Publications

Purchase

2017
Working Paper

Shopping for Confirmation: How Disconfirming Feedback Shapes Social Networks

By: Paul Green Jr., Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats

Many organizations employ interpersonal feedback processes as a structured means of informing and motivating employee improvement. Ample evidence suggests that these feedback processes are largely ineffective, and despite a wealth of prescriptive literature, these... View Details

Keywords: Developmental Feedback; Self-concept; Positive Illusions; Social Network; Threat; Identity; Social and Collaborative Networks; Behavior; Performance; Social Media

SSRN

2009
Working Paper

Walking the Talk in Multiparty Bargaining: An Experimental Investigation

By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Katherine L Milkman and Markus Noth

We study the framing effects of communication in multiparty bargaining. Communication has been shown to be more truthful and revealing than predicted in equilibrium. Because talk is preference-revealing, it may effectively frame bargaining around a logic of fairness or... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Competition; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Types; Fairness; Interpersonal Communication; Game Theory; Cooperation

03 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 3, 2009

Persuasion Author: Eric J. Van den Steen Abstract This paper studies a principal's trade-off between using persuasion versus using interpersonal authority to get the agent to "do the right thing" from the principal's perspective... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Forthcoming
Article

Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Elizabeth Friedman, Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar and Xupin Zhang

Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. While past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, relatively less is known about how smiling... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Image Feature Extraction; Machine Learning; Facial Expressions; Prejudice and Bias; Nonverbal Communication; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Perception

March–April 2021
Article

Network-biased Technical Change: How Information Management Tools Overcome Some Biases but Exacerbate Others.

By: Gerald C. Kane and Lynn Wu

Organizations have long sought to improve employee performance by managing knowledge more effectively. In this paper, we test whether the adoption of digital tools for expertise search and access within an organization, often referred to as a support to an... View Details

Keywords: Digital Tools; Social Media; Social Networks; Transactive Memory Systems; Augmented Intelligence; Artificial Intelligence; Social and Collaborative Networks; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Technology Adoption; Knowledge Management; Performance Improvement; Power and Influence; Organizational Change and Adaptation

2009
Chapter

Collaboration Across Knowledge Boundaries within Diverse Teams: Reciprocal Expertise Affirmation as an Enabling Condition

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Kate Roloff and Lucy H. MacPhail

We review research on expertise diversity, psychological safety, team collaboration, and role identity to propose a model in which reciprocal affirmations of expertise identity among team members—a feature of the team environment that we conceptualize as a dimension of... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Experience and Expertise; Learning; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Groups and Teams; Familiarity; Identity; Cooperation

06 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Did You Hear What I Said? How to Listen Better

heard by another person is essential in a happy relationship, whether that’s communication between romantic partners, a patient and a doctor, or colleagues in the office. And feeling heard at work could make the difference between... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

February 2003
Background Note

Leading Teams

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer

This note which describes the architecture and processes that characterize effective teams, begins by detailing the steps involved in designing a team, from diagnosing the complexity, interdependence, and objectives of the task to harnessing the key resources teams... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Decision Making; Leadership; Managerial Roles; Performance Effectiveness; Groups and Teams

Educators

Purchase

2007
Working Paper

Recognizing the New: A Multi-Agent Model of Analogy in Strategic Decision-Making

By: Giovanni Gavetti and Massimo Warglien

In novel environments, strategic decision-making is often premised on analogy, and recognition lies at its heart. Recognition refers to a class of cognitive processes through which a problem is interpreted associatively in terms of something that has been experienced... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods; Cognition and Thinking; Power and Influence

March 2014
Article

Private Interaction Between Firm Management and Sell-Side Analysts

By: Eugene F. Soltes

Although sell-side analysts often privately interact with managers of publicly traded firms, the private nature of this contact has historically obscured direction examination. By examining a set of proprietary records compiled by a large-cap NYSE traded firm, I offer... View Details

Keywords: Sell-side Analysts; Management; Interpersonal Communication

SSRN

24 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 24, 2009

managers' leadership competencies (namely, their effectiveness at person-oriented and task-oriented behaviors) and the likelihood that they will emphasize the different activities involved in planned organizational change implementation (namely, View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2021
Article

Making Doctors Effective Managers and Leaders: A Matter of Health and Well-Being

By: Lisa Rotenstein, Robert S. Huckman and Christine K. Cassel

The COVID-19 crisis has forced physicians to make daily decisions that require knowledge and skills they did not acquire as part of their biomedical training. Physicians are being called upon to be both managers—able to set processes and structures—and leaders—capable... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management; Leadership; Health Pandemics; Health Industry

07 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 7, 2008

"dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? Two experiments demonstrated conversational blindness—listeners' surprising failure to notice such dodges—and explored the interpersonal... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

27 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Horrible Boss Workarounds

what employees can do to resist them. As she states in a recent column in Harvard Business Review, "The best cure for horrible bosses is wonderful colleagues." Bad boss behavior #1: failure to communicate. At any level of management, it's important that... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

January 1992 (Revised December 1994)
Background Note

Note on E-Mail and Privacy: U.S. Law and Company Policies

By: Lynn S. Paine

Describes the legal landscape of employee privacy as it applies to e-mail interception: the various legal theories on which a privacy claim might be based and proposed federal legislation relevant to the subject. Also describes the policies companies like UPS,... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Information; Rights; Government Legislation; Internet and the Web; Interpersonal Communication; Ethics; Theory; Policy; Employees

16 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

Is Your Workplace Biased Against Introverts?

Managers almost universally say they want to see passion in their employees. Yet sometimes, they can’t spot it when it’s right in front of them. Extroverted employees are more likely to be considered passionate compared to more introverted colleagues—even if it’s not... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

2008
Book

Managing Up

By: Linda A. Hill

Managing up is not political game playing. Rather, it's a conscious approach to working with your supervisor toward goals that are important to both of you. Through managing up, you build a productive working relationship with your boss and create a way to use the... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Employees; Managerial Roles; Alliances; Value Creation

Purchase

29 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Firsthand Experience and the Subsequent Role of Reflected Knowledge in Cultivating Trust in Global Collaboration

Keywords: by Mark Mortensen & Tsedal Neeley

2012
Working Paper

What Do Managers Do? Exploring Persistent Performance Differences among Seemingly Similar Enterprises

By: Robert Gibbons and Rebecca Henderson

Social networks and social groups have both been seen as important to discouraging malfeasance and supporting the global pro-social norms that underlie social order, but have typically been treated either as pure substitutes or as having completely independent effects.... View Details

Keywords: Social Norms; Social Networks; Triadic Closure; Social Groups; Group Identity; Groups and Teams; Identity; Performance Consistency; Social and Collaborative Networks; Societal Protocols; Social Media