Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,186)
- Faculty Publications (324)
- Article
Using Fresh Starts to Nudge Increased Retirement Savings
By: John Beshears, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi
We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of framing future moments in time as new beginnings (or “fresh starts”). University employees (N=6,082) received mailings with an opportunity to choose between increasing their contributions to a savings plan... View Details
- September 28, 2021
- Editorial
A Guide to Implementing the 4-Day Workweek
By: A.V. Whillans and Charlotte Lockhart
As organizations continue to explore a variety of flexible work options, one promising avenue is the four-day workweek: The standard 40 hours per week is reduced to 32 hours, with the same pay and the same productivity expectations. Research suggests reducing hours can... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Luck of the Draw: The Causal Effect of Physicians on Birth Outcomes
By: Christian Posso, Jorge Tamayo, Arlen Guarin and Estefania Saravia
We estimate the effect on birth outcomes of a mother’s being treated by more-skilled versus less-skilled physicians by exploiting a Colombian government program that randomly assigned newly graduated physicians to local health centers (LHCs). We estimate the impact on... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Should Human Capital Development Programs Be Voluntary or Mandatory? Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
In a field experiment, we find large differences in productivity treatment effects between voluntary and mandatory workplace mentorship programs. A significant portion of this difference is due to the best employees opting into the program when it is voluntary and... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Creating Exercise Habits Using Incentives: The Trade-off Between Flexibility and Routinization
By: John Beshears, Hae Nim Lee, Katherine L. Milkman, Robert Mislavsky and Jessica Wisdom
Habits involve regular, cue-triggered routines. In a field experiment, we tested whether incentivizing exercise routines—paying participants each time they visit the gym within a planned, daily two-hour window—leads to more persistent exercise than offering flexible... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy
By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons
We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Structuring Local Environments to Avoid Diversity: Anxiety Drives Whites' Geographical and Institutional Self-Segregation Preferences
By: Eric Anicich, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Merrick Osborne and L. Taylor Phillips
The current research explores how local racial diversity affects Whites’ efforts to structure their local communities to avoid incidental intergroup contact. In two experimental studies (N=509; Studies 1a-b), we consider Whites’ choices to structure a fictional,... View Details
- July–August 2021
- Article
Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government
By: Ryan W. Buell, Ethan Porter and Michael I. Norton
Problem definition: As trust in government reaches historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs.
Academic/practical relevance: We propose that in co-productive settings like government services, peoples’ trust and... View Details
- 2021
- Chapter
Towards a Unified Framework for Fair and Stable Graph Representation Learning
By: Chirag Agarwal, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Marinka Zitnik
As the representations output by Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are increasingly employed in real-world applications, it becomes important to ensure that these representations are fair and stable. In this work, we establish a key connection between counterfactual... View Details
- Article
Towards the Unification and Robustness of Perturbation and Gradient Based Explanations
By: Sushant Agarwal, Shahin Jabbari, Chirag Agarwal, Sohini Upadhyay, Steven Wu and Himabindu Lakkaraju
As machine learning black boxes are increasingly being deployed in critical domains such as healthcare and criminal justice, there has been a growing emphasis on developing techniques for explaining these black boxes in a post hoc manner. In this work, we analyze two... View Details
- Article
Work Group Rituals Enhance the Meaning of Work
By: Tami Kim, Ovul Sezer, Juliana Schroeder, Jane L. Risen, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton
The many benefits of finding meaning in work suggest the importance of identifying activities that increase job meaningfulness. The current paper identifies one such activity: engaging in rituals with workgroups. Five studies (N = 1,099) provide evidence that... View Details
Keywords: Groups; Meaningfulness; Task Meaning; Ritual; Teams; Organizational Citizenship; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Familiarity
- June 2021
- Case
Who Lives & Who Dies: Expanded Access for Experimental Drugs at Chimerix (A)
By: Amitabh Chandra and Spencer Lee-Rey
- June 2021
- Supplement
Who Lives & Who Dies: Expanded Access for Experimental Drugs at Chimerix (B)
By: Amitabh Chandra and Spencer Lee-Rey
- June 2021
- Case
Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A)
By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards
In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details
Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Mobility; Strategy; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; XPRIZE; Space Industry; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan
- June 2021
- Case
Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A) (Abridged)
By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards
In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details
Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Innovation; Crowdsourcing; XPRIZE; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Space Industry; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Mobility; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan
- Article
Large-Scale Field Experiment Shows Null Effects of Team Demographic Diversity on Outsiders' Willingness to Support the Team
By: Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios and Rosanna K. Smith
Demographic diversity in the United States is rising, and increasingly, work is conducted in teams. These co-occurring phenomena suggest that it might be increasingly common for work to be conducted by demographically diverse teams. But to date, in spite of copious... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Population Interference in Panel Experiments
By: Iavor I Bojinov, Kevin Wu Han and Guillaume Basse
The phenomenon of population interference, where a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit's outcome, has received considerable attention in standard randomized experiments. The complications produced by population interference in... View Details
- March 2021
- Case
VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory
By: Karim R. Lakhani and Amy Klopfenstein
Florian Hillen, co-founder and CEO of VideaHealth, a startup that used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect dental conditions on x-rays, spent the early years of his company laying the groundwork for an AI factory. A process for quickly building and iterating on new... View Details
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Entrepreneurship; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge
- February 2021
- Tutorial
Getting Started in RStudio Cloud
By: Chiara Farronato and Caleb Kwon
This video provides an introduction to the free programming language R using an online cloud version of RStudio, which is the most popular editor and interface for writing and executing R code. The video begins by providing a brief background of R and RStudio and... View Details
- February 2021
- Tutorial
T-tests: Theory and Practice
By: Michael Parzen, Natalie Epstein, Chiara Farronato and Michael Toffel
This video provides an introduction to hypothesis testing, sampling, t-tests, and p-values. It provides examples of A/B testing and t-testing to assess whether difference between two groups are statistically significant. This video can be assigned in conjunction with... View Details