Publications

Article

Returnable Reciprocity: Returnable Gifts Are More Effective than Unreturnable Gifts at Promoting Virtuous Behaviors

By: J.J. Zlatev and Rogers, T.

Increasing virtuous behaviors, such as initiating healthy habits, is an important goal for policymakers and social scientists. To promote compliance with requests to perform virtuous behaviors, we study “returnable reciprocity.” Whereas traditional reciprocity involves... View Details

Keywords: Nudges; Reciprocity; Want-should Conflicts; Wellness; Health; Behavior; Change; Well-being

Find at Harvard

September 2003
Case

Nelson Mandela, Turnaround Leader

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Euvin Naidoo

Nelson Mandela was the first democratically elected president of South Africa. He had to shift the culture of a country after the end of the apartheid regime, which enforced separation of the races and stifled freedom of the press. He established more open dialogue,... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Government and Politics; Governance; Policy; Political Elections; Culture; Communication Intention and Meaning; Relationships; Leadership Style; Welfare; South Africa

12 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

The Value of a ‘Portable’ Career

do many organizations. But with professional football, for example, we have a much tidier time measuring performance since it can so easily be quantified with widely available, specially detailed, and highly... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Sports

19 Oct 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Impact of Supply Learning on Customer Demand: Model and Estimation Methodology

Keywords: by Nathan Craig, Nicole DeHoratius & Ananth Raman; Apparel & Accessories; Fashion

April 2008 (Revised October 2008)
Case

TD Canada Trust (A): The Green and the Red

By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan

The case series illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Commercial Banking; Profit; Balanced Scorecard; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Banking Industry; Canada

In this study we examine whether, for a sample of retail chains, high levels of employee compensation can deter employee theft, an increasingly common type of fraudulent behavior. Specifically, we examine the extent to which relative wages (i.e., employee wages... View Details

Debora L. Spar

Debora Spar is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean for Business and Global Society. Her current research focuses on issues of gender and technology, and the interplay between... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; broadcasting; communications; entertainment; federal government; health care; information; internet; music; pharmaceuticals

June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Mobility; Strategy; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; XPRIZE; Space Industry; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

2020
Working Paper

Are ISS Recommendations Informative? Evidence from Assessments of Compensation Practices

By: Ana Albuquerque, Mary Ellen Carter and Susanna Gallani

Using detailed information from the largest proxy advisor in the U.S., Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we examine whether proxy advisors’ assessments of firms’ compensation practices are able to identify poor compensation practices as measured by subsequent... View Details

Keywords: Proxy Advisors; CEO Compensation; Say-on-Pay; Institutional Shareholder Voting; Executive Compensation; Performance

SSRN

Read Now

2017
Working Paper

Why and How Investors Use ESG Information: Evidence from a Global Survey

By: Georgios Serafeim

Using survey data from a sample of senior investment professionals from mainstream (i.e., not SRI funds) investment organizations, we provide insights into why and how investors use reported environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. The primary reason... View Details

Keywords: Investment Management; Sustainability; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment Fund; Investment Strategy; Corporate Accountability; Activist Shareholder; Engagement; Environment; Climate Change; Customers; Customer Satisfaction; Employee Engagement; Global Warming; Investment; Decision Making; Environmental Sustainability; Performance Expectations

SSRN

April 2014 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Texas Children's Hospital: Congenital Heart Disease Care

By: Michael E. Porter, Justin M. Bachmann and Zachary C. Landman

In 2014, Dr. Charles D. Fraser Jr., Surgeon-in-Chief of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, was contemplating the future direction of the congenital heart disease program. The nation's largest pediatric hospital, Texas Children's was ranked by U.S. News & World... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Congenital Heart Disease; Integrated Practice Units; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Improvement; Health Industry; United States; Texas

March 2013
Teaching Note

Automating the Paris Subway (TN) (A) & (B)

By: Michel Anteby and Ayn Cavicchi

In 2001, the head of the Paris Subway reflected on how to transform Line 1 into a driverless line without triggering a social conflict. After the shock of the 2000 Notre Dame de Lorette subway accident, in which a train derailed and caused 25 injuries in a Paris subway... View Details

Keywords: Labor Relations; Unions; Organizational Behavior; Change; Information Technology; Rail Transportation; Labor Unions; Infrastructure; Change Management; Employment; Organizations; Labor and Management Relations; Transportation Industry; Rail Industry; Paris

August 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Driving Sustainability at Bloomberg L.P.

By: Christopher Marquis, Daniel Beunza, Fabrizio Ferraro and Bobbi Thomason

Describes the addition of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance indicators to the Bloomberg terminal. The initiative grew out of Bloomberg's broader sustainability initiatives and is an example of how committed employees can create positive social... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Knowledge Dissemination; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Culture; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Environmental Sustainability; Publishing Industry; New York (city, NY)

October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Investing at Pivotal Ventures

By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Emily R. McComb and Eren Kuzucu

Launched in 2015 by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company. The company aims to support and promote transformational ideas, people and organizations, and advance social progress for women... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Management; Mission and Purpose; Venture Capital

Every major company is grappling with the meaning and application of sustainability in relation to its geographic location, industry and business model. Similarly, more and more institutional investors are incorporating sustainability into their... View Details

January 2009
Article

Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services

By: Robert S. Huckman, Bradley R. Staats and David M. Upton

Much of the literature on team learning views experience as a unidimensional concept captured by the cumulative production volume of, or the number of projects completed by, a team. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Learning; Performance Improvement; Projects; Groups and Teams; Familiarity; Information Technology Industry; India

Find at Harvard

01 Jun 2015
Research & Ideas

The Surprising Benefits of Oversharing

On Facebook and a myriad of other social media platforms, you can find out who your friends are dating, see pictures of their last vacation, and even know what they had for lunch yesterday. It is now becoming more unusual when someone... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2023
Other Article

The Harvard USPTO Patent Dataset: A Large-Scale, Well-Structured, and Multi-Purpose Corpus of Patent Applications

By: Mirac Suzgun, Luke Melas-Kyriazi, Suproteem K. Sarkar, Scott Duke Kominers and Stuart Shieber

Innovation is a major driver of economic and social development, and information about many kinds of innovation is embedded in semi-structured data from patents and patent applications. Though the impact and novelty of innovations expressed in patent data are difficult... View Details

Keywords: USPTO; Natural Language Processing; Classification; Summarization; Patent Novelty; Patent Trolls; Patent Enforceability; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science