Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,403)
- Faculty Publications (234)
- January–March 2020
- Article
Inaction and Decision Making in Moral Conflicts
By: Netta Barak-Corren and Max Bazerman
People regularly face conflicts in which obeying one moral requirement means transgressing another. Moral conflicts require difficult decisions: a person believes she should take both actions, but doing both is impossible. In this paper, we examine a common form of... View Details
- 2020
- Book
The Power of Experiments: Decision-Making in a Data-Driven World
By: Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman
Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of changes to an... View Details
- February 2020
- Article
Why Prosocial Referral Incentives Work: The Interplay of Reputational Benefits and Action Costs
By: Rachel Gershon, Cynthia Cryder and Leslie K. John
While selfish incentives typically outperform prosocial incentives, in the context of customer referral rewards, prosocial incentives can be more effective. Companies frequently offer “selfish” (i.e., sender-benefiting) referral incentives, offering customers financial... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
A Tough Call: SEAL Team Leader in Kandahar (A)
By: George A. Riedel
The case, which is a disguised version of real events, is set in Kandahar, Afghanistan (2013) during the long running Afghan war. Lt. Paul Rickson, a Navy SEAL Platoon Commander, is leading a team of 30 U.S. and Afghan soldiers on a mission to clear hostile forces in... View Details
- November 26, 2019
- Article
Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good
By: Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman
The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was... View Details
- Article
How Social Entrepreneurs Zig-Zag Their Way to Impact at Scale
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg
This article provides guidance to social entrepreneurs and their funders as they seek to advance the enterprise from startup to scale. It focuses on the evolution of four social entrepreneurs and their decision-making paths as they attempt to scale their respective... View Details
- November 2019
- Article
When and Why Defaults Influence Decisions: A Meta-analysis of Default Effects
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Shannon Duncan, Elke U. Weber and Eric J. Johnson
When people make decisions with a pre-selected choice option—a “default”—they are more likely to select that option. Because defaults are easy to implement, they constitute one of the most widely employed tools in the choice architecture toolbox. However, to decide... View Details
- 2019
- White Paper
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy
By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing
Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Affects Labor Supply and Gender Norms
By: Natalia Rigol, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Simone Schaner and Charity Troyer-Moore
Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Amandla Capital: Real Estate in Côte d‘Ivoire
By: John D. Macomber, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Dilyana Botha
This case describes Amandla Capital, a fledgling company in Cote d’Ivoire, facing three opportunities in the real estate and hospitality industries in Africa. It introduces students to several concepts: decision-making and cost-benefit analysis in real estate,... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Unifying Divisions: Joro's Mission to Preserve the Planet
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Marilyn Morgan Westner
The case focuses on the initial startup team and Founders’ agreements. In March 2018, Sanchali Pal proposed renegotiating the informal founders’ agreement and equity split she and her co-founders had drafted the previous spring. They had been working together for over... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Digital Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing
By: Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji
Recent work argues that experimentation is the appropriate framework for entrepreneurial strategy. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the time-varying adoption of A/B testing technology, which has drastically reduced the cost of experimentally testing... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Favors the Greater Good
By: Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman
The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was... View Details
- June 2019
- Article
Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines
By: Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan and Benjamin Roth
A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of... View Details
Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Household; Personal Finance; Decision Making; Behavior; India; Philippines
- 2019
- Working Paper
Rehabilitating Corporate Purpose
In this paper, I address how the ascendance of the theory of shareholder value maximization into the central consciousness of public corporations and its canonization as the only legitimate expression of corporate purpose has contributed to both a widening breach... View Details
- Article
Four Things No One Will Tell You About ESG Data
By: Sakis Kotsantonis and George Serafeim
As the ESG finance field and the use of ESG data in investment decision-making continue to grow, the authors seek to shed light on several important aspects of ESG measurement and data. This article is intended to provide a useful guide for the rapidly rising number of... View Details
Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Reporting; Data Analytics; Sustainability; Sustainability Reporting; CSR; Transparency; Investment Management; Socially Responsible Investing; Sustainable Finance; Sustainable Development; Inclusion; Inclusive Growth; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Investment; Management; Climate Change; Corporate Governance; Diversity; Integrated Corporate Reporting
- February 2019
- Article
Bounded Ethicality and Ethical Fading in Negotiations: Understanding Unintended Unethical Behavior
By: McKenzie Rees, Ann E. Tenbrunsel and Max Bazerman
The business scandals in the past several decades led to the rising importance of ethics as a topic central to management scholarship. Behavioral scientists in particular were attracted to the topic in far greater numbers, and the study of ethical decision-making... View Details
- January 15, 2019
- Article
Is Your Company's Strategy Aligned with Your Ownership Model?
By: Josh Baron
The legacy of Vanguard founder John Bogle has brought attention to the transformative influence of ownership structures within the business world. Bogle's revolutionary insight into the limitations of active fund management led to the widespread adoption of index... View Details
- January 4, 2019
- Article
How Companies Can Balance Social Impact and Financial Goals
By: Marya L. Besharov, Wendy K. Smith and Michael Tushman
It’s notoriously difficult for a business to manage two separate-but-equal goals—making money and creating social value at the same time, for example, or managing an existing business at the same time that you invent a new one. Most attempts at managing these... View Details
- January 2019
- Case
Accenture's Code of Business Ethics
By: Eugene Soltes
Leaders of Accenture’s compliance and ethics program are seeking to design a new code of business ethics for its global workforce of over 400,000 employees. The case explores the decision-making process that went into the design process and ultimately how they created... View Details