Observation - Publications - Faculty & Research

09 Mar 2016
HBS Seminar

Katja Seim of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

14 Jan 2019
Op-Ed

These 4 CEOs Created a New Standard of Leadership

Many speculated about the possibility of a new depression, a collapsing stock market, and extreme unemployment. Some observers even began to question the foundations of capitalism, arguing it needed to change in order to endure. Nooyi,... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Health; Banking; Food & Beverage; Consumer Products

30 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Can AI Predict Whether Shoppers Would Pick Crest or Colgate?

average, would switch to the less preferred but cheaper brand. “Substitution patterns that you expect to find in observational data, we were able to find by collecting GPT’s responses,” says Israeli. “That was pretty incredible to us,... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

Web

Women at HBS - Alumni

in February 2013. HBS observed International Women's Day on March 8, 2013 with a series of student-focused discussions and events, including discussion of a new case: "Women MBAs at Harvard Business School: 1962-2012". A documentary film,... View Details

19 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

The History of Beauty

many small and often family-owned firms whose stories are hard to reconstruct. The industry as a whole is well known to be secretive—after all, its foundations rest heavily on mystique. And then there is the frequently observed gender... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics

03 Jun 2013
Research & Ideas

The Power of Rituals in Life, Death, and Business

discover that the majority of the recounted rituals were neither religious nor communal. Rather, they were personal, private, and occasionally angry—but in a controlled way. "We observed some amazing rituals," he says. "One... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2024
Working Paper

Modest Victims: Victims Who Decline to Broadcast Their Victimization Are Seen As Morally Virtuous

By: Nathan Dhaliwal, Jillian J. Jordan and Pat Barclay

What do people think of victims who conceal their victimhood? We propose that the decision to not broadcast that one has been victimized serves as a costly act of modesty—in doing so, one is potentially forgoing social support and compensation from one’s community. We... View Details

Keywords: Public Opinion; Mathematical Methods; Communication; Perception; Reputation

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January–February 2018
Article

Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye

By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Bruce G.S. Hardie

We investigate the increasingly common business setting in which companies face the possibility of both observed and unobserved customer attrition (i.e., “overt” and “silent” churn) in the same pool of customers. This is the case for many online-based services where... View Details

Keywords: Churn; Retention; Attrition; Customer Base Analysis; Hidden Markov Models; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior

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November–December 2015
Article

Active Postmarketing Drug Surveillance for Multiple Adverse Events

By: Joel Goh, Margrét V. Bjarnadóttir, Mohsen Bayati and Stefanos A. Zenios

Postmarketing drug surveillance is the process of monitoring the adverse events of pharmaceutical or medical devices after they are approved by the appropriate regulatory authorities. Historically, such surveillance was based on voluntary reports by medical... View Details

Keywords: Drug Surveillance; Health Care; Stochastic Models; Queueing; Diffusion Approximation; Brownian Motion; Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis

Citation

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We show that business development companies (BDCs) — closed-end funds that provide a significant share of nonbank loans to middle market firms — are very well capitalized according to bank capital frameworks. They have median risk-based capital ratios of about 36% and,... View Details

13 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

The Power of Personal Connections: How Shared Experiences Boost Performance

through those ties and may take pride in a reputation for a higher standard of performance when observed by a valued peer, the researchers note. In some ways, analogous effects may be observed in customer... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

06 Jul 2023
News

Home Economics

In a remote village in the Mexican state of Chiapas, 13 women gather in an open-air community space. Each has arrived at their weekly meeting with a small deposit for El Banco—“the bank”—as the women have named the savings club they’ve formed with the assistance of... View Details

Keywords: April White

04 Jun 2020
Book

It’s Not About You: Why Leaders Need to Look Outward

isn't what we observe [that] is getting in the way of great leadership. We're finding that if we can change the orientation, progress can be made.” We’ve been teaching people to look in the mirror, but I want to change the mirror to a... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

Web

About - Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

they assess future risks in good times? Are there underlying principles that help an outside observer recognize potential errors in beliefs? How do markets learn? Size and Structure of the Financial Sector What explains the growth of... View Details

21 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Free Isn’t Always Better: How Slack Holds Its Own Against Microsoft Teams

Teams app to Office 365 in 2017. Microsoft executives briefly considered buying Slack, but founder Bill Gates reportedly opposed the move. "New companies like Slack emerge with a great product, better than Microsoft has, and then Microsoft View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Information Technology; Technology

01 Sep 2021
Op-Ed

How Women Can Learn from Even Biased Feedback

that they would take steps to address the feedback and improve as compared to women who just read the reviews, and the gender difference disappeared. Ask questions As part of my research on annual performance reviews, I’ve observed many... View Details

Keywords: by Francesca Gino

Web

Research - Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

have observed in recent years. See Sam’s other research here , David’s other research here , and Jonathan’s other research here . More Info Can Policy Tame the Credit Cycle? By: Jeremy C. Stein JAN 2021 Jeremy provides a brief survey of... View Details