Publications

September 1960 (Revised August 1995)
Case

Slade Co., The

Describes a conflict between the values and norms of a segment of an internal social system and those of management and the wider culture. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Conflict and Resolution

Educators

15 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

We Have Better Ways to Break Habits Than Willpower. Why Don't We Use Them?

doing so may expose a weakness: a lack of self-control that would make others judge them harshly, says Harvard Business School Associate Professor Julian Zlatev in a recent paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

April 2020
Article

Collective Emotions

By: Amit Goldenberg, David Garcia, Eran Halperin and James J. Gross

When analyzing situations in which multiple people are experiencing emotions together—whether the emotions are positive or negative and whether the situations are online or offline—we are intuitively drawn to the emotions of each individual in the situation. However,... View Details

Keywords: Emotions; Social Psychology

2013
Working Paper

iPosture: The Size of Electronic Consumer Devices Affects Our Behavior

By: Maarten W. Bos and Amy J.C. Cuddy

We examined whether incidental body posture, prompted by working on electronic devices of different sizes, affects power-related behaviors. Grounded in research showing that adopting expansive body postures increases psychological power, we hypothesized that working on... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Behavior; Health; Size; Outcome or Result; Power and Influence

February 2023
Article

Homophily and Acrophily as Drivers of Political Segregation

By: Amit Goldenberg, Joseph M. Abruzzo, Zi Huang, Jonas Schone, David Bailey, Robb Willer, Eran Halperin and James J. Gross

Political segregation is an important social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Previous work has viewed the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others who have similar views. Here we... View Details

Keywords: Political Affiliation; Extremism; Values and Beliefs; Identity; Groups and Teams; Emotions; Civil Society or Community

September 2019
Article

The Self-Presentational Consequences of Upholding One's Stance in Spite of the Evidence

By: Leslie John, Martha Jeong, Francesca Gino and Laura Huang

Five studies explore the self-presentational consequences of refusing to “back down” – that is, upholding a stance despite evidence of its inaccuracy. Using data from an entrepreneurial pitch competition, Study 1 shows that entrepreneurs tend not to back down even... View Details

Keywords: Self-presentation; Belief Perseverance; Judgment; Confidence; Persuasion; Personal Characteristics; Behavior; Perception; Decision Making; Outcome or Result

31 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 31, 2018

addresses interventions that firms, governments, and other parties deploy to shape household financial outcomes: education and information, peer effects and social influence, product design, advice and disclosure, choice architecture, and... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2021
Working Paper

Salience

By: Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer

We review the fast-growing work on salience and economic behavior. Psychological research shows that salient stimuli attract human attention “bottom up” due to their high contrast with surroundings, their surprising nature relative to recalled experiences, or their... View Details

Keywords: Salience; Economic Behavior; Bottom Up Attention; Microeconomics; Decision Making; Behavior

04 Oct 2023
HBS Seminar

Ithai Stern, INSEAD

2020
Book

Better, Not Perfect: A Realist's Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness

By: Max Bazerman

Every day, you make hundreds of decisions. They’re largely personal, but these choices have an ethical twinge as well; they value certain principles and ends over others. Bazerman argues that we can better balance both dimensions—and we needn’t seek perfection to make... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Moral Sensibility; Ethics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

2010
Working Paper

Will I Stay or Will I Go?: Cooperative and Competitive Effects of Workgroup Sex and Race Composition on Turnover

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Katherine L Milkman

We develop an integrated theory of the social identity mechanisms linking workgroup sex and race composition across levels with individual turnover. Building on social identity research, we theorize that social cohesion (Tyler, 1999; Hogg and Terry, 2000) and social... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Ethnicity; Race; Groups and Teams; Identity; Resignation and Termination; Gender; Cooperation

April 2015
Article

Self-serving Justifications: Doing Wrong and Feeling Moral

By: Shaul Shalvi, F. Gino, Rachel Barkan and Shahar Ayal

Unethical behavior by "ordinary" people poses significant societal and personal challenges. We present a novel framework centered on the role of self-serving justification to build upon and advance the rapidly expanding research on intentional unethical behavior of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Moral Sensibility

May 2017
Case

Fresh to Table

By: Gautam Mukunda and Brooks C. Holtom

After the contentious firing of an office manager, the leadership at Fresh to Table, a software-as-a-service provider for luxury hotels and restaurants, make an unpleasant discovery. While reviewing the office manager's internal electronic communications, company... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Resignation and Termination; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs; Leadership

Educators

February 2025
Teaching Note

Influencer-Led Brand Building: Hairitage and the McKnights

By: William R. Kerr and James Palano

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 825-066. Mindy McKnight started in 2009 as an early influencer on social media whose videos of creative hairstyles for girls launched her family on an entrepreneurship journey. The McKnights transitioned from YouTube ad revenue to brand... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Social Media; Entrepreneurship; Brands and Branding; Product Launch; Power and Influence; Expansion; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

2011
Article

Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia

By: Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu

In this paper, we examine the causal relationship between group size and incentives to contribute in the setting of Chinese Wikipedia, the Chinese language version of an online encyclopedia that relies entirely on voluntary contributions. The group at Chinese Wikipedia... View Details

Keywords: Rights; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Valuation; Groups and Teams; Knowledge Sharing; Behavior; Satisfaction; Size; Government and Politics; Economics; Information Technology Industry; Hong Kong; Taiwan; Singapore

February 2012
Article

CEO Relational Leadership and Strategic Decision Quality in Top Management Teams: The Role of Team Trust and Learning from Failure

By: Abraham Carmeli, Asher Tishler and Amy C. Edmondson

In this study, we examine a complex pathway through which CEOs, who exhibit relational leadership, may improve the quality of strategic decisions of their top management teams (TMTs) by creating psychological conditions of trust and facilitating learning from failures... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Decisions; Management Teams; Trust; Learning; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Managerial Roles; Failure