Publications

Article

The Not-So-Common-Wealth of Australia: Evidence for a Cross-Cultural Desire for a More Equal Distribution of Wealth.

By: Michael I. Norton, David T. Neal, Cassandra L. Govan, Dan Ariely and Elise Holland

Recent evidence suggests that Americans underestimate wealth inequality in the United States and favor a more equal wealth distribution (Norton & Ariely, 2011). Does this pattern reflect ideological dynamics unique to the United States, or is the phenomenon evident in... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Australia; United States

March 2012
Article

New Project? Don't Analyze—Act

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer and Paul B. Brown

In a predictable world, getting a new initiative off the ground typically involves analyzing the market, creating a forecast, and writing a business plan. But what about in an unpredictable environment? The authors recommend looking to those who are experts in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Managing Yourself; Project Management; Project Strategy; Risk Management

Article

Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure

By: Sergey Chernenko, C. Fritz Foley and Robin Greenwood

Standard theories of corporate ownership assume that because markets are efficient, insiders ultimately bear all agency costs that they create and therefore have a strong incentive to minimize conflicts of interest with outside investors. We argue that if equity is... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Ownership; Conflict of Interests; Investment; Valuation

July – August 2011
Article

Evolve (Again)

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

Frenzy over social networks and interactive media can produce equally overhyped predictions that everything will change, not to mention money-losing investments in silly ventures. Separating enduring strategic lessons from the hype can help avoid a new crash. Hint: the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Venture Capital; Investment; Technological Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships

2010
Working Paper

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Decision Making; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Management Systems; Financial Services Industry

2010
Working Paper

On the Descriptive Value of Loss Aversion in Decisions under Risk

By: Eyal Ert and Ido Erev

Five studies are presented that explore the assertion that losses loom larger than gains. The first two studies reveal equal sensitivity to gains and losses. For example, half of the participants preferred the gamble "1000 with probability 0.5; -1000 otherwise"... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Research; Risk and Uncertainty; Behavior; Loss

25 Sep 2024
HBS Seminar

Nan Clement, MIT Sloan School of Management

July – August 2011
Article

Foundations of Organizational Trust: What Matters to Different Stakeholders?

By: Michael Pirson and Deepak Malhotra

Prior research on organizational trust has not rigorously examined the context specificity of trust nor distinguished between the potentially varying dimensions along which different stakeholders base their trust. As a result, dominant conceptualizations of... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Competency and Skills; Forecasting and Prediction; Ethics; Framework; Analytics and Data Science; Surveys; Organizations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Identity; Perspective

23 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Face Value: Do Certain Physical Features Help People Get Ahead?

empirically predicted with a machine learning model, suggests work by Shunyuan Zhang, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and collaborators. “Our research represents the first empirical attempt to characterize the... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

11 Jun 2024
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2024

As the vacation season looms, Harvard Business School faculty members share recommendations for a little light reading. Spoiler alert: Lessons in Chemistry tops two of their beach-read lists. For those whose brains can’t—or won’t—turn off, HBS faculty also suggest some... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

03 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Layoffs Can Be Bad Business: 5 Strategies to Consider Before Cutting Staff

The pattern has become painfully predictable in recent years: As the economy shows signs of a slowdown, companies hand out layoff notices to stabilize profitability and calm investor fears. That cycle seems to be in place in the... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Telecommunications; Technology; Financial Services; Manufacturing

Web

Marketing - Faculty & Research

predicted negative consumer welfare and marketing outcomes related to loss, including mourning the loss, and devaluing the ‘new’ AI relative to the ‘original’. Experimental evidence confirms these findings. In short, we quantify the... View Details

September 2023
Supplement

Accelerating with Caution: Forecasting and Managing birddogs’ Growth (B)

By: Mark Egan

As 2017 was drawing to a close, birddogs’ founder and CEO, Peter Baldwin, was working with his CFO Jack Sullivan to prepare for 2018. Their task at hand? To predict the demand for their product in the coming season, determine the appropriate investments in working... View Details

Keywords: Working Capital; Forecasting and Prediction; Expansion; Production; Apparel and Accessories Industry

31 Mar 2022
HBS Seminar

John Paul MacDuffie, Wharton

September 1998
Case

Vanguard Group, Inc. (1998), The

By: Andre F. Perold

Since the beginning of 1997, Vanguard's assets under management have increased more than 60% from $240 billion to almost $400 billion, making it second in market share only to Fidelity. Vanguard views this success as another vindication of its low-cost strategy of... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Cost Management; Investment Funds; Product; Service Operations; Performance Expectations; Competition; Consolidation; Expansion; Internet; Financial Services Industry

Educators

December 2021
Article

Negativity Spreads More Than Positivity on Twitter after Both Positive and Negative Political Situations

By: Jonas Paul Schöne, Brian Parkinson and Amit Goldenberg

What type of emotional language spreads further in political discourses on social media? Previous research has focused on situations that primarily elicited negative emotions, showing that negative language tended to spread further. The current project extends existing... View Details

Keywords: Negative Emotions; Emotional Influence; Emotional Resonance; Political Discourse; Emotion Contagion; Intergroup; Interactive Communication; Emotions; Government and Politics; Social Media

2015
Chapter

Consumer Neuroscience: Revealing Meaningful Relationships Between Brain and Consumer Behavior

By: Hilke Plassmann and Uma R. Karmarkar

The goal of this chapter is to give an overview of the nascent field of consumer neuroscience and discuss when and how it is useful to integrate the "black box" of the consumer's brain into consumer psychology. To reach this goal, we first briefly outline several... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Cognition and Thinking