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(685)
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- Faculty Publications (277)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(685)
- People (1)
- News (120)
- Research (457)
- Events (12)
- Multimedia (3)
- Faculty Publications (277)
- April 2011
- Supplement
Emergia: Driving Profitability on Help Desk Contracts (CW)
By: F. Asis Martinez Jerez
Contact Data for September 2010, dictionary of terms, and agent login information. View Details
Keywords: Contracts
- February 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup
By: Frank Nagle, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein and Susan Pinckney
The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Startups; Small Business; Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Digital Platforms; Technological Innovation; Copyright; Management; Growth and Development; Market Timing; Ownership; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Open Source Distribution; Entrepreneurial Finance; Computer Industry; Europe; Germany
Nagle, Frank, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein, and Susan Pinckney. "AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup." Harvard Business School Case 724-444, February 2024. (Revised January 2025.)
- February 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Best Buy Health: Enabling Care at Home
This case explores retailer Best Buy’s decision to enter health care. Best Buy Health aims to enable care at home across three prongs: consumer health, active aging, and virtual care. A key pillar of Best Buy Health's strategy is leveraging the Geek Squad—the company's... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Business Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Electronics Industry; Health Industry; Retail Industry; United States; Minnesota
Huckman, Robert S., Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Antonio Moreno, Bradley Staats, and Sarah Mehta. "Best Buy Health: Enabling Care at Home." Harvard Business School Case 624-009, February 2024. (Revised December 2024.)
- September 2004
- Article
Rational Overoptimism (and Other Biases)
Rational agents with differing priors tend to be overoptimistic about their chances of success. In particular, an agent who tries to choose the action that is most likely to succeed, is more likely to choose an action of which he overestimated, rather than... View Details
Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Decision Choices and Conditions; Performance Expectations; Outcome or Result; Opportunities; Risk and Uncertainty; Failure; Success; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Personal Characteristics; Values and Beliefs; Ethics
Van den Steen, Eric J. "Rational Overoptimism (and Other Biases)." American Economic Review 94, no. 4 (September 2004): 1141–1151.
- 12 Feb 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus-Based Compensation Plans
Overcoming Overconfidence: Teamwork and Self-Control
This paper analyzes interactions between agents who are overconfident regarding their own future self-control relative to others. The paper considers the problem of incentivizing several such agents, and compares two methods: assigning work individually to each... View Details
- 20 Feb 2014
- HBS Seminar
Teck Ho, University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business
- Article
Relational Reconciliation: Socializing Others Across Demographic Differences
By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Erin M. Reid
In demographically diverse organizations, employees charged with socializing others—
socialization agents—must navigate a deep tension between the organization’s needs to
integrate individuals into a collective and individuals’ needs for recognition of their
unique... View Details
Ramarajan, Lakshmi, and Erin M. Reid. "Relational Reconciliation: Socializing Others Across Demographic Differences." Academy of Management Journal 63, no. 2 (April 2020): 356–385.
- 2006
- Working Paper
Too Motivated?
I show that an agent's motivation to do well (objectively) may be unambiguously bad in a world with differing priors, i.e., when people openly disagree on the optimal course of action. The reason is that an agent who is strongly motivated is more likely to follow... View Details
Keywords: Governance Controls; Employees; Wages; Measurement and Metrics; Outcome or Result; Performance; Agency Theory; Motivation and Incentives
Van den Steen, Eric J. "Too Motivated?" Sloan School of Management Working Paper, No. 4547-05, April 2006. (Available at SSRN.)
- Forthcoming
- Article
Engaging Customers with AI in Online Chats: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
By: Shunyuan Zhang and Das Narayandas
We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) affected the productivity of customer service agents and customer sentiment in online interactions. Collaborating with a meal delivery company, we conducted a randomized field experiment that exploited exogenous variation in... View Details
- 2014
- Other Unpublished Work
No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Public Services Delivery
By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and Kelsey Jack
A substantial body of research investigates the effect of pay for performance in firms, yet less is known about the effect of non-financial rewards, especially in organizations that hire individuals to perform tasks with positive social spillovers. We conduct a field... View Details
Keywords: Incentives; Non-monetary Rewards; Intrinsic Motivation; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Motivation and Incentives
Ashraf, Nava, Oriana Bandiera, and Kelsey Jack. "No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Public Services Delivery." (March 2014. Conditionally accepted, Journal of Public Economics.)
- 25 Apr 2014
- Video
Jim Alexandre - Making A Difference
- Awards
Doing Good with Good O.R. Student Paper Competition
Finalist with Karthik Balasubramanian and Doug Fearing for the 2017 Doing Good with Good O.R. Student Paper Award from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) for “Inventory Models for Mobile Money Agents in the Developing World.” View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency, and Marginal Returns: An Equivalence
By: John William Hatfield, Fuhito Kojima and Scott Duke Kominers
We show that a mechanism induces an agent to make efficient ex ante investment choices if and only if it rewards that agent with his marginal surplus; additionally, for an ex post efficient mechanism, these properties are equivalent to strategy-proofness for the agent.... View Details
Keywords: Strategy-proofness; Investment Efficiency; Providing Marginal Rewards; Vickrey-Clarke-Groves Mechanisms; Mechanism Design; Market Design; Human Capital
Hatfield, John William, Fuhito Kojima, and Scott Duke Kominers. "Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency, and Marginal Returns: An Equivalence." Working Paper, January 2015.
- October 2004
- Article
FDI and Economic Growth: The Role of Local Financial Markets
By: Laura Alfaro, Areendam Chanda, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Selin Sayek
The purpose of this paper is to examine the various links among foreign direct investment, financial markets and growth. We model an economy with a continuum of agents indexed by their level of ability. Agents have two choices: they can work for the foreign company in... View Details
Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Markets; Economic Growth; Cost; Wealth; Investment Return; Knowledge
Alfaro, Laura, Areendam Chanda, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, and Selin Sayek. "FDI and Economic Growth: The Role of Local Financial Markets." Journal of International Economics 64, no. 1 (October 2004): 89–112.
- September 2004
- Article
Trust in Agency
Existing models of the principal-agent relationship assume the agent works only under extrinsic incentives. However, many observed agency contracts take the form of a fixed payment. For such contracts to succeed, the principal must trust the agent to work in the... View Details
Keywords: Trust; Agency Theory; Relationships; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Contracts; Business Model; Emotions; Forecasting and Prediction; Ethics; Standards; Risk and Uncertainty
Casadesus-Masanell, Ramon. "Trust in Agency." Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 13, no. 3 (September 2004): 375–404.
- 29 May 2008
- Working Paper Summaries
Some Neglected Axioms in Fair Division
Keywords: by John W. Pratt
- 07 Oct 2015
- HBS Seminar
Florian Ederer, Assistant Professor of Economics, Yale School of Management
- March 2008 (Revised August 2017)
- Exercise
The Book Deal: Confidential Instructions for the PUBLISHER
By: Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman
A two-party negotiation between an Agent representing a new author and an Editor at a large Publishing Firm. The exercise involves a one-issue, zero-sum negotiation concerning the advance on royalties that the publisher will pay to the author. View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Agreements and Arrangements; Negotiation Preparation; Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Types; Publishing Industry
Malhotra, Deepak, and Max H. Bazerman. "The Book Deal: Confidential Instructions for the PUBLISHER." Harvard Business School Exercise 908-050, March 2008. (Revised August 2017.)
- April 2013
- Article
Overcoming Resistance to Organizational Change: Strong Ties and Affective Cooptation
By: Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro
We propose a relational theory of how change agents in organizations use the strength of ties in their network to overcome resistance to change. We argue that strong ties to potentially influential organization members who are ambivalent about a change (fence-sitters)... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Power and Influence; Health Industry; United Kingdom
Battilana, Julie, and Tiziana Casciaro. "Overcoming Resistance to Organizational Change: Strong Ties and Affective Cooptation." Management Science 59, no. 4 (April 2013): 819–836.