Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(432)
- Faculty Publications (77)
- 2017
- Working Paper
Voter Mobilization and Trust in Electoral Institutions: Evidence from Kenya
By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri
Voter mobilization campaigns face trade-offs in young democracies. In a large-scale experiment implemented in 2013 with the Kenyan Electoral Commission (IEBC), text messages intended to mobilize voters boosted participation but also decreased trust in electoral... View Details
- Article
Third-Party Punishment as a Costly Signal of High Continuation Probabilities in Repeated Games
By: Jillian J. Jordan and David G. Rand
Why do individuals pay costs to punish selfish behavior, even as third-party observers? A large body of research suggests that reputation plays an important role in motivating such third-party punishment (TPP). Here we focus on a recently proposed reputation-based... 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
- March 2017
- Article
Why Do We Hate Hypocrites? Evidence for a Theory of False Signaling
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Roseanna Sommers, Paul Bloom and David G. Rand
Why do people judge hypocrites, who condemn immoral behaviors that they in fact engage in, so negatively? We propose that hypocrites are disliked because their condemnation sends a false signal about their personal conduct, deceptively suggesting that they behave... View Details
- August 2, 2016
- Article
Uncalculating Cooperation Is Used to Signal Trustworthiness
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Moshe Hoffman, Martin A. Nowak and David G. Rand
Humans frequently cooperate without carefully weighing the costs and benefits. As a result, people may wind up cooperating when it is not worthwhile to do so. Why risk making costly mistakes? Here, we present experimental evidence that reputation concerns provide an... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Improving Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: The Role of Institutional Environments and Monitoring Program Design
By: Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill
Activism seeking to improve labor conditions in global supply chains has led transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct and monitor suppliers for compliance, but it is unclear whether these formal organizational structures raise labor standards. Drawing on... View Details
Keywords: Monitoring; Supplier Relationship; Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Sustainable Operations; Sustainable Supply Chains; NGO; Globalization; Corporate Accountability; Operations; Supply Chain; Supply Chain Management; Labor; Working Conditions; Business Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Evaluation; Safety; Risk and Uncertainty; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Electronics Industry; China; Indonesia; India; Bangladesh
- Article
Third-party Punishment as a Costly Signal of Trustworthiness
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Moshe Hoffman, Paul Bloom and David G. Rand
Third-party punishment (TPP), in which unaffected observers punish selfishness, promotes cooperation by deterring defection. But why should individuals choose to bear the costs of punishing? We present a game theoretic model of TPP as a costly signal of... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Paying (for) Attention: The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Bayesian Inference
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Xiaosheng Mu and Alexander Peysakhovich
Human information processing is often modeled as costless Bayesian inference.
However, research in psychology shows that attention is a computationally costly and potentially limited resource. We study a Bayesian individual for whom computing posterior beliefs is... View Details
- November 2015
- Article
Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel
Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Signaling without Certification: The Critical Role of Civil Society Scrutiny
By: Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell and Michael W. Toffel
In response to stakeholders' growing concerns, companies are joining voluntary environmental programs to signal their superior environmental management capabilities. In contrast to the literature's focus on certification programs that require a third-party audit, we... View Details
Keywords: United Nations; Labor Standards; Supplier Relationship; Procurement; Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Quality And Safety; Risk; Globalization; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Working Conditions; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Reputation
- 2014
- Article
Children Develop a Veil of Fairness
By: Alex Shaw, Natalia Montinari, Marco Piovesan, Kristina Olson, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton
Previous research suggests that children develop an increasing concern with fairness over the course of development. Research with adults suggests that the concern with fairness has at least two distinct components: a desire to be fair and a desire to signal to others... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel
Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised July 2013)
- Case
The “Chongqing Model” and the Future of China
By: Meg Rithmire
Since opening to the global economy in 1979, but especially since entering the WTO in 2001, China's economy grew at rates around 10% annually by attracting FDI and promoting exports. After the financial crisis that began in 2008 and depressed demand in the United... View Details
- December 2012
- Article
Bolstering and Restoring Feelings of Competence via the IKEA Effect
By: Daniel Mochon, Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely
We examine the underlying process behind the IKEA effect, which is defined as consumers' willingness to pay more for self-created products than for identical products made by others, and explore the factors that influence both consumers' willingness to engage in... View Details
- January 2012
- Article
How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work
By: Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer
Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees in four avoidable ways. This article is based on analysis of hundreds of work diaries from professionals describing everyday events that... View Details
- January 2012
- Article
Paying to Be Nice: Consistency and Costly Prosocial Behavior
By: Ayelet Gneezy, Alex Imas, Amber Brown, Leif D. Nelson and Michael I. Norton
Building on previous research in economics and psychology, we propose that the costliness of initial prosocial behavior positively influences whether that behavior leads to consistent future behaviors. We suggest that costly prosocial behaviors serve as a signal of... View Details
- September – October 2011
- Article
Manage the Culture Cycle
By: James L. Heskett
Organizational culture—the shared assumptions, values, and behaviors that determine "how we do things around here"—can be measured and shaped. In organizations with large numbers of customer-facing employees, it can account for up to half of the difference in operating... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when... View Details
- June 2011
- Article
Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor
By: Christina Fong and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
It is often difficult for donors to predict the value of charitable giving because they know little about the persons who receive their help. This concern is particularly acute when making contributions to organizations that serve heterogeneous populations. While we... View Details
- Article
The Social Utility of Feature Creep
By: Debora V. Thompson and Michael I. Norton
Previous research shows that consumers frequently choose products with too many features that they later find difficult to use. Our research shows that this seemingly suboptimal behavior may in fact confer benefits when factoring in the social context of consumption.... View Details