Publications

March 2012
Article

Anxiety, Advice, and the Ability to Discern: Feeling Anxious Motivates Individuals to Seek and Use Advice

By: F. Gino, A.W. Brooks and M.E. Schweitzer

Across eight experiments, we describe the influence of anxiety on advice seeking and advice taking. We find that anxious individuals are more likely to seek and rely on advice than are those in a neutral emotional state (Experiment 1), but this pattern of results does... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives

Article

Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers

By: Benjamin Edelman

I analyze all questions and answers from the inception of the Google Answers service through November 2003, and I find notable trends in answerer behavior: more experienced answerers provide answers with the characteristics askers most value, receiving higher ratings... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Opportunities; Behavior; Value; Jobs and Positions; Wages; Business Earnings

May 2017
Supplement

Betfair (B), (C), and (D) Case Slides

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and John Heilbron

Contains slides related to the Betfair B, C, and D cases.
Abstracts:
B) Buoyed by success in the market for gambling contracts, Betfair attempts to enter the market for financial products using its exchange model.
C) Prompted by a takeover bid from... View Details

Keywords: Betfair; Exchange; Betting; Leisure Industry; Betting Markets; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Diversification; Business Model; Laws and Statutes; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Europe

Article

Hype and Suspicion: The Effects of Pretrial Publicity, Race, and Suspicion on Jurors' Verdicts.

By: Steven Fein, Seth J. Morgan, Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers

Keywords: Courts and Trials; Judgments; Diversity

April 2003 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance

By: Nancy F. Koehn, Erica Helms and Philip Mead

Provides an opportunity to examine leadership and entrepreneurship in the context of Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition, a compelling story of crisis, survival, and triumph. Summarizes Shackleton's career as an officer in the British Merchant Marine, his... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; History; Leadership; Crisis Management; Management Practices and Processes; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Antarctica

Educators

24 Oct 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Individual Experience of Positive and Negative Growth Is Asymmetric: Global Evidence from Subjective Well-being Data

Keywords: by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, George W. Ward, Femke De Keulenaer, Bert Van Landeghem, Georgios Kavetsos & Michael I. Norton

2011
Working Paper

'Last-place Aversion': Evidence and Redistributive Implications

By: Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan W. Buell, Taly Reich and Michael I. Norton

Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Surveys; Wealth and Poverty; Behavior; Income; Research; Rank and Position; Attitudes; Personal Characteristics; Economics

June 2010 (Revised April 2014)
Course Overview Note

Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Engagement

By: Christopher Marquis, Bobbi Thomason and Jennifer Tydlaska

Analyzes the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and employee engagement, including CSR effects on employee commitment and motivation, new skills and training, and motivation. Also discusses best practices in employee engagement through CSR. View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Training; Employees; Retention; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Culture; Practice; Motivation and Incentives

February 2006
Article

Mixed Motives and Racial Bias: The Impact of Legitimate and Illegitimate Criteria on Decision-making.

By: Michael I. Norton, Samuel R. Sommers, Joseph A. Vandello and John M. Darley

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making

2017
Article

A Brief Money Management Scale and Its Associations with Personality, Financial Health, and Hypothetical Debt Repayment

By: Masha Ksendzova, Grant Edward Donnelly and Ryan Howell

Money management is essential for financial health, and more research is needed to better assess people’s money management practices. Therefore, we factor-analyzed 205 scaled questions from previous money management measures to select the best items and examined their... View Details

Keywords: Budgeting; Debt; Money Management; Financial Health; Scale Development; Budgets and Budgeting; Personal Finance; Behavior; Decision Making

19 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Connecting School Ties and Stock Recommendations

advantages through their social networks," Cohen and colleagues write. "In addition, laws designed to block these types of information pathways can be effective in curbing selective disclosure. The... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

December 2000 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Reverend Jeffrey Brown: Cops, Kids and Ministers

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Alexis Lefort

Introduces Reverend Jeffrey Brown, one of the cofounders of the Ten Point Coalition in Boston, Mass. The Ten Point Coalition, a group of ministers that worked to change the dynamics between the Boston Police Department and the kids on the street, was instrumental in... View Details

Keywords: Change; Civil Society or Community; Alliances; Interpersonal Communication; Power and Influence; Law Enforcement; City; Boston

Educators

07 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Negotiation and All That Jazz

directly to negotiations," says Wheeler, whose own background is in law and policy analysis. "I'm not speaking metaphorically. By emulating what jazz masters do, we all can become better negotiators."... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

December 2009 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Sony and the JK Wedding Dance

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Executives at Sony Music Entertainment faced a dilemma: a user-generated video featuring controversial artist Chris Brown's music was netting millions of views per week on YouTube. Sony held the copyright to the song, and was entitled to issue a takedown notice to the... View Details

Keywords: Music Entertainment; Copyright; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Network Effects; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet; Music Industry

Educators

2021
Working Paper

Measuring Employment Impact: Applications and Cases

By: Katie Panella and George Serafeim

Applying the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative’s employment impact methodology on eight leading companies, we document wide variability in employment impacts as a percentage of salaries paid, ranging between 59 and 80 percent. We identify opportunities for... View Details

Keywords: Impact Measurement; Employee Compensation; Accounting; Employees; Labor; Well-being; Diversity; Wages; Compensation and Benefits

SSRN

2006
Comment

The Rise and Fall of the Widely Held Firm: A History of Corporate Ownership in Canada

By: Jordan I. Siegel

This chapter features an admirable effort by by Morck, Percy, Tian, and Yeung to apply recent developments in law and finance theory to a longitudinal country-level case study. The authors closely examine nearly 500 years of Canadian corporate governance and analyze... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance Theory; Corporate Governance; Canada

June 1993
Case

General Dynamics and Computer Sciences Corporation: Outsourcing the IS Function (A) and (B) (Abridged)

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Katherine N. Seger

Describes the largest information systems outsourcing agreement in the industry from the perspectives of both companies involved in the deal. View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Transition; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Contracts; Agreements and Arrangements; Business Strategy; Information Technology

2014
Article

Prosocial Spending and Happiness: Using Money to Benefit Others Pays Off

By: Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin and Michael I. Norton

While a great deal of research has shown that people with more money are somewhat happier than people with less money, our research demonstrates that how people spend their money also matters for their happiness. In particular, both correlational and... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Spending; Well-being; Happiness; Money; Spending; Welfare; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

October 2009
Simulation

Strategy Simulation: Competitive Dynamics and Wintel

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

In this online simulation students study the dynamics of cooperation and competition between two markedly different businesses that both rely on the flow of PC sales. Playing the role of Microsoft or Intel, students determine product release schedules and pricing, as... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Cooperation; Motivation and Incentives; Negotiation; Software; Computer Industry