Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,155)
- Faculty Publications (133)
- July 2008 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
Corruption in Germany
By: Rawi E. Abdelal, Rafael Di Tella and Jonathan Schlefer
Why do managers become corrupt? Does corruption ever pay? When do friendly relations cross into bribery? How can CEOs manage and prevent outbreaks of corruption? These and other questions are raised by three short case studies of corruption in Germany: at the global... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization
By: Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart and Michael L. Tushman
This is a descriptive study of the structure of communications in a modern organization. We analyze a dataset with millions of electronic mail messages, calendar meetings and teleconferences for many thousands of employees of a single, multidivisional firm during a... View Details
- July 2008
- Article
Crime and Punishment in the 'American Dream'
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We observe that countries where belief in the "American dream" (i.e., effort pays) prevails also set harsher punishment for criminals. We know that beliefs are also correlated with several features of the economic system (taxation, social insurance, etc). Our objective... View Details
- April 2008
- Journal Article
Inventory Record Inaccuracy: An Empirical Analysis
By: Nicole DeHoratius and Ananth Raman
This study explores the systematic variation in inventory record inaccuracy (IRI) observed both within and across stores. Traditional inventory models, with a few exceptions, do not account for the existence of IRI and those that do treat record inaccuracy as random.... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised July 2011)
- Background Note
Strategic Decline
By: David J. Collis and Jan W. Rivkin
This note first documents the facts around the sustainability of competitive advantage. It then observes that the demise of a previously successful strategy, in the first instance, often comes from some change in the external environment. It, therefore, characterizes... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis
By: Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak and Carliss Y. Baldwin
A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are... View Details
- Article
The Sciences of Design: Observations on an Emerging Field
By: S. Purao, C. Y. Baldwin, A. Hevner, V. Storey, J. Pries-Heje and B. Smith
he boundaries and contours of design sciences continue to undergo definition and refinement. In many ways, the sciences of design defy disciplinary characterization. They demand multiple epistemologies, theoretical orientations (e.g. construction, analysis or... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Effects of a Centralized Clearinghouse on Job Placement, Wages, and Hiring Practices
By: Muriel Niederle and Alvin E. Roth
New gastroenterologists participated in a labor market clearinghouse (a "match") from 1986 through the late 1990's, after which the match was abandoned. This provides an opportunity to study the effects of a match, by observing the differences in the outcomes and... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
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
- 2007
- Working Paper
A Taste For Obscurity: An Individual-Level Examination of 'Long Tail' Consumption
By: Anita Elberse
Because online retailers are often able to provide products in a more cost-efficient manner than bricks-and-mortar stores, online channels are characterized by a vast assortment of products. Proponents of the "long tail" principle recently argued that the demand for... View Details
- May 2007
- Article
Inner Work Life: Understanding the Subtext of Business Performance
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer
Anyone in management knows that employees have their good days and their bad days and that, for the most part, the reasons for their ups and downs are unknown. Most managers simply shrug their shoulders at this fact of work life. But does it matter, in terms of... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Price of Capital: Evidence from Trade Data
By: Laura Alfaro and Faisal Ahmed
We use highly disaggregated data on trade in capital goods to study differences in the price of capital across countries. This strategy is motivated by the fact that most countries import the bulk of machinery equipment from a small number of industrialized countries.... View Details
- August 2006
- Article
Predicting Returns with Managerial Decision Variables: Is There a Small-Sample Bias?
By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Jeffrey Wurgler
Many studies find that aggregate managerial decision variables, such as aggregate equity issuance, predict stock or bond market returns. Recent research argues that these findings may be driven by an aggregate time-series version of Schultz's (2003, Journal of Finance... View Details
- June 2003
- Case
Peabody Elementary School (A)
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Kevin Morris
A new principal, Marty Pettigrew, has just joined this inner-city optional school--which offers special programs in international studies to attract children from all over the city. Entering mid-way through the school year, he observes a number of areas of concern,... View Details
- 2001
- Article
The Economic Contribution of Information Technology: Towards Comparative and User Studies
By: Timothy F. Bresnahan and Shane Greenstein
By what process does technical change in information technology (IT) increase economic welfare? How does this process result in increases in welfare at different rates in different countries and regions? This paper considers existing literature on measuring the... View Details
- December 1999
- Article
Changes in the Work Environment for Creativity during Downsizing
By: T. M. Amabile and Regina Conti
This study examined the work environment for creativity at a large high-technology firm before, during, and after a major downsizing. Creativity and most creativity-supporting aspects of the perceived work environment declined significantly during the downsizing but... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Culture; Situation or Environment; Creativity; Resignation and Termination; Employees; Business or Company Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Crisis Management; Groups and Teams; Communication; Announcements; Interpersonal Communication
- 1998
- Article
Looking Inside the Fishbowl of Creativity: Verbal and Behavioral Predictors of Creative Performance
By: J. Ruscio, D. M. Whitney and T. M. Amabile
This study set out to identify specific task behaviors that predict observable product creativity in three domains and to identify which of those behaviors mediate the well-established link between intrinsic motivation and creativity. One-hundred fifty-one... View Details
- Article
Renegotiation and the Form of Efficient Contracts
By: Jerry R. Green and J. J. Laffont
Two parties may agree to a mutually binding contract that will govern their behavior after an uncertain event becomes known. As there is no agent who can both observe this uncertain outcome and enforce the contract, contingent agreements are precluded. However, the... View Details
- January 1987
- Article
Posterior Implementability in a Two-person Decision Problem
By: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont
When a decision rule is implemented using a Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism in which the messages are publicly observable, the players' information is augmented by their observation of each others' strategies. In this paper we study the set of Bayesian... View Details
- Research Summary
Designing Productive Zones of Privacy
A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details