Publications

February 1975 (Revised April 2002)
Case

Elizabeth Best (A)

By: Wickham Skinner and Ardis Burst

New political appointee with years of volunteer experience takes over highly responsible job in state government and is met with bureaucratic resistance. View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Organizational Structure; Attitudes; Groups and Teams; Human Resources; Jobs and Positions; Prejudice and Bias; Public Administration Industry

April 2011 (Revised April 2011)
Exercise

Raptor Oil Company: An Exercise

The exercise, which adapts a famous experiment by experimental psychologist Thomas Gilovich, is designed to show both the ubiquity of analogy or associative thinking more generally and its potential perils. Students are presented with a scenario in which an oil company... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Cognition and Thinking; Prejudice and Bias; Strategy

January 2011 (Revised April 2014)
Case

Uptake of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests

By: Nava Ashraf, Natalie Kindred and Richard Sedlmayr

This case describes barriers to adoption of malaria rapid diagnostic tests in Zambia and highlights the importance of understanding end users in promoting product adoption. Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are simple, easy-to-use tools that provide a relatively reliable,... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Health Pandemics; Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Behavior; Prejudice and Bias; Health Industry; Zambia

18 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

Better by the Bunch: Evaluating Job Candidates in Groups

have worked on" —Max Bazerman A recent collaboration between Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) reveals that you're much less likely to stereotype by gender if you apply an "evaluation nudge"—an... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

April 2022
Teaching Note

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 422-066, "Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" The case traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Gender; Management; Employees; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Equity; United States

April 3, 2024
Article

How Automakers Can Address Resistance to Self-Driving Cars

By: Stuti Agarwal, Julian De Freitas and Carey K. Morewedge

Research involving multiple experiments found that consumers have biased views of their driving abilities relative to those of other drivers and automated vehicles. These findings have implications for the adoption of partly or fully automated vehicles, which one day... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Consumer Behavior; Government Legislation; Prejudice and Bias; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

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April 2025
Article

The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders

By: W. Scott Frame, Ruidi Huang, Erica Jiang, Yeonjoon Lee, Will Liu, Erik J. Mayer and Adi Sunderam

We study links between the labor market for loan officers and access to mortgage credit. Using novel data matching the (near) universe of mortgage applications to loan officers, we find that minorities are significantly underrepresented among loan officers. Minority... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Demographic Economics; Financial Institutions; Diversity; Prejudice and Bias; Mortgages; Personal Finance

February 1990 (Revised March 1990)
Case

Quantum Semiconductor, Inc.

By: Janice H. Hammond and Roy D. Shapiro

Quantum is faced with a difficult ethical dilemma--industry studies provide evidence that chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing may cause women working in fabrication cleanrooms to suffer a higher likelihood of spontaneous abortions. The possibility of other... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Prejudice and Bias; Law; Equality and Inequality; Cost; Production; Ethics; Health; Gender; Semiconductor Industry

Column

The Mind of the Negotiator: Beware Your Counterpart's Biases

By: M. H. Bazerman

Keywords: Negotiation; Prejudice and Bias

January 1983 (Revised July 2007)
Case

Neill Hance

Neill Hance takes advantage of all available information and resources to insure a smooth entry into a culture--an entry that would have normally been rather difficult to deal with because of stereotyping and perceived threat. View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizational Culture; Personal Development and Career; Planning; Prejudice and Bias

30 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Venture Investors Prefer Funding Handsome Men

Management; and Fiona E. Murray, associate dean of innovation at Sloan and Kearney's thesis adviser. “Our paper provides concrete proof that gender discrimination exists in the context of entrepreneurial... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

August 2003 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Multinational Corporations in Apartheid-era South Africa: The Issue of Reparations

By: Geoffrey Jones and Cate Reavis

Considers the lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of apartheid against multinationals who operated in South Africa prior to 1994. Reviews the debates about divestment from and sanctions against South Africa from the 1950s. Includes case studies of companies that... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Multinational Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business and Government Relations; Prejudice and Bias; South Africa

October 2024
Article

Racial Inequality in Organizations: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective

By: Sanaz Mobasseri, William A. Kahn and Robin J. Ely

This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. organizations and to inform an approach for disrupting it. We treat White men as the dominant group and Black people as the archetypal subordinate group... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Organizational Culture; Gender; Power and Influence; Employees; Attitudes

1995
Chapter

Egocentric Interpretations of Fairness as an Obstacle to Just Resolution of Conflict

By: K. A. Wade-Benzoni, A. E. Tenbrunsel and M. H. Bazerman

Keywords: Fairness; Conflict and Resolution; Perspective; Prejudice and Bias

April 2011
Article

Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success

By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano

We argue that for a variety of psychological reasons, it is often much harder for leaders and organizations to learn from success than to learn from failure. Success creates three kinds of traps that often impede deep learning. The first is attribution error or the... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Innovation and Management; Leadership; Failure; Success; Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias

August 20, 2024
Article

Sexual Assault Victims Face a Penalty for Adjacent Consent

By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers

Across 11 experimental studies (n = 12,257), we show that female victims of sexual assault are blamed more and seen as less morally virtuous if their assault follows voluntary sexual intimacy, a factor we term “adjacent consent”. Moreover, we illuminate a... View Details

Keywords: Perception; Prejudice and Bias; Moral Sensibility; Crime and Corruption; Social Issues

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October 2024
Article

Racial Disparities in the Paycheck Protection Program

By: Sergey Chernenko and David Scharfstein

Using a large sample of Florida restaurants, we document significant racial disparities in borrowing through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and investigate the causes of these disparities. Black-owned restaurants are 25% less likely to receive PPP loans.... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Paycheck Protection Program; Economic Injury Disaster Loans; Bank Lending; Nonbank Lending; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Prejudice and Bias; Race

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2008
Working Paper

Nameless + Harmless = Blameless: When Seemingly Irrelevant Factors Influence Judgment of (Un)ethical Behavior

By: Francesca Gino, Lisa L. Shu and Max H. Bazerman

People often make judgments about the ethicality of others' behaviors and then decide how harshly to punish such behaviors. When they make these judgments and decisions, sometimes the victims of the unethical behavior are identifiable, and sometimes they are not. In... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Ethics; Law; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Prejudice and Bias

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April 2022
Case

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

"Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The case identifies six distinct phases in the... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Gender; Management; Employees; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Equity; United States