Publications

SSRN

Article

In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity

By: Teresa M. Amabile

Creativity researchers have long paid careful attention to individual creativity, beginning with studies of well-known geniuses and expanding to personality, biographical, cognitive, and social-psychological studies of individual creative behavior. Little is known,... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Behavior; Innovation and Invention

25 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Being a Team Player: Why College Athletes Succeed in Business

Persistence. Teamwork. Grit and grace in victory and defeat. Intercollegiate varsity sports may build such skills that employers prize—and that later propel former players into management roles faster than their classmates, suggests a recent View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

03 Oct 2023
What Do You Think?

Do Leaders Learn More From Success or Failure?

leaders most effectively to enter the real world. I can add a personal experience to those that Edmondson cites. In 1990, a colleague, HBS Professor John Kotter, and I began a study of the impact of an organization’s culture on its... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2024
Working Paper

Private Equity and Digital Transformation

By: Brian K. Baik, Wilbur Chen and Suraj Srinivasan

We study the role which private equity (PE) plays in digital transformation. We find that PE investment is associated with greater investments into portfolio firm’s digital technologies, as measured by IT expenditures and the hiring demand for AI skills. This... View Details

Keywords: Digital Transformation; Private Equity; Selection and Staffing; Investment Portfolio; Value Creation

15 Feb 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Replicating Private Equity with Value Investing, Homemade Leverage, and Hold-to-Maturity Accounting

Keywords: by Erik Stafford; Banking; Financial Services

05 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

Graeber. The outcomes “depend on whether the right people are confident or not.” Graeber cowrote the paper, which was published in American Economic Review in July 2023, with Benjamin Enke, an associate professor in economics at Harvard... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

Article

Matchmaking Promotes Happiness

By: Lalin Anik and Michael I. Norton

Four studies document and explore the psychology underlying people's proclivity to connect people to each other—to play "matchmaker." First, Study 1 shows that chronic matchmaking is associated with higher well-being. Studies 2 and 3 show that matching others on the... View Details

Keywords: Happiness; Relationships

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

two-sided platform, you have to acquire both the customers and the services,” says Harvard Business School’s Thales Teixeira, Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration. “It’s the classic chicken-and-egg problem,” he... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

09 Nov 2023
HBS Case

What Will It Take to Confront the Invisible Mental Health Crisis in Business?

Cohen’s recent case studies spotlights Zak Pym Williams, the son of the late comedian Robin Williams, who is spreading awareness about mental illness after struggles following his dad’s suicide. Another case highlights the Staglins, a... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Health

13 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

Should Men’s Products Fear a Woman’s Touch?

to an intensive study of a defining moment in the history of an iconic brand: when Porsche launched its first sport-utility vehicle, dubbed the Cayenne, after a long history of creating sports cars. Porsches are culturally View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Consumer Products; Food & Beverage; Auto

30 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

‘Intrinsic Joy’ Sparks Ideas Better than Cash

fun. He wants to help others,” Roche recalls. The paper’s co-authors include Annamaria Conti, an associate professor at IE Business School; Vansh Gupta, an analyst at Charles River Associates who... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology

09 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Called Back to the Office? How You Benefit from Ideas You Didn't Know You Were Missing

and disciplinary isolation led Duede to wonder whether the data they had collected could be used to understand the association of geographic and intellectual proximity on intellectual influence. The power of diverse interactions The View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

Article

Work Group Rituals Enhance the Meaning of Work

By: Tami Kim, Ovul Sezer, Juliana Schroeder, Jane L. Risen, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton

The many benefits of finding meaning in work suggest the importance of identifying activities that increase job meaningfulness. The current paper identifies one such activity: engaging in rituals with workgroups. Five studies (N = 1,099) provide evidence that... View Details

Keywords: Groups; Meaningfulness; Task Meaning; Ritual; Teams; Organizational Citizenship; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Familiarity

2011
Working Paper

Fractionalization and the Municipal Bond Market

We study the impact of ethnic and religious fractionalization on the U.S. municipal debt market and find that issuers from more ethnically and religiously fractionalized counties pay higher yields on their municipal debt. A two standard deviation increase in religious... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity Characteristics; Bonds; Financial Markets; Investment Return; Geographic Location; City; Religion; United States

Article

The Impact of the 'Open' Workspace on Human Collaboration

By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban

Organizations’ pursuit of increased workplace collaboration has led managers to transform traditional office spaces into “open,” transparency-enhancing architectures with fewer walls, doors, and other spatial boundaries, yet there is scant direct empirical research on... View Details

31 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Checking Your Ethics: Would You Speak Up in These 3 Sticky Situations?

look for the line, you never want to be in the ZIP Code of the line.” Here’s a look at three sticky situations, along with Fubini’s advice about how to handle them. The case of the freeloading associate: A client grants a per-diem stipend to View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consulting

Spring 2013
Article

Accounting Quality, Stock Price Delay, and Future Stock Returns

By: Jeffrey Callen, Mozaffar N. Khan and Hai Lu

In frictionless capital markets with complete information and rational investors, stock prices adjust to new information instantaneously and completely. However, a substantial body of research studies information imperfections such as asymmetric information and... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Price; Stocks; Asset Pricing; Accounting

17 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

‘Not a Bunch of Weirdos’: Why Mainstream Investors Buy Crypto

emerging market. A study of 59 million US consumers Di Maggio, the Ogunlesi Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at HBS, collaborated on the research with Darren Aiello, Jason Kotter, and... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

Article

Corporate Culture and Analyst Catering

By: Joseph Pacelli

This study examines the relation between financial institutions’ corporate culture and the quality of analysts’ research services. Using data collected from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, I measure the weakness of financial institutions’ corporate culture... View Details

Keywords: Analysts; Corporate Culture; Global Settlement; Financial Institutions; Organizational Culture; Conflict of Interests; Performance; Quality