Publications

Article

Your Visual System Provides All the Information You Need to Make Moral Judgments about Generic Visual Events

By: Julian De Freitas and George A. Alvarez

To what extent are people's moral judgments susceptible to subtle factors of which they are unaware? Here we show that we can change people’s moral judgments outside of their awareness by subtly biasing perceived causality. Specifically, we used subtle visual... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Perceived Causality; Visual Illusions; Moral Sensibility; Judgments

Article

Power Imbalance, Mutual Dependence and Constraint Absorption: A Closer Look at Resource Dependence Theory

By: Tiziana Casciaro and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Despite ubiquitous references to Pfeffer and Salancik's classic volume, The External Control of Organizations, resource dependence theory is more of an appealing metaphor than a foundation for testable empirical research. We argue that several ambiguities in the... View Details

Keywords: Power and Influence; Theory

Research Summary

Research

Professor Karmarkar's research in consumer behavior develops theory-driven frameworks “from the brain up”. In particular, using a combination of consumer psychology, behavioral economics, and insights from neuroscience, she investigates the factors that consciously... View Details

Article

'Matter Battles': Cognitive Representations, Boundary Objects, and the Failure of Collaboration in Two Smart Cities

By: Tiona Zuzul

In this paper, I present a longitudinal study of two smart city projects that brought together experts from diverse knowledge domains. Both projects structured collaboration around the development of boundary objects that could integrate actors’ expertise. In both... View Details

Keywords: Smart Cities; Interpersonal Conflict; Boundary Objects; Cooperation; Failure

SSRN

04 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 4

Style: What Are We Talking About Here? By: Salter, Malcolm S. Abstract—This paper seeks to reduce the ambiguity surrounding our understanding of what crony capitalism is, what it is not, what costs crony capitalism leaves in its wake, and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Political Skill: Explaining the Effects of Nonnative Accent on Managerial Hiring and Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang, Marcia Frideger and Jone L. Pearce

We propose and test a new theory explaining glass-ceiling bias against nonnative speakers as driven by perceptions that nonnative speakers have weak political skill. Although nonnative accent is a complex signal, its effects on assessments of the speakers' political... View Details

Keywords: Spoken Communication; Prejudice and Bias; Competency and Skills; Selection and Staffing; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Decisions

09 Sep 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Quantity vs. Quality: Exclusion by Platforms with Network Effects

Keywords: by Andrei Hagiu; Technology

2007
Working Paper

Recognizing the New: A Multi-Agent Model of Analogy in Strategic Decision-Making

By: Giovanni Gavetti and Massimo Warglien

In novel environments, strategic decision-making is often premised on analogy, and recognition lies at its heart. Recognition refers to a class of cognitive processes through which a problem is interpreted associatively in terms of something that has been experienced... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods; Cognition and Thinking; Power and Influence

Research Summary

International Financial Integration and Entrepreneurship (joint with Andrew Charlton)

By: Laura Alfaro

We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. Researchers have stressed the role of new firm activity and economic dynamism on growth. Yet, the empirical effects of international capital... View Details

Research Summary

Professor Hiatt’s research is aimed at discovering how institutional factors can affect sector growth and technology development and adoption by mediating and moderating uncertainty. His work encompasses two related research questions:

1) How can... View Details

02 Feb 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Lawful but Corrupt: Gaming and the Problem of Institutional Corruption in the Private Sector

Keywords: by Malcolm S. Salter; Financial Services

11 Aug 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Influence of Prior Industry Affiliation on Framing in Nascent Industries: The Evolution of Digital Cameras

Keywords: by Mary J. Benner & Mary Tripsas; Electronics

29 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 29

that a firm has been executing its current strategy. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/download.aspx?name=14-103.pdf 'My Bad!' How Internal Attribution and Ambiguity of Responsibility Affect Learning from Failure... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

Breaking Through the Self-Doubt That Keeps Talented Women from Leading

management UpWork test scores to apply to the advanced position. “Reducing ambiguity around expectations can help people recognize that they are qualified,” Coffman says. “This likely draws in people who would otherwise fail to recognize... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

complexities and legal ambiguities of the Enron case, and to indict Skilling, Lay, and former chief accounting officer Rick Causey. Federal prosecutors claimed that Enron used the Raptors and other off-balance-sheet entities to inflate... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

January 2025
Module Note

Understanding and Addressing Gender Gaps

By: Katherine Coffman

This module provides a framework for students to analyze how gender stereotypes, through their impact on beliefs about others and beliefs about ourselves, contribute to gender gaps in the workplace. The module proceeds in three parts. First, through a case and an... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Gender; Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Prejudice and Bias

Purchase

Article

Turbulent Stability of Emergent Roles: The Dualistic Nature of Self-Organizing Knowledge Co-Production

By: Ofer Arazy, Johaness Daxenberg, Hila Lifshitz - Assaf, Oded Nov and Irene Gurevych

Increasingly, new forms of organizing for knowledge production are built around self-organizing co-production community models with ambiguous role definitions. Current theories struggle to explain how high-quality knowledge is developed in these settings and how... View Details

Keywords: Wikipedia; Knowledge Production; Organizational Structure; Knowledge; Information Publishing