Publications
Publications
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(1,559)
- Faculty Publications (309)
- October 13, 2021
- Editorial
How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now
By: Daniel Stein, Nick Hobson, Jon M. Jachimowicz and Ashley Whillans
A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Intrinsic Motivation and Referrals Within Firms: Evidence from a Large Microfinance Institution
By: Natalia Rigol and Benjamin N. Roth
Many organizations rely on internal referrals between employees with differing
comparative advantages. Yet when an employee encounters a lucrative opportunity,
they may be motivated to retain it even when doing so harms efficiency. We develop
a framework that... View Details
- September 28, 2021
- Article
12 Questions About Hybrid Work, Answered
By: Tsedal Neeley
As we move into the next phase of the pandemic, companies are grappling with whether and how to bring their employees back into the office after working from home extensively. According to multiple surveys, most people want a mix of in-person and remote work, and some... View Details
- September 28, 2021
- Editorial
A Guide to Implementing the 4-Day Workweek
By: A.V. Whillans and Charlotte Lockhart
As organizations continue to explore a variety of flexible work options, one promising avenue is the four-day workweek: The standard 40 hours per week is reduced to 32 hours, with the same pay and the same productivity expectations. Research suggests reducing hours can... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Zoom Video Communications: Building a Culture of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion During COVID-19
By: Karen G. Mills, Scott Duke Kominers, Christopher Stanton, Andy Wu, George Gonzalez and Gabriella Elanbeck
Keywords: Diversity Management; Diversity Training; Cultural Change; Cultural Diversity; Inclusion; Inclusive Growth; Inclusive Hiring; Hiring; Hiring Of Employees; Recruiting; Performance Management; Change Leadership; Race And Ethnicity; Racial Bias; Racial Disparity; Racial Injustice; Racial Tensions; Racism; Organization; Organization Process; Organization Structure; Structural/institutional Racism; Leadership And Change Management; Leadership And Managing People; Leading; Gender Bias; Discrimination; Inequalities; Inequality; Social Change; Employee Attitude Development And Empowerment; Employee Bonding; Employee Empowerment; Employee Engagement; Employee Fairness; Employee Morale; Employee Performance Management; Employee Relations; Company Culture; Company Values; Values; COVID-19 Pandemic; Demographics; Diversity; Age; Ethnicity; Gender; Business Processes; Change Management; Change; Race; Human Capital; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Jobs and Positions; Job Interviews; Leadership; Leading Change; Management; Management Teams; Business or Company Management; Crisis Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Style; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Culture; Happiness; Prejudice and Bias; Satisfaction; Equity; Identity; Leadership Style; Values and Beliefs; Technology Industry; United States
- August 12, 2021
- Article
The Endless Digital Workday
By: Arjun Narayan, Rohan Narayana Murty, Rajath B. Das and Scott Duke Kominers
The shift to remote work ended the traditional 9–5 workday: employees work in bursts, at night, between caregiving tasks, and whenever they can find time between the endless distractions of messages, calls, and emails. New research, however, shows that for many teams,... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Multi-location Workers in Multinational Firms? Tradeoffs in Contextual Specialization of Employees and Organizational Outcomes
We study how “contextual specialization,” the act of focusing workers’ organizational tasks within a particular locational context, and “contextual non-specialization,” the practice of diversifying workers’ organizational tasks among multiple locational contexts,... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Should Human Capital Development Programs Be Voluntary or Mandatory? Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
In a field experiment, we find large differences in productivity treatment effects between voluntary and mandatory workplace mentorship programs. A significant portion of this difference is due to the best employees opting into the program when it is voluntary and... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Multiple Team Membership, Turnover, and On-Time Delivery: Evidence from Construction Services
By: Hise O. Gibson, Bradely R. Staats and Ananth Raman
Firms who want to compete in dynamic markets are finding that they must build more agile operations to ensure success. One way for a firm to increase organizational agility is to allocate employees to multiple project teams, simultaneously—a practice known as multiple... View Details
- Article
Are They Useful? The Effects of Performance Incentives on the Prioritization of Work Versus Personal Ties
By: Julia Hur, Alice Lee-Yoon and Ashley V. Whillans
Most working adults report spending very little time with friends and family. The current research explores the aspects of work that encourage employees to spend less time with personal ties. We show that incentive systems play a critical role in shaping how people... View Details
- June 30, 2021
- Article
Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Let Employees Take the Lead on ESG
Companies that don’t give rank-and-file workers a central role in their environmental, social and governance (ESG) work are making a mistake. They risk alienating values-oriented employees who question company practices, and they miss a big opportunity for employee... View Details
- June 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Suzhou Good-Ark Electronics: Creating and Implementing a Sage Culture
By: Sandra J. Sucher, Nien-he Hsieh, Susan J. Winterberg, Nancy Hua Dai and Shalene Gupta
Suzhou Good-Ark, a Chinese semiconductor implemented "Sage Culture" management based on traditional Chinese philosophy. Productivity doubled, turnover decreased, and employee satisfaction shot up. By 2015, more than 2,000 companies had toured Wu’s factories, and Wu had... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Virtual Water Coolers: A Field Experiment on the Role of Virtual Interactions on Organizational Newcomer Performance
Designing management practices to better onboard organizational newcomers working remotely is a key priority for firms. We report results from a randomized field experiment conducted at a large global firm that estimates the performance effects of different types of... View Details
- April 2021 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
The Turnaround at Ford Motor Company
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Olivia Jung
This case describes the corporate turnaround of the Ford Motor Company under the charismatic leadership of Alan Mulally. Ford was in deep trouble in the early 2000s as its prices and debt ratings plummeted and employee morale suffered. In 2006, the company anticipated... View Details
- April–May 2021
- Article
Labor Mobility and Antitakeover Provisions
By: Aiyesha Dey and Joshua White
How do firms protect their human capital? We test whether firms facing an increased threat of being acquired strengthen their antitakeover provisions (ATPs) in order to bond with their employees. We use the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S.... View Details
- April 2021
- Article
Work-From-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographical Flexibility
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi and Barbara Larson
An emerging form of remote work allows employees to work-from-anywhere, so that the worker can choose to live in a preferred geographic location. While traditional work-from-home (WFH) programs offer the worker temporal flexibility, work-from-anywhere (WFA) programs... View Details
- April 2021
- Case
Zeynep Ton: The Good Jobs Strategy
By: Francesca Gino and Frances X. Frei
The link to this multimedia case should be provided to students in advance as preparation for classroom case discussion.
In Zeynop Ton’s 2014 book The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost... View Details
In Zeynop Ton’s 2014 book The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost... View Details
- March 2021
- Article
Experimenting During the Shift to Virtual Team Work: Learnings from How Teams Adapted Their Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Past research has focused on understanding the characteristics of work that are fully virtual or fully collocated. The present study seeks to expand our understanding of team work by studying knowledge workers' experiences as they were suddenly forced to transition to... View Details
- February 2021
- Case
A Cultural Transformation at Southeastern Grocers
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Jonah S. Goldberg and Joseph A. Paul
When Anthony Hucker, the CEO of Southeastern Grocers (SEG), took over in that role in July 2017, the company was in dire financial and operational condition and was headed towards bankruptcy. SEG, the fifth largest grocery chain in the U.S. in early 2021, operated... View Details
- February 2021
- Article
Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession
By: S. Bernstein, T. McQuade and R. Townsend
We investigate how the deterioration of household balance sheets affects worker productivity, and, in turn, economic downturns. Specifically, we compare the output of innovative workers who experienced differential declines in housing wealth during the financial crisis... View Details