Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,199)
- Faculty Publications (227)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Targeting for Long-Term Outcomes
By: Jeremy Yang, Dean Eckles, Paramveer Dhillon and Sinan Aral
Decision makers often want to target interventions so as to maximize an outcome that is observed only in the long term. This typically requires delaying decisions until the outcome is observed or relying on simple short-term proxies for the long-term outcome. Here we... View Details
- September–October 2020
- Article
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... 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
- Article
Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives
By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler
Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are... 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
Tell It Like It Is: When Politically Incorrect Language Promotes Authenticity
By: J. Schroeder, M. Rosenblum and F. Gino
When a person’s language appears political—such as being politically correct or incorrect—it can influence fundamental impressions of him or her. Political correctness is “using language or behavior to seem sensitive to others’ feelings, especially those others who... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
In Generous Offers I Trust: The Effect of First-offer Value on Economically Vulnerable Behaviors
By: M. Jeong, J. Minson and F. Gino
Negotiation scholarship espouses the importance of opening a bargaining situation with an aggressive offer, given the power of first offers to shape concessionary behavior and outcomes. In our research, we identify a surprising consequence to this common prescription.... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Iterative Coordination and Innovation
By: Sourobh Ghosh and Andy Wu
Agile management practices from the software industry continue to transform the way organizations innovate across industries, yet they remain understudied in the organizations literature. We investigate the widespread Agile practice of iterative coordination: frequent... View Details
- May 2020
- Article
To Be or Not to Be Your Authentic Self? Catering to Others' Expectations and Interests Hinders Performance
By: Francesca Gino, Ovul Sezer and Laura Huang
When approaching interpersonal first meetings (e.g., job interviews), people often cater to the target’s interests and expectations to make a good impression and secure a positive outcome such as being offered the job (pilot study). This strategy is distinct from other... View Details
- April 2020
- Article
Field Comparisons of Incentive-Compatible Preference Elicitation Techniques
By: Shawn A. Cole, A. Nilesh Fernando, Daniel Stein and Jeremy Tobacman
Knowledge of consumer demand is important for firms, policy makers, and economists. One common tool for incentive-compatible demand elicitation, the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism, has been widely used in laboratory settings but rarely evaluated for... View Details
- Article
Designing Social Networks: Joint Tasks and the Formation and Endurance of Network Ties
By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
Can managers influence the formation of organizational networks? In this article, we evaluate the effect of joint tasks on the creation of network ties with data from a novel field experiment with 112 aspiring entrepreneurs. During the study, we randomized individuals... 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
- February 2020
- Article
Why Prosocial Referral Incentives Work: The Interplay of Reputational Benefits and Action Costs
By: Rachel Gershon, Cynthia Cryder and Leslie K. John
While selfish incentives typically outperform prosocial incentives, in the context of customer referral rewards, prosocial incentives can be more effective. Companies frequently offer “selfish” (i.e., sender-benefiting) referral incentives, offering customers financial... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
Communicating with Warmth in Distributive Negotiations Is Surprisingly Counterproductive
By: M. Jeong, J. Minson, M. Yeomans and F. Gino
When entering into a negotiation, individuals have the choice to enact a variety of communication styles. We test the differential impact of being “warm and friendly” versus “tough and firm” in a distributive negotiation, when first offers are held constant and... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
It Helps to Ask: The Cumulative Benefits of Asking Follow-up Questions
By: Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Julia A. Minson and Francesca Gino
In a recent article published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP; Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson, & Gino, 2017), we reported the results of 2 experiments involving “getting acquainted” conversations among strangers and an observational field... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
The Impact of Increasing Search Frictions on Online Shopping Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Donald Ngwe, Kris J. Ferreira and Thales Teixeira
Many online stores are designed such that shoppers can easily access any available discounted products. We propose that deliberately increasing search frictions by placing small obstacles to locating discounted items can improve online retailers’ margins and even... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Engineering Serendipity: When Does Knowledge Sharing Lead to Knowledge Production?
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani
We investigate how knowledge similarity between two individuals is systematically related to the likelihood that a serendipitous encounter results in knowledge production. We conduct a natural field experiment at a medical research symposium, where we exogenously... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Recognition Incentives for Internal Crowdsourcing: A Field Experiment at NASA
By: Jana Gallus, Olivia S. Jung and Karim R. Lakhani
What might motivate employees to participate in internal crowdsourcing, a peer-based approach to innovation? Should organizations use incentives that are congruent with their established hierarchical structures, or should they use incentives that are aligned with the... View Details
- November 2019
- Article
Conversations and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
When do conversations lead people to generate better ideas? We conducted a field experiment at a startup boot camp to evaluate the impact of informal conversations on the quality of product ideas generated by participants. Specifically, we examine how the personality... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
The Boss Has the Wrong Idea: Confidential Role Material for Julia Smith
By: Katherine Coffman, Kathleen McGinn, Judith A. Clair and Katherine Chen
“The Boss Has the Wrong Idea” is a two-person conversation exercise in which an MBA student seeks advice from a mentor in her field about how to handle an incident of workplace sexual harassment. The case consists of two confidential role materials: a role for the... View Details