Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,024)
- Faculty Publications (270)
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Business of K-12 Education in China
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu
This working paper examines the evolution of K-12 education in China, especially between 1985 and the present day, drawing extensive interviews with participants in the educational sector. China has been hugely successful in reaching almost 100 percent literacy,... View Details
- September–October 2021
- Article
Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Nitin Mehta, Param Singh and Kannan Srinivasan
We study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Our empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s introduction of the algorithm and its voluntary adoption by hosts as a quasi-natural experiment. Among... View Details
- Article
Health Equity, Schooling Hesitancy, and the Social Determinants of Learning
By: Meira Levinson, Alan C. Geller, Joseph G. Allen and John D. Macomber
At least 62 million K-12 students in North America—disproportionately low-income children of color— have been physically out of school for over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These children are at risk of significant academic, social, mental, and physical harm... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Community Solutions
By: Brian Trelstad and Tom Quinn
Community Solutions was an anti-homelessness nonprofit founded in 2011 after protagonist Rosanne Haggerty grew frustrated with the limited impact of traditional housing and outreach strategies. It set an ambitious goal, reached in some partner communities, of ending... View Details
Keywords: Change; Change Management; Disruption; Transformation; Communication; Communication Strategy; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Social Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Capital Budgeting; Capital Markets; Country; Government Administration; Government Legislation; Housing; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge Sharing; Leading Change; Resource Allocation; Mission and Purpose; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Opportunities; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Human Needs; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Societal Protocols; Poverty; Welfare; Well-being; System; Equality and Inequality; Consulting Industry; Real Estate Industry; United States; New York (city, NY); Florida; Texas
- September 17, 2021
- Article
AI Can Help Address Inequity—If Companies Earn Users' Trust
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan, Param Singh and Nitin Mehta
While companies may spend a lot of time testing models before launch, many spend too little time considering how they will work in the wild. In particular, they fail to fully consider how rates of adoption can warp developers’ intent. For instance, Airbnb launched a... View Details
- September 2021
- Comment
Commentary on ‘2019 Academic Marketing Climate Survey: Motivation, Results and Recommendations', by Jeff Galak and Barbara E. Kahn
By: John A. Deighton
This paper reflects on the conclusions of a survey by Galak and Kahn on the climate experienced by faculty of all genders and ethnicities in the marketing departments of US business schools. View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Employee Ownership and Wealth Inequality: A Path to Reducing Wealth Concentration
By: Thomas Dudley and Ethan Rouen
This paper examines the impact of an economy-wide shift to broad-based employee ownership on wealth concentration in the United States. Relying on government data, we show that if all private firms became 30% employee-owned, the wealth distribution would be profoundly... View Details
- 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
- September 2021
- Article
Shaking Things Up: Disruptive Events and Inequality
By: Letian Zhang
This paper develops a theory of how disruptive events could reduce racial and gender inequality in organizations. Despite pressure from regulators and advocates, racial and gender inequality in the workplace remains high. I theorize that because such inequality is... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Zoom Video Communications: Building a Culture of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion During COVID-19
By: Karen G. Mills, Scott Duke Kominers, Christopher Stanton, Andy Wu, George Gonzalez and Gabriella Elanbeck
Keywords: Diversity Management; Diversity Training; Cultural Change; Cultural Diversity; Inclusion; Inclusive Growth; Inclusive Hiring; Hiring; Hiring Of Employees; Recruiting; Performance Management; Change Leadership; Race And Ethnicity; Racial Bias; Racial Disparity; Racial Injustice; Racial Tensions; Racism; Organization; Organization Process; Organization Structure; Structural/institutional Racism; Leadership And Change Management; Leadership And Managing People; Leading; Gender Bias; Discrimination; Inequalities; Inequality; Social Change; Employee Attitude Development And Empowerment; Employee Bonding; Employee Empowerment; Employee Engagement; Employee Fairness; Employee Morale; Employee Performance Management; Employee Relations; Company Culture; Company Values; Values; COVID-19 Pandemic; Demographics; Diversity; Age; Ethnicity; Gender; Business Processes; Change Management; Change; Race; Human Capital; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Jobs and Positions; Job Interviews; Leadership; Leading Change; Management; Management Teams; Business or Company Management; Crisis Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Style; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Culture; Happiness; Prejudice and Bias; Satisfaction; Equity; Identity; Leadership Style; Values and Beliefs; Technology Industry; United States
- July 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Trouble at Basecamp: Managing Politics, Polarization, and Conflict in the Workplace (A)
By: Nour Kteily, Deepak Malhotra and David Lane
As founders of the software company Basecamp, Jason Fried and David H. Hansson were used to being the subjects of social media attention. Both maintained active and dedicated Twitter followings for their unique perspectives on management and life. But on April 26,... View Details
Keywords: Change; Communication; Policy; Diversity; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Governance; Employees; Working Conditions; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Work-Life Balance; Labor and Management Relations; Conflict and Resolution; Identity; Social Issues; Equality and Inequality; Digital Platforms; Conflict Management; Information Technology Industry; United States
- July 2021
- Supplement
Trouble at Basecamp: Managing Politics, Polarization, and Conflict in the Workplace (B)
By: Nour Kteily, Deepak Malhotra and David Lane
Supplement to the (A) case View Details
Keywords: Change; Communication; Diversity; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Governance; Employees; Working Conditions; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Work-Life Balance; Labor and Management Relations; Conflict and Resolution; Identity; Social Issues; Equality and Inequality; Technology Platform; Information Technology Industry; United States
- July 2021
- Article
Invisible Inequality Leads to Punishing the Poor and Rewarding the Rich
By: Oliver P. Hauser, Gordon T. Kraft-Todd, David Rand, Martin A. Nowak and Michael I. Norton
Four experiments examine how the lack of awareness of inequality affects behaviour towards the rich and poor. In Experiment 1, participants who became aware that wealthy individuals donated a smaller percentage of their income switched from rewarding the wealthy to... View Details
Keywords: Income Transparency; Income; Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Knowledge; Behavior; Outcome or Result; Society; Policy
- July 2021
- Article
Redistribution through Markets
By: Piotr Dworczak, Scott Duke Kominers and Mohammad Akbarpour
Policymakers frequently use price regulations as a response to inequality in the markets they control. In this paper, we examine the optimal structure of such policies from the perspective of mechanism design. We study a buyer-seller market in which agents have private... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency
By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson
The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek
to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting
and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Great Unequalizer: Initial Health Effects of COVID-19 in the United States
By: Marcella Alsan, Amitabh Chandra and Kosali I. Simon
We measure inequities from the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality and hospitalizations in the United States during the early months of the outbreak. We discuss challenges in measuring health outcomes and health inequality, some of which are specific to COVID-19 and others... View Details
- May 13, 2021
- Article
The Big Benefits of Employee Ownership
By: Thomas Dudley and Ethan Rouen
Wealth inequality in the U.S. has been increasing for decades: The richest 1% own a majority of all business wealth, and the top 10% own more than 90%. Companies, which have played a vital role in the growth in inequality can also play one in reducing it. One place to... View Details
- April 2021
- Case
Glass-Shattering Leaders: Ros Atkins
By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman
Ros Atkins launched the 50:50 Project on a BBC news program he anchored, deciding with his team to start tracking the gender of the contributors and experts featured on the show. Before long, it was clear that monitoring the data led to increased awareness of a gender... View Details
- April 2021 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Capitalism, Slavery, and Reparations
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Cary Williams
The birth of “Modern Economic Growth” constituted a watershed in human history, allowing societies to escape the Malthusian impasse and permanently raise living standards. While the new growth regime had lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty over the last... View Details
- April 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
SA Taxi: A Vehicle for Empowerment? (A)
By: Nien-he Hsieh, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and F. Christopher Eaglin
SA Taxi was a vertically integrated business that operated in South Africa’s distinctive taxi industry. Despite being plagued by violence, informal structures, unsafe road practices and lack of government support, the taxi industry had grown to become South Africa’s... View Details