Publications

February 1990 (Revised March 1990)
Case

Quantum Semiconductor, Inc.

By: Janice H. Hammond and Roy D. Shapiro

Quantum is faced with a difficult ethical dilemma--industry studies provide evidence that chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing may cause women working in fabrication cleanrooms to suffer a higher likelihood of spontaneous abortions. The possibility of other... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Prejudice and Bias; Law; Equality and Inequality; Cost; Production; Ethics; Health; Gender; Semiconductor Industry

May 9, 2024
Article

Business Education Is Broken: Here Are Strategies to Fix It

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Business schools have lost their way. Students are schooled in a system that, having raised the standard of living for millions of people over centuries, is now facing systemic failures in both the environmental and social domains—failures that market forces cause and,... View Details

Keywords: Education Reform; Business And Society; Climate Change; Equality and Inequality; Environmental Sustainability; Business Education

February 2019
Article

Pettiness in Social Exchange

By: Tami Kim, Ting Zhang and Michael I. Norton

We identify and document a novel construct—pettiness, or intentional attentiveness to trivial details—and examine its (negative) implications in interpersonal relationships and social exchange. Seven studies show that pettiness manifests across different types of... View Details

Keywords: Relationships; Personal Characteristics; Perception; Societal Protocols

01 Mar 2008
News

India's Chidambaram Says Nation Is "Poor Rich"

poverty by the country’s growing economy, Palaniappan Chidambaram (MBA ’68), India’s finance minister, predicted in a speech at HBS in October. However, India remains a land of vexing contrasts and contradictions, with enormous View Details

Keywords: Administration of Economic Programs; Administration of Economic Programs

Article

The Interplay Between Sharing Behavior and Beliefs About Others in Children During Dictator Games

By: Hernando Santamaría-García, María Luz González-Gadea, Rafael Di Tella, Agustín Ibáñez and Mariano Sigman

Previous studies in adults demonstrated that beliefs and sharing decisions in social scenarios are closely related. However, to date, little is known about the development of this relationship in children. By using a modified dictator game, we assessed sharing behavior... View Details

Keywords: Dictator Game; Altruism; Generosity; Development; Conveniently Upset; Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Perception; Decision Making

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

01 Mar 2013
News

Leveraging Female Talent

The research of HBS professor Boris Groysberg centers on a question that troubles many managers: How do I hire and develop top performers who will contribute to my company's success? The author of Talk,... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises

2011
Working Paper

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people's disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with while the second is the dependence of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Mathematical Methods; Attitudes; Interests; Perception; Wealth and Poverty

29 Apr 2019
Research & Ideas

Is the Digital Age Making Us Petty?

punish the person socially, such as by assigning them boring tasks. These results held across age groups and cultures. (One study compared the perceptions of American participants with those View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

02 May 2018
Blog Post

Should Companies Disclose Employee Compensation?

Individual pay transparency would eliminate a source of distraction (Srishti Mehra) and "would do more to eliminate gender and racial pay inequity than any other action," according to Miki Saxon.... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

25 Oct 2024
Blog Post

Harvard Business School Announces Latest RISE Fellows

As part of the Harvard Business School (HBS) Advancing Racial Equity action plan, 26 students from the MBA Classes of 2025 and 2026 have been named recipients of a Recognizing... View Details

08 Jan 2007
What Do You Think?

Neuro Economics: Science or Science Fiction?

risk and return are assessed in different parts of the brain, thereby questioning theories regarding expected utility on which a great deal of decision theory has been based up to now. Thus, according to... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

September 2017 (Revised March 2019)
Supplement

Henry Kissinger: Negotiating Black Majority Rule in Rhodesia (B)

By: James K. Sebenius and Laurence A. Green

In 1976, United States Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger conducted a series of intricate, multiparty negotiations in Southern Africa to persuade white Rhodesian leader Ian Smith to accede to black majority rule. Conducted near the end of President Gerald Ford’s... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Race; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Deal; Government and Politics; Africa; United States

March 2016
Teaching Note

MasterCard: Driving Financial Inclusion

By: Sunil Gupta

Since joining MasterCard (MC) in 2010, CEO Ajay Banga had made advancing financial inclusion (FI)—bringing formal financial services to marginalized populations—an important goal for the company. In 2014, MC had entered a number of partnerships with governments and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Inclusion; Banking; Equality and Inequality; Credit Cards; Developing Countries and Economies; Banking Industry; South Africa; Nigeria

23 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Market Research Meets the “People Factor”

problems," Zaltman and Deshpandé explain elsewhere in the study. "These are not considerations that managers weigh lightly." What's Next? As a result of their study of the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

April 2021
Case

Glass-Shattering Leaders: Ros Atkins

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Ros Atkins launched the 50:50 Project on a BBC news program he anchored, deciding with his team to start tracking the gender of the contributors and experts featured on the show. Before long, it was clear that monitoring the data led to increased awareness of a gender... View Details

Keywords: Gender Equality; Allyship; Representation; Leadership; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Media; Analytics and Data Science

Educators

24 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 24, 2018

learning; when staff believe that support for learning-oriented culture, practices, and leadership is low, they may be less willing or able to share ideas. Purpose: We examined how staff perception of... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

January 31, 2022
Article

Who Pays Tolls at Work and Who Cruises on an Open Highway?

By: Siri Chilazi, D. Kolb, Kathleen L. McGinn and Jessica L. Porter

As organizations continue to navigate a changed world amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and the reverberations of the Black Lives Matter movement, many of the issues that affect underrepresented groups in organizations, including women of all different races and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Opportunities; Equality and Inequality; Social Issues