional, material, or physical harm to... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Leadership; Problems and Challenges; Ethics; Management Skills

06 May 2019
Research & Ideas

Consumers Blame Business for Global Health Problems. Can Business Become the Solution?

Every public health crisis—whether it’s the availability of highly addictive opioids or junk food marketing to children—prompts consumers to question how far companies will go for profit. It’s not an unwarranted concern. After all, cigarette makers once used... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

13 Nov 2020
Working Paper Summaries

The European Commission’s Sustainable Corporate Governance Report: A Critique

Keywords: by Mark Roe, Holger Spamann, Jesse Fried, and Charles Wang

November 2022 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Hugging Face (A): Serving AI on a Platform

By: Shane Greenstein, Daniel Yue, Sarah Gulick and Kerry Herman

It is fall 2022, and open-source AI model company Hugging Face is considering its three areas of priorities: platform development, supporting the open-source community, and pursuing cutting-edge scientific research. As it expands services for enterprise clients, which... View Details

Keywords: Community; Open-source; AI and Machine Learning; Product Development; Networks; Service Delivery; Research; Governance; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Information Industry; Technology Industry; United States

Educators

16 May 2016
HBS Case

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

heightened consumer awareness and expectations make this appear not to be the case.” Global food safety standards are lacking Unsafe food, such as fruits and vegetables contaminated with feces, clearly creates a huge public health risk, with the potential transfer of... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

23 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

Forgiving Medical Debt Won't Make Everyone Happier

The solution seems obvious. Forgiving medical debt should ease both financial and emotional burdens for the two in five people in the US who carry it. Yet a new comprehensive study that tracked more than 200,000 patients and randomly relieved more than $169 million of... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

May 2024
Article

Moral Thin-Slicing: Forming Moral Impressions from a Brief Glance

By: Julian De Freitas and Alon Hafri

Despite the modern rarity with which people are visual witness to moral transgressions involving physical harm, such transgressions are more accessible than ever thanks to their availability on social media and in the news. On one hand, the literature suggests that... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgement; Thin Slices; Social Media; Fake News; Misinformation; Moral Sensibility; News; Behavior

Article

Designing Transparency Systems for Medical Care Prices

By: David Cutler and Leemore S. Dafny

In the contentious political environment surrounding health care reform, calls for increased price transparency in health care are among the few areas of general agreement. But the wrong kind of transparency could actually harm patients, rather than help them. View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Health Care and Treatment; Price

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2021
Working Paper

Note on Productive Knowledge

By: Amar Bhidé

This Note examines the development of ideas (‘knowledge’) embodied in products (including ‘intangibles’) that do not exist in nature. It focuses on ‘multi-player’ development—advances by and for the many—and highlights its technical scaffolding and venturesome spirit.... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge; Framework

SSRN

Article

Kill or Die: Moral Judgment Alters Linguistic Coding of Causality

By: Julian De Freitas, Peter DiScioli, Jason Nemirow, Maxim Massenkoff and Steven Pinker

What is the relationship between the language people use to describe an event and their moral judgments? We test the hypothesis that moral judgment and causative verbs rely on the same underlying mental model of people’s actions. Experiment 1a finds that participants... View Details

Keywords: Moral Cognition; Moral Psychology; Causative Verbs; Trolley Problem; Argument Structure; Moral Sensibility; Judgments

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December 2024
Technical Note

Ethical Analysis: Complicity

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Matthew Souba

This note introduces students to the concept of complicity and outlines key questions to determine whether a party is complicit in the wrong or harm caused by another. The note uses examples from the well-known case of Theranos. View Details

Keywords: Ethics

Educators

April 2004 (Revised May 2005)
Case

Confronting a Necessary Evil: The Firing of Alex Robins (A)

By: Joshua D. Margolis

A manager recounts his experience firing the person he was asked to replace and reflects on the challenges of the experience. Teaching Purpose: To role-play and reflect on tasks that entail harming other people to fulfill one's responsibility. View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Problems and Challenges; Leadership Development; Behavior; Decision Making; Resignation and Termination

Educators

03 Apr 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Learning or Playing? The Effect of Gamified Training on Performance

Keywords: by Ryan W. Buell, Wei Cai, and Tatiana Sandino

20 May 2009
Working Paper Summaries

On Good Scholarship, Goal Setting, and Scholars Gone Wild

Keywords: by Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky & Max H. Bazerman

Research Summary

Contentment with Professor Roy Chua

Middle-Way is one of the core principles of Buddhism-it promotes a moderate lifestyle that is self-sufficient and void of excesses or extremes in any life domains. People with this type of lifestyle live a "content" life. However, could life... View Details

March 2017
Article

Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status

By: T. B. Bitterly, A.W. Brooks and M. E. Schweitzer

Across eight experiments, we demonstrate that humor can influence status, but attempting to use humor is risky. The successful use of humor can increase status in both new and existing relationships, but unsuccessful humor attempts (e.g., inappropriate jokes) can harm... View Details

Keywords: Status and Position; Behavior; Groups and Teams; Perception

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