Publications

September 2013 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Morning Star Company: Self-Management at Work

By: Francesca Gino, Bradley R. Staats, Brian J. Hall and Tiffany Y. Chang

Morning Star, a collection of affiliated companies, had grown steadily since 1970 when Chris Rufer, president and founder, started the business hauling tomatoes to processing plants in a truck. The company's main products continued to be tomato-based, including a... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Motivation and Incentives; Working Conditions; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Food; Management Practices and Processes; Compensation and Benefits; Manufacturing Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

June 1991 (Revised June 1993)
Background Note

The Decline of the British Cotton Industry (Abridged)

Supplements the general argument concerning the decline of the British economy by showing how vertical specialization, horizontal competition, and entrenched job control combined to create incentives for management to adapt to changing international conditions by... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Business Cycles; Organizational Structure; Consumer Products Industry; Great Britain

October 2011 (Revised June 2014)
Case

inge watertechnologies, GmbH

By: Ramana Nanda, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Markus Mittermaier

Using the financing history and exit choices of a German clean-tech startup as a lens, this case explores the reasons why venture-backed entrepreneurship is much lower in Germany than the US, despite a robust SME sector and large-corporate innovation in Germany. It... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Finance; Venture Capital; Negotiation; Entrepreneurship; Technology Industry; Germany

Article

Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market

By: Santosh Anagol, Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar

We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents cater to the beliefs of... View Details

Keywords: Advice; Customers; Insurance; Service Operations; Motivation and Incentives; Ethics; India

2021
Working Paper

Which Markets (Don't) Drive Pharmaceutical Innovation? Evidence From U.S. Medicaid Expansions

By: Craig Garthwaite, Rebecca Sachs and Ariel Dora Stern

Pharmaceutical innovation policy involves managing a tradeoff between high prices for new products in the short-term and stronger incentives to develop products for the future. Prior research has documented a causal relationship between market size and pharmaceutical... View Details

Keywords: Pharmaceuticals; Medicaid; Innovation and Invention; Policy; Markets; Research and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry

Read Now

August 2019 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Lemonade: Disrupting Insurance with Instant Everything, Killer Prices, and a Big Heart

By: Elie Ofek and Danielle Golan

Launching its first products in the fall of 2016 in New York, insurtech startup Lemonade was on a mission to disrupt the insurance market by using AI and behavioral economics principles. The company offered renters, homeowners, and condo insurance and mainly targeted... View Details

Keywords: AI; Business Startups; Insurance; Technological Innovation; Business Model; Disruption; Brands and Branding; Growth and Development Strategy; Global Strategy; Decision Making; Insurance Industry; Technology Industry

March 2010 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Toby Johnson (A): Leading After School

By: Boris Groysberg, Leslie Danford, Amy Lodge and Tereh Sayles

After completing her MBA in 2007, Toby Johnson, a former army pilot with the 18th Airborne Corps Rapid Deployment Force, joined PepsiCo's Leadership Development Program (LDP). For her first assignment with PepsiCo, Johnson accepted a position as a manufacturing-manager... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Compensation and Benefits; Business or Company Management

2011
Article

Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives, and Evaluation

By: Christopher Parsons, J. Sulaeman, M. Yates and D. Hamermesh

Major League Baseball umpires express their racial/ethnic preferences when they evaluate pitchers. Strikes are called less often if the umpire and pitcher do not match race/ethnicity, but mainly where there is little scrutiny of umpires. Pitchers understand the... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Prejudice and Bias; Ethnicity; Race; Performance Productivity; Sports; Sports Industry

Teaching Interest

Harvard Business Analytics Program: Operations and Supply Chain Management

By: Dennis Campbell

Digital technologies and data analytics are radically changing the operating model of an organization and how it connects to its broader supply chain and ecosystem. This course emphasizes managing product availability, especially in a context of rapid product... View Details

24 Jul 2012
First Look

First Look: July 24

an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers Authors:Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz, and Leora Klapper Abstract This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2014
Background Note

Setting Price Effectively

By: Nava Ashraf and Kristin Johnson

Price is one of the most powerful instruments a manager can use to influence the take-up of her product, especially in a subsidized and noncompetitive market as is common for global health products. However, the question of whether and how to price has been the subject... View Details

August 2020
Article

Workplace Knowledge Flows

By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton

We conducted a field experiment in a sales firm to test whether improving knowledge flows between coworkers affects productivity. Our design allows us to compare different management practices and to isolate whether frictions to knowledge transmission primarily reside... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Interpersonal Communication; Employees; Performance Productivity; Sales; Motivation and Incentives

Read Now

January 1991 (Revised March 1991)
Case

Prepare/21 at Beth Israel Hospital (A)

In response to escalating cost pressures throughout the hospital industry, the management of Beth Israel Hospital (BI) decided to implement a productivity plan to cut their operating costs. They chose the Scanlon Plan, an employee participation and incentive program... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Cost Management; Employees; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

22 Sep 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Task and Temporal Microstructure of Productivity: Evidence from Japanese Financial Services

Keywords: by Bradley R. Staats & Francesca Gino; Banking

Research Summary

By: Srikant M. Datar

Datar's research interests are in the cost management and management control areas. He has published his research on activity-based management, quality, productivity, time-based competition, new product development, bottleneck management, incentives and ... View Details

March 17, 2017
Article

How Economics Can Shape Precision Medicines

By: Ariel Dora Stern, Brian M. Alexander and Amitabh Chandra

Many public and private efforts in coming years will focus on research in precision medicine, developing biomarkers to indicate which patients are likely to benefit from a certain treatment so that others can be spared the cost—financial and physical—of being treated... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Research; Economics; Motivation and Incentives

Register to Read

19 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

Why Are Web Sites So Confusing?

was offering a perfect information service (i.e. one that enabled consumers to find what they want most quickly and efficiently), it would be losing valuable potential revenues. Hence the incentive to attract users with View Details

Keywords: by Andrei Hagiu & Bruno Jullien

June 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Chipmaking in the Desert: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's Global Expansion

By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit

On December 6, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) Executive Chairman Mark Liu outlined the company’s ambitious plans to invest $40 billion to build semiconductor manufacturing plants in Phoenix. The event also celebrated the... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitical Units; Government and Politics; Government Legislation; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan; United States

November 2015
Article

Cannibalization and Option Value Effects of Secondary Markets: Evidence from the U.S. Concert Industry

By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Robert Seamans and Feng Zhu

We examine how reducing search frictions in secondary markets affects the value appropriated by firms in primary markets. We characterize two effects on primary market firms caused by intermediaries entering secondary markets: the "cannibalization" and "option value"... View Details

Keywords: Cannibalization Effect; Option Value Effect; Secondary Markets; Concert Industry; Craigslist; Competition; Distribution Channels; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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