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- 2021
- Working Paper
Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?
By: Benjamin Enke, Uri Gneezy, Brian Hall, David Martin, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman and Jeroen van de Ven
Despite decades of research on heuristics and biases, empirical evidence on the effect of large incentives—as present in relevant economic decisions—on cognitive biases is scant. This paper tests the effect of incentives on four widely documented biases: base rate... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Into the Raging Sea: Final Voyage of the SS El Faro
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Mel Martin
Captain Michael Davidson of the container ship SS El Faro was determined to make his planned shipping trip on time—but a hurricane was approaching his intended path. To succeed, Davidson and his fellow officers must plot a course to avoid the storm in the face of... View Details
- January 11, 2021
- Article
The Breach of the U.S. Capitol Was a Breach of Trust
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta
This article frames the January 6th attack of the U.S. Capitol as a betrayal of our trust in government. Using Sucher and Gupta’s trust framework, the article explains how the attacks were a failure of the four elements of trust: competence, motives, fair means, and... View Details
- Editorial
Why ESG Funds Fail to Scale
By: Gabriel Karageorgiou and George Serafeim
You’ve seen the headlines about the growth in environmental, social, and governance funds. Many investment professionals might read these and believe that launching a new ESG investment firm or ESG offering will be an automatic success. Our analysis of the data shows... View Details
Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Investment Management; Investment Strategy; Investments; Investment Fund; Sustainability; Sustainable Finance; Sustainable Investing; Investment; Management; Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Finance; Growth and Development; Failure
- 2021
- Working Paper
No-fault Default, Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and Financial Institutions
By: Robert C. Merton and Richard T. Thakor
This paper analyzes the costs and benefits of a no-fault-default debt structure as an alternative to the typical bankruptcy process. We show that the deadweight costs of bankruptcy can be avoided or substantially reduced through no-fault-default debt, which permits a... View Details
- Article
Resilience vs. Vulnerability: Psychological Safety and Reporting of Near Misses with Varying Proximity to Harm in Radiation Oncology
By: Palak Kundu, Olivia Jung, Amy C. Edmondson, Nzhde Agazaryan, John Hegde, Michael Steinberg and Ann Raldow
Background
Psychological safety, a shared belief that interpersonal risk taking is safe, is an important determinant of incident reporting. However, how psychological safety affects near-miss reporting is unclear, as near misses contain contrasting cues that... View Details
Psychological safety, a shared belief that interpersonal risk taking is safe, is an important determinant of incident reporting. However, how psychological safety affects near-miss reporting is unclear, as near misses contain contrasting cues that... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
IBM Watson at MD Anderson Cancer Center
By: Shane Greenstein, Mel Martin and Sarkis Agaian
After discovering that their cancer diagnostic tool, designed to leverage the cloud computing power of IBM Watson, needed greater integration into the clinical processes at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the development team had difficult choices to make. The Oncology... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Operations; Failure; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Health Care and Treatment; Product Development; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Houston; Texas
- 2020
- Working Paper
Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
When Institutions Fail: HIV/AIDS in the 1980s
By: Tom Nicholas and Christian Godwin
During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting... View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Policy; Government and Politics; Health Pandemics; History; Rights; Media; Organizations; Business and Community Relations; Religion; Social Psychology; Identity; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry; Health Industry; Journalism and News Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States
- Fall 2020
- Article
Sizing Up Corporate Restructuring in the COVID Crisis
By: Robin Greenwood, Benjamin Iverson and David Thesmar
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need to deal with a surge of financial distress in the business sector. Some firms will be able to survive, while others will face bankruptcy and thus need to be liquidated or reorganized. Many... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
When Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? The Role of Negative Information in Expert Evaluations for Novel Projects
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani
The evaluation of novel projects lies at the heart of scientific and technological innovation, and yet literature suggests that this process is subject to inconsistency and potential biases. This paper investigates the role of information sharing among experts as the... View Details
- July 2020
- Article
Intra-firm Geographic Mobility: Value Creation Mechanisms and Future Research Directions
This paper argues that intra-firm geographic mobility is an understudied mechanism that can help mitigate coordination failures in a geographically distributed organization. The paper presents an organizing framework on how intra-firm geographic mobility creates value... View Details
- Article
Using the Balanced Scorecard for Successful Health Care M&A Integration
By: Robert S. Kaplan
The failure of merged organizations to achieve stated goals is commonplace. In health care, the challenge is exacerbated by the industry’s third-party payer system and multiple stakeholders, especially the physicians in the merging entities. This article describes how... View Details
- April 29, 2020
- Article
The Case for AI Insurance
By: Ram Shankar Siva Kumar and Frank Nagle
When organizations place machine learning systems at the center of their businesses, they introduce the risk of failures that could lead to a data breach, brand damage, property damage, business interruption, and in some cases, bodily harm. Even when companies are... View Details
- April 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Amazon in China and India
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey
Amazon has been unsuccessful in its efforts to develop a business in China. Even though Amazon was an early entrant into China’s e-commerce space, its domestic rivals, especially Alibaba, created innovative business models uniquely suited for the conditions in China. ... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Novel Risks
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard and Anette Mikes
All organizations practice some form of risk management to identify and assess routine risks in their operations, supply chains, strategy, and external environment. These risk management policies, however, fail in the presence of novelty. Novel risks arise from... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
Aereo
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jacey Taft
Aereo aimed to disrupt television program distribution by providing consumers access to local broadcast TV programming using offsite antennas, cloud-based DVRs, and an Internet connection. With Aereo, consumers could “cut the cord” and avoid the high cost of a cable TV... View Details
- March–April 2020
- Article
Building A Culture of Experimentation
By: Stefan Thomke
Why don’t organizations test more? After examining this question for several years, I can tell you that the central reason is culture. As companies try to scale up their experimentation capacity, they often find that the obstacles are not tools and technology but... View Details
- February 2020
- Case
Fake News at DER SPIEGEL (A)
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and Tonia Labruyere
The case discusses the strategy of DER SPIEGEL, the leading news magazine in Germany, in the aftermath of the discovery of a fake reporting scandal. It had come to light that one of DER SPIEGEL’s own reporters had falsified and made up entire articles for years,... View Details
- Article
What We Can Learn from Five Naturalistic Field Experiments That Failed to Shift Commuter Behaviour
By: Ariella S. Kristal and A.V. Whillans
Across five field experiments with employees of a large organization (n = 68,915), we examined whether standard behavioural interventions (“nudges”) successfully reduced single-occupancy vehicle commutes. In Studies 1 and 2, we sent letters and emails with nudges... View Details