Publications

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January–February 2014
Article

IDEO's Culture of Helping

By: Teresa Amabile, Colin M. Fisher and Julianna Pillemer

Leaders can do few things more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the highest-performing companies, it is a norm that colleagues support one another's efforts to do the best work they can. That has always been true for efficiency... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Behavior; Attitudes; Organizational Culture; Relationships; Social and Collaborative Networks

2008
Working Paper

The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard

The central role of "platform" products and services in mediating the activities of disaggregated "clusters" or "ecosystems" of firms has been widely recognized. But platforms and the systems in which they are embedded are very diverse. In particular, platforms may... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms

05 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

Why People Crave Feedback—and Why We’re Afraid to Give It

recognize how much more the receiver wanted the feedback—but asking the feedback giver to put themselves in the other person’s shoes was more effective overall. This suggests that one potential way to increase the likelihood that someone will give feedback is to View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Web

Programs & Resources - Entrepreneurship

transform their thinking and vision in a dynamic global environment. Using the vaunted HBS case study method, our participants spend meaningful time with HBS faculty and peers from around the world in programs that encourage and support... View Details

07 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Digital Transformation: A New Roadmap for Success

encourages the psychological safety necessary for cultivating a growth mindset among employees. To nurture that sense of shared purpose, as well as customer-centric thinking, participants described how they sent cross-functional or... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

May 17, 2023
Article

Don't Let Passion Lead to Burnout on Your Team

By: Joy Bredehorst, Kai Krautter, Jirs Meuris and Jon M. Jachimowicz

Passion is often heralded as the key to a fulfilling and successful career, but the authors’ recent research suggests that it can also come at a cost: Feeling passionate about work can lead to exhaustion and even burnout. Through studies with more than 700 employees... View Details

Keywords: Burnout; Emotions; Work-Life Balance; Employees

Spring 2023
Article

Incentive Contract Design and Employee-Initiated Innovation: Evidence from the Field

By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin

This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers’ official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers’ propensity to engage in employee-initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are... View Details

Keywords: Employee-initiated Innovation; Contract Design; Rank-and-file; Extra-role Behaviors; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation and Management

Purchase

2016
Chapter

Wrong Paths to Right: Defining Morality With or Without a Clear Red Line

By: Ryann Elizabeth Manning and Michel Anteby

The extensive literature on organizational wrongdoing tends to assume that a clear red line divides the moral terrain. However, many organizations function not as moral orders, but as moral pursuits in which there is intentionally no explicit definition of right and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Organizational Theory; Sociology Of Ethics And Morality; Morality; Organizational Culture; Culture; Ethics; Africa; North and Central America

November 2015
Article

Why Organizations Don't Learn: Our Traditional Obsessions—Success, Taking Action, Fitting In, and Relying on Experts—Undermine Continuous Improvement

By: F. Gino and B. Staats

For any enterprise to be competitive, continuous learning and improvement are key—but not always easy to achieve. After a decade of research, the authors have concluded that four biases stand in the way: we focus too heavily on success, are too quick to act, try too... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Learning

Register to Read

September–October 2015
Article

Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces

By: Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein and David Lazer

Using data from a novel laboratory experiment on complex problem solving in which we varied the structure of 16-person networks, we investigate how an organization's network structure shapes performance of problem-solving tasks. Problem solving, we argue, involves both... View Details

October 2009
Article

Making Time Off Predictable—and Required

By: Leslie Perlow and Jessica L. Porter

People in professional services believe a 24/7 work ethic is essential for getting ahead—and so they work 60-plus hours a week and stay tethered to their BlackBerrys. This perpetuates a vicious cycle: Responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness. When people... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance Expectations; Performance Productivity; Work-Life Balance; Service Industry

Purchase

12 Dec 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 12, 2017

and encourages the continued creation of deep knowledge within the field, as well as collaborative research across disciplines that develops and incorporates insights from service operations. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets - Faculty & Research

the micro foundations of these phenomena. Our work is grounded in the power of strategic interaction to encourage individuals and organizations to create and sustain value (in negotiations, in organizations, and in markets). We explore... View Details

31 Jan 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Peer Effects and Entrepreneurship

Keywords: by Ramana Nanda & Jesper B. Sørensen

2024
Working Paper

Igniting Innovation: Evidence from PyTorch on Technology Control in Open Collaboration

By: Daniel Yue and Frank Nagle

Many companies offer free access to their technology to encourage outside addon innovation, hoping to later profit by raising prices or harnessing the power of the crowd while continuing to steer the direction of innovation. They can achieve this balance by opening... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Power and Influence; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Corporate Governance

August 2021
Article

Information Seeding and Knowledge Production in Online Communities: Evidence from OpenStreetMap

By: Abhishek Nagaraj

The wild success of a few online communities (like Wikipedia) has obscured the fact that most attempts at forming such communities fail. This study evaluates information seeding, an early-stage intervention to bootstrap online communities that enables contributors to... View Details

Keywords: Online Communities; Knowledge Production; Crowdsourcing; Innovation; Digitization; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Social and Collaborative Networks; Analytics and Data Science; Knowledge Dissemination

April 2013
Article

Rx: Human Nature: How Behavioral Economics Is Promoting Better Health Around the World

By: Nava Ashraf

Why doesn't a woman who continues to have unwanted pregnancies avail herself of the free contraception at a nearby clinic? What keeps people from using free chlorine tablets to purify their drinking water? Behavioral economics has shown us that we don't always act in... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Economics; Motivation and Incentives; Zambia