Publications

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Article

Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives

By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler

Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Motivation Laundering; Self-signaling; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Perception

January–February 2014
Article

IDEO's Culture of Helping

By: Teresa Amabile, Colin M. Fisher and Julianna Pillemer

Leaders can do few things more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the highest-performing companies, it is a norm that colleagues support one another's efforts to do the best work they can. That has always been true for efficiency... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Behavior; Attitudes; Organizational Culture; Relationships; Social and Collaborative Networks

2008
Working Paper

The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard

The central role of "platform" products and services in mediating the activities of disaggregated "clusters" or "ecosystems" of firms has been widely recognized. But platforms and the systems in which they are embedded are very diverse. In particular, platforms may... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms

20 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: December 20

categories were set by a strict rotation scheme, thereby mitigating the potentially confounding effect that they targeted only "hot" technology sectors. Prizes encouraged competition and medals were more important than monetary... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

August 2021 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Allbirds: Decarbonizing Fashion

By: Michael W. Toffel, Kenneth P. Pucker and Eren Kuzucu

The Allbirds: Decarbonizing Fashion (A) case introduces Allbirds as a footwear startup not only focused on simple design, comfort, and sustainable natural materials but on decarbonizing the wider fashion industry. Background material highlights the growing... View Details

Keywords: Decarbonization; Climate Impact; Environmental Strategy; Innovation; Product Design; Supply Chain Management; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Product Development; Climate Change; Environmental Management; Environmental Sustainability; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Fashion Industry; United States; California

Educators

Purchase

2007
Text Book

The Moral Leader: Challenges, Tools, and Insights

By: Sandra J. Sucher

Successful leaders—at any level and in any arena—are inevitably presented with moral and ethical choices. This unique and innovative textbook is designed to encourage students and managers to confront those fundamental moral challenges, to develop skills in moral... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Moral Sensibility; Leadership

Research Summary

People Are Experience Goods: Improving Online Dating with Virtual Dates

Because internet search mechanisms are designed for finding searchable items, we tend to conceptualize the things we seek online in terms of their objective characteristics. For some pursuits, however, this illuminates a mismatch between processes and goals. In online... View Details

September 2013
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Laurent Adamowicz and Bon'App

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins

After a successful career as Chairman and CEO of Paris-based luxury food company Fauchon, Laurent Adamowicz sought to reduce obesity and improve health outcomes. Adamowicz created a mobile application to provide consumers with more accessible and interpretable... View Details

Educators

2024
Working Paper

Content Moderation with Opaque Policies

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Jesse M. Shapiro

A sender sends a signal about a state to a receiver who takes an action that determines a payoff. A moderator can block some or all of the sender's signal before it reaches the receiver. When the moderator's policy is transparent to the receiver, the moderator can... View Details

Keywords: Market Design; Communication; Knowledge Sharing; Information Infrastructure; Media

Register to Read

March 2019
Article

A Structural Analysis of the Role of Superstars in Crowdsourcing Contests

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Param Singh and Anindya Ghose

We investigate the long-term impact of competing against superstars in crowdsourcing contests. Using a unique 50-month longitudinal panel data set on 1677 software design crowdsourcing contests, we illustrate a learning effect where participants are able to improve... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing Contests; Superstar Effect; Bayesian Learning; Utility; Economics Of Information System; Dynamic Structural Model; Dynamic Programming; Markov Chain; Monte Carlo; Learning; Competition; Performance Improvement

2010
Working Paper

Just Say No to Wall Street: Putting A Stop to the Earnings Game

By: Joseph Fuller and Michael C. Jensen

Putting an end to the "earnings game" requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative by avoiding earnings guidance and managing expectations in such a way that their stocks trade reasonably close to their intrinsic value. In place of earnings forecasts, management should... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Performance Expectations; Goals and Objectives; Risk and Uncertainty; Growth and Development Strategy; Decisions; Risk Management; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Value; Projects

SSRN

14 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

How to Profit from Scarcity

scarcity encourages us to buy sooner and perhaps to buy more than normal. We saw two excellent examples of this effect this summer with the launches of the iPhone and the seventh Harry Potter book. In both cases, the pre-launch publicity... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Consumer Products; Advertising

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

manufactuer's 787 Dreamliner, designed and built using more than 100 outside partners, is perhaps the most-watched example of the use of innovation networks. But already almost two years late, the project was dealt another blow last month... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

November–December 2023
Article

Network Centralization and Collective Adaptability to a Shifting Environment

By: Ethan S. Bernstein, Jesse C. Shore and Alice J. Jang

We study the connection between communication network structure and an organization’s collective adaptability to a shifting environment. Research has shown that network centralization—the degree to which communication flows disproportionately through one or more... View Details

Keywords: Network Centralization; Collective Intelligence; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Communication; Decision Making; Networks; Adaptation

Article

Megastudies Improve the Impact of Applied Behavioural Science

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Dena Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Pepi Pandiloski, Yeji Park, Aneesh Rai, Max Bazerman, John Beshears, Lauri Bonacorsi, Colin Camerer, Edward Chang, Gretchen Chapman, Robert Cialdini, Hengchen Dai, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ayelet Fishbach, James J. Gross, Samantha Horn, Alexa Hubbard, Steven J. Jones, Dean Karlan, Tim Kautz, Erika Kirgios, Joowon Klusowski, Ariella Kristal, Rahul Ladhania, Jens Ludwig, George Loewenstein, Barbara Mellers, Sendhil Mullainathan, Silvia Saccardo, Jann Spiess, Gaurav Suri, Joachim H. Talloen, Jamie Taxer, Yaacov Trope, Lyle Ungar, Kevin G. Volpp, Ashley V. Whillans, Jonathan Zinman and Angela L. Duckworth

Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens’ decisions and outcomes. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time... View Details

Keywords: Policy Making; Behavioral Science; Behavior; Change; Decision Making; Policy

2009
Working Paper

Specific Knowledge and Divisional Performance Measurement

By: Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling

This paper discusses five common divisional performance measurement methods—cost centers, revenue centers, profit centers, investment centers, and expense centers—providing a theory that explains when each of these methods is likely to be the most efficient. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business Headquarters; Decisions; Cost; Investment; Investment Return; Profit; Revenue; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Managerial Roles; Performance Efficiency; Strategy