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- Winter 2024
- Article
Is Pay Transparency Good?
By: Zoë B. Cullen
Countries around the world are enacting pay transparency policies to combat pay discrimination. Since 2000, 71 percent of OECD countries have done so. Most are enacting transparency horizontally, revealing pay between coworkers doing similar work within a firm. While... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups
By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein
How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth?
To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS
hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details
- December 2023 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
Generative AI and the Future of Work
By: Christopher Stanton, Matt Higgins, Shira Aronson and Meg Shriber
Generative AI seemed poised to reshape the world of work, including the higher-wage, white-collar jobs typically pursued by MBA graduates. Informed by the latest research, this case explores generative AI's potential impacts on work, productivity, value creation, and... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Rapport in Organizations: Evidence from Fast Food
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Parker Howell, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Common identity often provides a foundation for workplace rapport. Though gender is perhaps the most frequently studied dimension of identity among workers, little is known about how gender match between managers and their workers might affect team performance. Using... View Details
- December 2023 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Yellow Corporation: On the Verge of Bankruptcy
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer
Yellow Corporation, one of the country’s oldest and largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers, was nearing its 100th anniversary in 2024. Whether it would reach that milestone, however, was uncertain as the company was attempting to restructure its operations to... View Details
- December 4, 2023
- Comment
The Great Resignation, Employment, and Wages in Health Care
By: Amitabh Chandra and Louis-Jonas Heizlsperger
Notwithstanding concerns about staffing levels and burnout in health care, federal wage and employment data does not support the suggestion that a COVID-19 pandemic-related spike in quitting has had an enduring impact for hospitals or physician offices. Employment in... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Market Design and Maintenance
By: Alvin E. Roth
Because no marketplace operates in isolation from the larger world, marketplace designs may need to adapt to changes in the larger environments. I discuss such changes in connection with the labor markets for new doctors, new Ph.D. economists, and for kidney exchange... View Details
Keywords: Market Design
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Impact of Unionization on Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality: Evidence from Starbucks
By: Isamar Troncoso, Minkyung Kim, Ishita Chakraborty and SooHyun Kim
The US has seen a rise in union movements, but their effects on service industry marketing outcomes like customer satisfaction and perceptions of service quality remain understudied. In this paper, we empirically study the impact on customer satisfaction and... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
Swanson Health: Becoming a Super Seller
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and Paige Boehmcke
Founded in 1969, Swanson Health sold vitamins, supplements, natural health products, and organic foods. Over the years, the company had successfully navigated multiple industry transitions as it expanded from a print catalog to sell products on its own... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Background Note
Talent Incubator Rankings
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott
In 2023, The Official Board surveyed 853 executives on the topic of talent incubators/academy companies. Executives were asked to list the top three academy companies within their function, industry, and country. They were also asked: what practices differentiate these... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
UST's Adoption of Open Talent
By: Christopher Stanton and Kristen Senz
This case details the 2020 launch and subsequent scaling of UST’s Open Talent initiative, a program to integrate freelancers from digital platforms into its workforce. The case highlights how the shifting post-pandemic world, including layoffs, wage inflation, and... View Details
- 2023
- White Paper
Delivering on the Degree: The College to Jobs Playbook
By: David Deming, Joseph B. Fuller, Rachel Lipson, Kerry McKittrick, Ali Epstein and Emma Catalfamo
- November–December 2023
- Article
Look the Part? The Role of Profile Pictures in Online Labor Markets
By: Isamar Troncoso and Lan Luo
Profile pictures are a key component of many freelancing platforms, a design choice that can impact hiring and matching outcomes. In this paper, we examine how appearance-based perceptions of a freelancer’s fit for the job (i.e., whether a freelancer "looks the part"... View Details
- 2023
- White Paper
The 2023 American Opportunity Index: Measuring Who Moves Ahead
By: Matthew Sigelman, Joseph B. Fuller, Nik Dawson, Alex Martin and Gad Levanon
- 2023
- White Paper
Unlocking Economic Prosperity: Career Navigation in a Time of Rapid Change
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Kerry McKittrick, Sherry Seibel, Cole Wilson, Vasundhara Dash and Ali Epstein
- October 2023
- Case
Making Progress at Progress Software (A)
By: Katherine Coffman, Hannah Riley Bowles and Alexis Lefort
In this case, the Human Capital team at Progress Software has identified that some employees have a hard time understanding how to advance within Progress. This realization leads the team to develop several major people-process innovations: the introduction of... View Details
- October 2023
- Teaching Note
Timnit Gebru: 'SILENCED No More' on AI Bias and The Harms of Large Language Models
By: Tsedal Neeley and Tim Englehart
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 422-085. Dr. Timnit Gebru—a leading artificial intelligence (AI) computer scientist and co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team—was messaging with one of her colleagues when she saw the words: “Did you resign?? Megan sent an email saying that... View Details
- October 2023
- Case
Social Finance: Driving Accountability
By: Robin Greenwood, Richard S. Ruback and Robert Ialenti
Social Finance is a Boston-based nonprofit that works at the intersection of finance and policy. It raises, allocates, and manages capital to fund projects in the areas of education, early childhood development, criminal justice, and health. The case explores how... View Details
- October 3, 2023
- Article
The Employer-Educator Partnership That Can Fill U.S. Jobs
By: Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman
Middle-skills workers—those with less than a four-year college education but more than a high school diploma—make up more than 60% of U.S. workers over the age of 25. These workers are the life force that keeps America’s economic engine humming, but, increasingly, as... View Details