Publications

February 1979
Article

Effects of External Evaluation on Artistic Creativity

By: T. M. Amabile

Examined the conditions under which the imposition of an extrinsic constraint upon performance of an activity can lead to decrements in creativity. 95 female undergraduates worked on an art activity either with or without the expectation of external evaluation. In... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Social Psychology; Performance Evaluation; Motivation and Incentives; Situation or Environment

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January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Duolingo: On a 'Streak'

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Nicole Luo

In December 2024, Severin Hacker, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Duolingo, reflected on the remarkable evolution of the language-learning app he helped launch in 2011. As the #1 most downloaded education app in the world, Duolingo had over 100 million... View Details

Keywords: Learning; AI and Machine Learning; Growth and Development Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Diversification; Business Model; Market Entry and Exit; Technology Industry; Education Industry; United States

Educators

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18 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 18

government sought to limit executive pay and excessive risk. The debate raged over what constituted excessive risk and how best to mitigate it. This case describes the government restrictions on executive pay for TARP recipients and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

29 Feb 2016
HBS Case

Bigbelly's Big Bet on the Digital Trash Can

advertising. “Government is a giant customer. They buy a lot of stuff” Harvard Business School professor Mitchell Weiss explores this strategy pivot in a new case on Bigbelly, co-written with case researcher Christine Snively, that looks at the implications View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy

09 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Catching Up With Boards--Jay Lorsch

impact. Nonetheless, boards have been focusing strictly on monetary rewards as an incentive for CEOs to achieve desired results, tying the returns that go to stockholders to the size of the chief executive's... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

28 Aug 2014
Op-Ed

Government Can Do More to Unfreeze Small Business Credit

(Editor's note: This is the third in a series of articles based on a Harvard Business School working paper by Karen Mills that analyzes the current state of availability of bank capital for small business.) Access to credit is critical to... View Details

Keywords: by Karen Mills; Banking

January – February 2012
Article

How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication

By: Paul Leonardi, Tsedal Neeley and Elizabeth M. Gerber

Several recent studies have found that managers engage in redundant communication; that is, they send the same message to the same recipient through two or more unique media sequentially. Given how busy most managers are, and how much information their subordinates... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Media; Information; Groups and Teams; Projects; Management Style; Power and Influence; Motivation and Incentives; Technology

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15 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Rethinking E-Leadership

era are especially in need of this kind of updating. 1. Forgo stewardship for entrepreneurship. A steward, writes Robert Hargrove, co-CEO of Masterful Coaching, based in Brookline, Mass., in E-Leader, is someone who conserves the existing... View Details

Keywords: by Melissa Raffoni

19 Jan 2016
First Look

January 19, 2016

which casts the profit-seeking incentives of firms as the main driver of technical change. In a series of influential writings, von Hippel and colleagues found empirical evidence that flatly contradicted the producer-centered model of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

I’ll Have the Ice Cream Soon and the Vegetables Later: Decreasing Impatience over Time in Online Grocery Orders

Keywords: by Todd Rogers, Katherine L. Milkman & Max H. Bazerman; Food & Beverage

2009
Article

Silenced by Fear: The Nature, Sources, and Consequences of Fear at Work

By: Jennifer Kish Gephart, James R. Detert, Linda K. Trevino and Amy C. Edmondson

In every organization, individual members have the potential to speak up about important issues, but a growing body of research suggests that they often remain silent instead, out of fear of negative personal and professional consequences. In this chapter, we draw on... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Working Conditions; Research; Emotions; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Theory; Behavior

25 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Steer Clear of the Blind Spots That Derail Experiments

more questions about the outcome. Alibaba, for example, set out a few years ago to test whether coupons nudged shoppers to buy items they had left in their digital carts. Executives found that these View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

26 May 2015
First Look

First Look: May 26

difference in the standalone utilities is sufficiently large, yields greater profits for both platforms. We further show that social welfare is greater under one-way compatibility than under incompatibility, and there exist no View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Beyond Emotional Similarity: The Role of Situation-specific Motives

By: Amit Goldenberg, David Garcia, Eran Halperin, Jamil Zaki, Danyang Kong, Golijeh Golarai and James J. Gross

It is well established that people often express emotions that are similar to those of other group members. However, people do not always express emotions that are similar to other group members, and the factors that determine when similarity occurs are not yet clear.... View Details

Keywords: Emotion Contagion; Emotional Influence; Motivation; Group Dynamics; Emotions; Situation or Environment; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior

2018
Working Paper

Backhanded Compliments: How Negative Comparisons Undermine Flattery

By: Ovul Sezer, Alison Wood Brooks and Michael I. Norton

Seven studies (N = 2352) examine backhanded compliments—seeming praise that draws a comparison with a negative standard—a distinct self-presentation strategy with two simultaneous goals: eliciting liking (“Your speech was good…”) and conveying status (“…for a woman”).... View Details

Keywords: Backhanded Compliments; Self-presentation; Impression Management; Interpersonal Perception; Liking; Status; Image Concern; Interpersonal Communication; Status and Position; Perception; Motivation and Incentives

November 2006
Article

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Change; Business Ventures; Compensation and Benefits; Rank and Position; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Jobs and Positions; United States