Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,656)
- Faculty Publications (599)
- April 2023
- Article
A Field Experiment on Subgoal Framing to Boost Volunteering: The Trade-off Between Goal Granularity and Flexibility
By: Aneesh Rai, Marissa A. Sharif, Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman and Angela L. Duckworth
Research suggests that breaking overarching goals into more granular subgoals is beneficial for goal progress. However, making goals more granular often involves reducing the flexibility provided to complete them, and recent work shows that flexibility can also be... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Feature Importance Disparities for Data Bias Investigations
By: Peter W. Chang, Leor Fishman and Seth Neel
It is widely held that one cause of downstream bias in classifiers is bias present in the training data. Rectifying such biases may involve context-dependent interventions such as training separate models on subgroups, removing features with bias in the collection... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Deepa Bachu (A): Design Thinking at Pensaar Design
By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal
In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details
Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Design; Education; Training; Working Conditions; Business or Company Management; Production; Business Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement; Programs; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Groups and Teams; Labor and Management Relations; Rank and Position; Safety; Attitudes; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Trust; Well-being; Consulting Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; India
- March 2023
- Supplement
Deepa Bachu (B): Insights and Experiments at Pensaar Design
By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal
In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details
Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Design; Training; Working Conditions; Business or Company Management; Production; Business Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement; Programs; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Groups and Teams; Labor and Management Relations; Rank and Position; Safety; Attitudes; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Trust; Well-being; Consulting Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; India
- March 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Background Note
Economic Analysis: The Hidden Costs of Layoffs and Managing Staff Reductions
By: Sandra J. Sucher, Marilyn Morgan Westner and Christopher Diak
Globally, over the past fifty years, more companies have used layoffs to cut costs during periods of decreased demand or economic downturns. But layoffs have far-reaching consequences, generate hidden costs, and harm the company in myriad ways. This note reviews ways... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Layoffs in the Tech Industry: 2022–2023
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Marilyn Morgan Westner
This case examines the mass layoffs that swept through the tech industry (2022-2023) through the lens of four companies: Twitter, Stripe, Meta, and Google. How these companies implemented workforce change through mass layoffs raises critical questions applicable beyond... View Details
- March–April 2023
- Article
Market Segmentation Trees
By: Ali Aouad, Adam Elmachtoub, Kris J. Ferreira and Ryan McNellis
Problem definition: We seek to provide an interpretable framework for segmenting users in a population for personalized decision making. Methodology/results: We propose a general methodology, market segmentation trees (MSTs), for learning market... View Details
- February 2023
- Supplement
Astyanax Kanakakis at norbloc: A Founder's Experience with the DIFC Fintech Hive
By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag
norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Organizations; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Digital Transformation; Digital Strategy; Digital Platforms; Technology Adoption; Technological Innovation; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business and Government Relations; Business Startups; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Banking Industry; Information Technology Industry; Sweden; Europe; Singapore; London; United Arab Emirates; Dubai; Middle East; Athens; Greece
- February 13, 2023
- Editorial
The Secret Tax on Women’s Time
By: Lauren C. Howe, Lindsay B. Howe and Ashley V. Whillans
When studies revealed the so-called pink tax, showing in 2015 that personal hygiene products “for her” cost 13% more than similar products for men, it caused outrage and action. The irony that women, despite generally having fewer financial resources than men, are... View Details
- February 2023
- Article
Increasing the Demand for Workers with a Criminal Record
By: Zoë Cullen, Will Dobbie and Mitchell Hoffman
State and local policies increasingly restrict employers’ access to criminal records, but without
addressing the underlying reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks.
Employers may thus still want to ask about a job applicant’s criminal record... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Life After Death: A Field Experiment with Small Businesses on Information Frictions, Stigma, and Bankruptcy
By: Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Mitchell Hoffman and Benjamin Iverson
In a randomized control trial (RCT) with U.S. small businesses, we document that a large share of firms are not well-informed about bankruptcy. Many assume that bankruptcy necessarily entails the death of a business and do not know about Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Efficiently Training Low-Curvature Neural Networks
By: Suraj Srinivas, Kyle Matoba, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Francois Fleuret
Standard deep neural networks often have excess non-linearity, making them susceptible to issues such as low adversarial robustness and gradient instability. Common methods to address these downstream issues, such as adversarial training, are expensive and often... View Details
Keywords: AI and Machine Learning
- December 2022
- Article
I Don't 'Recall': The Decision to Delay Innovation Launch to Avoid Costly Product Failure
By: Byungyeon Kim, Oded Koenigsberg and Elie Ofek
Innovations embody novel features or cutting-edge components aimed at delivering desired customer benefits.
Oftentimes, however, we observe the need to recall new products shortly after their introduction. Indeed, a firm
may rush an innovation to market in an attempt... View Details
- 2022
- Article
Investigating the Association Between Telemedicine Use and Timely Follow-Up Care After Acute Cardiovascular Hospital Encounters
By: Mitchell Tang, A Jay Holmgren, Erin E. McElrath, Ankeet S. Bhatt, Anubodh S. Varshney, Simin Gharib Lee, Muthiah Vaduganathan, Dale S. Adler and Robert S. Huckman
Background: Telemedicine use increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, questions remain as to how telemedicine use impacts care.
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the association of increased telemedicine use on rates of... View Details
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the association of increased telemedicine use on rates of... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
The Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Spending Are Robust and Replicable in Large Samples
By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Ashley V. Whillans
Past studies show that spending money on other people—prosocial spending—increases a person’s happiness. However, foundational research on this topic was conducted prior to psychology’s credibility revolution (or “replication crisis”), so it is essential to ask... View Details
- November–December 2022
- Article
Your Company Needs a Space Strategy. Now.
By: Matthew Weinzierl, Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Alan MacCormack and Brendan Rosseau
Space is becoming a potential source of value for businesses across a range of sectors, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and tourism. To understand what the opportunities are for your company, the authors advise you to consider the four ways in... View Details
- 2022
- Article
A Human-Centric Take on Model Monitoring
By: Murtuza Shergadwala, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Krishnaram Kenthapadi
Predictive models are increasingly used to make various consequential decisions in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, finance, and policy. It becomes critical to ensure that these models make accurate predictions, are robust to shifts in the data, do not rely on... View Details
- November–December 2022
- Article
Number One in Formula One: Leadership Lessons from Toto Wolff and Mercedes, the Team behind One of the Greatest Winning Streaks in All of Sports
By: Anita Elberse
Toto Wolff, the team principal for Mercedes-AMG Petronas—arguably the most impressive team in F1 racing history—has led his organization to unparalleled success. Mercedes earned the Constructors’ Championship (for best overall team performance) every year from 2014... View Details
- November 2022
- Article
Opportunity Neglect: An Aversion to Low-probability Gains
By: Emily Prinsloo, Kate Barasz, Leslie K. John and Michael I. Norton
Seven preregistered studies (N = 2,890) conducted in the field, lab, and online document opportunity neglect: a tendency to reject opportunities with low probability of success, even when they come with little or no objective cost (e.g., time, money,... View Details
- November–December 2022
- Article
To See the Way Forward, Look Back
By: Ranjay Gulati
Most business leaders focus on the future much more than on the past, believing that their job is to embrace disruption and innovation, transform their organizations, and explore new frontiers. But decades of research on companies worldwide shows that most successful... View Details