Publications

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

the rewards were great. This initial success prompted Enron to extrapolate its business model to other markets. In 1994, Enron officials started trading wholesale electricity after Congress deregulated the industry; Enron analysts... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

July 1993
Case

Air Miles Canada

By: Thomas O. Jones, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Roger H. Hallowell

Air Miles Canada both increases customer loyalty by rewarding shopping frequency at specified merchants, and enables its sponsors to develop a new, more complex understanding of their customers' (and potential customers') shopping habits, thus making future customer... View Details

Keywords: Programs; Customer Relationship Management; Information Management; Air Transportation Industry; Canada

2008
Working Paper

Structural Closure and Exposure: Formation of Structural Inequality in Managerial Labor Markets

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Positional advantages arise when actors obtain rewards attached to positions they occupy, but these rewards are not merited by their performance. Existing theory suggests that in competitive markets there should be no positional advantages. This paper proposes a model... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Jobs and Positions; Managerial Roles; Performance Improvement; Alignment; Competitive Advantage; Equality and Inequality

15 Dec 2014
News

The Benefits of Cost Transparency

11 Nov 2014
News

Young, Qualified, And Constantly Job Hunting

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Bank of America (A)

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes how Bank of America is creating a system for product and service innovation in its retail banking business. Emphasis is placed on the role of experimentation in some two-dozen real-life "laboratories" that serve as fully operating banking branches and as... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Problems and Challenges; Innovation and Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Change; Failure; Banks and Banking; Learning; Banking Industry

03 Dec 2010
News

When honesty isn't always the best policy

October 2010 (Revised June 2014)
Case

Volkswagen do Brasil: Driving Strategy with the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho

A new management team at VW do Brazil develops and deploys a strategy map and Balanced Scorecard to accomplish a turnaround and cultural change after eight consecutive years of financial losses and market share declines. The team uses the strategy map to align... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Developing Countries and Economies; Management Teams; Leadership; Balanced Scorecard; Strategic Planning; Balance and Stability; Motivation and Incentives; Communication Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Auto Industry; Brazil; Germany

29 Jan 2025
Blog Post

Finding Professional Purpose: Building an Impactful Career that Reflects your Values with Lisa Tanzer (MBA 1993)

leverage my experiences to help others achieve their goals, which feels like the perfect culmination of my career journey. I had some terrific mentors and advocates throughout my career, and it’s been incredibly rewarding to pay that... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Testing Coleman's Social-Norm Enforcement Mechanism: Evidence from Wikipedia

By: Mikolaj J. Piskorski and Andreea Gorbatai

Since Durkheim, sociologists have believed that dense network structures lead to fewer norm violations. Coleman (1990) proposed one mechanism generating this relationship and argued that dense networks provide an opportunity structure to reward those who punish norm... View Details

Keywords: Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Publishing; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Issues; Societal Protocols

SSRN

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2014
Chapter

Appetite, Consumption, and Choice in the Human Brain

By: Brian Knutson and Uma R. Karmarkar

Although linked, researchers have long distinguished appetitive from consummatory phases of reward processing. Recent improvements in the spatial and temporal resolution of neuroimaging techniques have allowed researchers to separately visualize different stages of... View Details

Find at Harvard

11 Feb 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Gender Stereotypes in Deliberation and Team Decisions

Keywords: by Katherine B. Coffman, Clio Bryant Flikkema, and Olga Shurchkov

September 2003
Case

Upromise 2002

By: William A. Sahlman

Describes a set of decisions confronting the senior management of a company that has established a loyalty rewards program allocating cash to tax-advantaged college savings accounts for participants. The company has recruited a new CEO and needs to raise additional... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Management Teams; Capital; Internet and the Web; Decisions