Publications

November 2005 (Revised July 2006)
Case

Two Tough Calls (A)

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.

A young female manager must decide whether to terminate two poorly performing managers who work for her. Shows the practical and ethical issues involved in firing decisions. View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Resignation and Termination; Management; Performance

Educators

2021
Working Paper

Who Do We Invent for? Patents by Women Focus More on Women's Health, but Few Women Get to Invent

By: Rembrand Koning, Sampsa Samila and John-Paul Ferguson

Has the increase in female medical researchers led to more medical advances for women? In this paper, we investigate if the gender of inventors shapes their types of inventions. Using data on the universe of U.S. biomedical patents, we find that patents with women... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Biomedical Research; Innovation and Invention; Diversity; Gender; Research; Health; United States

2014
Working Paper

Bride Price and the Returns to Education

By: Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Nathan Nunn and Alessandra Voena

Traditional cultural practices can play an important role in development, but can also inspire condemnation. The custom of bride price, prevalent throughout sub-Saharan Africa and in parts of Asia as a payment of the groom to the family of the bride, is one example. In... View Details

Keywords: Zambia; Indonesia

September 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Compilation

Laura Barr: Work Patterns at Ditto (B)

By: Leslie A. Perlow

According to her managers, Laura is an "ideal female employee." Depicts her life and provides a log of how she spends her time. This is a rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details

Keywords: Time Management; Work-Life Balance; Gender; Information Technology Industry

14 Jan 2013
Research & Ideas

Few Women on Boards: Is There a Fix?

Nobody questions that there's whopping gender imbalance in today's boardrooms, despite ample evidence that it makes financial sense to put women on the board. Companies with female board representation routinely outperform those with no... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

22 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: November 22

close with an attempt to identify strategies to close the gap between the unethical people we are and the ethical people that we strive to be. Publisher's Link: http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415873246/ Working PapersLocal Industrial Structures and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2024
Article

Networking Frictions in Venture Capital, and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship

By: Sabrina T. Howell and Ramana Nanda

We find that male participants in Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition who were randomly exposed to more VC investors on their panel were substantially more likely to start a VC-backed startup post-graduation, indicating that access to investors impacts... View Details

Keywords: Networks; Information Frictions; Venture Capital; Gender; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship

May 2022
Article

When Harry Fired Sally: The Double Standard in Punishing Misconduct

By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru

We examine gender differences in misconduct punishment in the financial advisory industry. We find evidence of a “gender punishment gap”: following an incident of misconduct, female advisers are 20% more likely to lose their jobs and 30% less likely to find new jobs... View Details

Keywords: Financial Advisers; Brokers; Gender Discrimination; Consumer Finance; Financial Misconduct And Fraud; FINRA; Financial Institutions; Employees; Crime and Corruption; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Personal Finance; Financial Services Industry

27 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Gender Inequality in Research Productivity During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Keywords: by Ruomeng Cui, Hao Ding, and Feng Zhu

April 2018
Article

We Ask Men to Win & Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding

By: Dana Kanze, Laura Huang, Mark Conley and E. Tory Higgins

Male entrepreneurs are known to raise higher levels of funding than their female counterparts, but the underlying mechanism for this funding disparity remains contested. Drawing upon Regulatory Focus Theory, we propose that the gap originates with a gender bias in the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Finance; Gender; Prejudice and Bias

June 2013
Article

Dysfunction in the Boardroom: Understanding the Persistent Gender Gap at the Highest Levels

By: Boris Groysberg and Deborah Bell

The article examines the gender gap that is present in boardrooms in U.S. corporations and internationally in 2013 as more women attempt to reach executive-level positions. Countries in the European Union are attempting to institute laws regarding the minimum... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Governing and Advisory Boards; Gender; United States; European Union

Fall 2021
Article

Job-Hopping Toward Equity: Changing Employers Can Help Narrow the Gender Gap in Executive Compensation

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Eric Lin

Changing employers has been linked to larger pay increases for executives and managers. Although survey-based studies suggest that men gain more than women, an analysis of more than 2,000 job moves found that executive women are commanding bigger increases than men... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Gender; Equality and Inequality

Register to Read

August 1992 (Revised December 1994)
Case

Sexual Harassment, Free Speech or ...?

By: Lynn S. Paine

Presents two brief vignettes about female employees who object to gender discrimination in their work environment. In one case, the manager of a convenience store removes "adult" magazines from the store's shelves because she sees them as damaging to women. In the... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Working Conditions; Law; Behavior; Managerial Roles; Crime and Corruption; Groups and Teams; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Gender

Educators

15 Sep 2010
Working Paper Summaries

From Bench to Board: Gender Differences in University Scientists’ Participation in Commercial Science

Keywords: by Waverly W. Ding, Fiona Murray & Toby E. Stuart; Biotechnology

05 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles and Working Papers 2008

with the strategy. 18. How Female Stars Succeed in New Jobs Women who are star performers on Wall Street tend to fare better than men after changing jobs. Why? According to HBS professor Boris Groysberg, star women place greater emphasis... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

February 2019 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Theranos: Who Has Blood on Their Hands? (A)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Christina R. Wing, Emilie Fournier and Anna Resman

This case covers the rise and fall of Theranos, the company founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2004 to revolutionize the blood testing industry by creating a device that could provide from a small finger prick the same results and accuracy as intravenous blood draws. As... View Details

Keywords: Health Testing and Trials; Corporate Accountability; Organizational Culture; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Entrepreneurship; Lawsuits and Litigation

Educators

16 Feb 2021
Cold Call Podcast

Fostering Authenticity and Employee Engagement at John Deere

Keywords: Re: Anthony Mayo; Manufacturing

Article

Sizing Up Entrepreneurial Potential: Gender Differences in Communication and Investor Perceptions of Long-Term Growth and Scalability

By: Laura Huang, Priyanka D. Joshi, Cheryl J. Wakslak and Andy Wu

Female entrepreneurs have been found to face disadvantages as compared with male entrepreneurs, especially in acquiring the financial resources they need to sustain and grow their ventures. Across three studies, we examine how disparities in funding outcomes may be due... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Finance; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Communication; Perception

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

Keywords: Gender Norms; Economics; Gender; Employment; Income; Societal Protocols; India