Publications

October 2018 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation

By: Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

In August 2017, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was looking for ways to differentiate itself from competing banks and was also trying to improve the financial well-being of... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Experimentation; Banks and Banking; Credit Cards; Customer Focus and Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Australia

February 2024
Case

Levels.fyi: How Negotiations Coaching and Pay Transparency Change Job Market Outcomes

By: Zoë B. Cullen

Salary information is everywhere. What impact does it have on compensation? How should employees and employers use salary information in negotiations? This case brings to light how pay information affects behavior and job market outcomes in surprising ways. View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Use and Leverage; Compensation and Benefits; Negotiation

September 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Teaching Note

Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation

By: Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation (619-018). In August 2017,... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Experimentation; Banks and Banking; Credit Cards; Customer Focus and Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Australia

July 2021
Article

Invisible Inequality Leads to Punishing the Poor and Rewarding the Rich

By: Oliver P. Hauser, Gordon T. Kraft-Todd, David Rand, Martin A. Nowak and Michael I. Norton

Four experiments examine how the lack of awareness of inequality affects behaviour towards the rich and poor. In Experiment 1, participants who became aware that wealthy individuals donated a smaller percentage of their income switched from rewarding the wealthy to... View Details

Keywords: Income Transparency; Income; Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Knowledge; Behavior; Outcome or Result; Society; Policy

March 5, 2022
Article

Hospital Capacity Shortages: An SEC-Backed Transparency “PULL” Will Open Beds Faster Than a “PUSH” by HHS

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

In the new normal of ongoing pandemics, hospital bed shortages will continue. Healthcare innovation expert and author of the upcoming book Innovating in Healthcare: Creating Breakthrough Services, Products, and Business Models (Wiley, 2023, 978-1119543008), HBS... View Details

Keywords: Hospital Capacity; Access To Care; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Capacity; Planning

November 11, 2022
Editorial

Finally Companies Have to Be Upfront about Job Pay Ranges

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The significance of pay transparency laws is their role in moving American workplaces away from bias and closer to equal opportunity. View Details

Keywords: Pay; Salary; Pay Gap; Transparency; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Equality and Inequality

March–April 2019
Article

Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees

By: Ryan W. Buell

Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Customers; Services; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Customer Satisfaction; Behavior; Service Industry

2019
Working Paper

Thinking Outside the Box (12): The Benefits of Increased Transparency in Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance for the 180 Million Insured

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman

Economists have long noted that the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) caused workers to purchase health plans that differ in price and other characteristics from those they would otherwise choose for themselves. We explore the short-term and long-term... View Details

Keywords: After-tax Income; Consumer-driven Health Care; Health Care Costs; Health Insurance; Income Inequality; Tax Policy; Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Insurance; Income; Equality and Inequality; Taxation; Policy; United States

2019
Working Paper

Relative Performance Transparency: Effects on Sustainable Choices

By: Ryan W. Buell, Shwetha Mariadassou and Yanchong Zheng

We study how transparency into the levels and changes of relative sustainability performance affects consumer choices. Our work considers two forms of transparency: process transparency, in which customers receive information about the company's sustainability... View Details

Keywords: Relative Performance Tranparency; Process Transparency; Customer Transparency; Levels; Changes; Reflectiveness; Self-serving Attribution Biases; Sustainability; Consumer Choice

SSRN

May 2017
Case

Buffer.com

By: Susanna Gallani, Tiffany Y. Chang, Brian J. Hall and Jee Eun Shin

Social media company Buffer wanted to establish clear company values early in its growth. One of these values was a commitment to transparency in its company practices. Buffer openly shared its business strategies and fundraising decks, among lots of other information.... View Details

Keywords: Compensation; Compensation Design; Company Values; Culture; Transparency; Compensation and Benefits; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

March 4, 2010
Column

Transparantie in pensioensector nog ver te zoeken [Adjusted Actuarial Cost Price Conflicts with Transparency Requirement]

By: Robert C. Merton and Jan Snippe

Article

Just Trust Us: Today's Credit Problems Have One Thing in Common, an Appalling Lack of Transparency

Keywords: Credit; Problems and Challenges

January 2015 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Trouble at Tessei

By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan W. Buell

In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen ("bullet") trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the... View Details

Keywords: Service Management; Employee Engagement; Employee Motivation; Leadership And Managing People; Quality Improvement; Efficiency; Japan; Operational Transparency; Employee Coordination; Transparency; Leadership; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Employees; Quality; Transportation Industry; Japan

Article

Motivated Inferences of Price and Quality in Healthcare Decisions

By: Emily Prinsloo, Kate Barasz and Peter A. Ubel

Policy makers have increasingly advocated for healthcare price transparency, whereby prices are made salient before services are rendered. While such policies may empower consumers, they also bring price to the forefront of healthcare choices as never before, with yet... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Price Transparency; Health Care and Treatment; Price; Quality; Perception; Consumer Behavior; Decisions; Insurance