Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,626)
- Faculty Publications (233)
- April 2013
- Article
Making a Difference Matters: Impact Unlocks the Emotional Benefits of Prosocial Spending
By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Ashley V. Whillans, Adam M. Grant and Michael I. Norton
When does giving lead to happiness? Here, we present two studies demonstrating that the
emotional benefits of spending money on others (prosocial spending) are unleashed when
givers are aware of their positive impact. In Study 1, an experiment using real... View Details
- March 2013
- Article
Advertising's New Medium: Human Experience
Standard ad messaging and conventional creative executions and placements are rapidly becoming outmoded. To win consumers' attention and trust, marketers must think less about what advertising says to its targets and more about what it does for them. Rather than... View Details
- March 2013
- Other Article
Redesigning Primary Care: A Strategic Vision to Improve Value by Organizing Around Patients' Needs
By: Michael E. Porter, Erika A. Pabo and Thomas H. Lee
Primary care in the United States currently struggles to attract new physicians and to garner investments in infrastructure required to meet patients' needs. We believe that the absence of a robust overall strategy for the entire spectrum of primary care is a... View Details
Keywords: Health
- 2013
- Article
Prosocial Spending and Well-Being: Cross-Cultural Evidence for a Psychological Universal
By: Lara B. Aknin, Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh, Elizabeth W. Dunn, John F. Helliwell, Justine Burns, Robert Biswas-Diener, Imelda Kemeza, Paul Nyende, Claire Ashton-James and Michael I. Norton
This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: Human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). In Study 1, survey data from 136 countries were examined... View Details
- January 2013
- Article
'I'll Have One of Each': How Separating Rewards into (Meaningless) Categories Increases Motivation
By: F. Gino and S. Wiltermuth
We propose that separating rewards into categories can increase motivation, even when those categories are meaningless. Across six experiments, people were more motivated to obtain one reward from one category and another reward from another category than they were to... View Details
Keywords: Motivation and Incentives
- November 2012
- Article
An Age Penalty in Racial Preferences
By: Deborah A. Small, Devin G. Pope and Michael I. Norton
We document an age penalty in racial discrimination: charitable behavior toward African American children decreases-and negative stereotypical inferences increase-with the age of those children. Using data from an online charity that solicits donations for school... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Rodan + Fields Dermatologists
By: Das Narayandas, Michael Roberts and Liz Kind
The case focuses on issues involved in managing the direct multilevel marketing sales consultants who sell R+F skin care products. The company is trying to better manage the inconsistent and highly variable recruitment behavior of the sales force i.e., the degree to... View Details
- 2012
- White Paper
Robust Enforcement Should Complement Voluntary Regulation
By: Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Spurred by the anti-regulation movement that started in the 1970s, voluntary self-regulation programs have emerged in many regulatory agencies, seeking to increase cooperation between government and industry to achieve greater and more cost-effective compliance.... View Details
- April 2012 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
Dovernet
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
This case illustrates the implications of using stringent performance measurement systems to create performance pressure, motivate employee achievement, and sharpen a firm's competitiveness. It opens by describing the downsides of the ruthlessly competitive culture at... View Details
- 1 Mar 2012
- Talk
German Health Care: Moving to a Value-Based System
Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School assesses the German health care system and offers suggestions for reforming to a value-based system, where rewards flow to those practices performing best. Introduced by Karl Lauterbach, professor of health economics and... View Details
- March 2012
- Article
The Incentive Bubble
By: Mihir Desai
The past three decades have seen American capitalism quietly transformed by a single, powerful idea—that financial markets are a suitable tool for measuring performance and structuring compensation. Stock instruments for managers, high-powered incentive contracts for... View Details
- February 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
What's the Deal with LivingSocial?
By: Michael I. Norton, Luc Wathieu, Betsy Page Sigman and Marco Bertini
Tim O'Shaughnessy, the 29-year-old CEO of LivingSocial, is growing a revolutionary worldwide business of "daily deals"—in which retailers offer a heavily-discounted product or service available for purchase for brief (often 24-hour) windows. The case explores the... View Details
- 2012
- Article
Do Voters Demand Responsive Governments? Evidence from Indian Disaster Relief
By: Shawn Cole, Andrew Healy and Eric Werker
Using rainfall, public relief, and election data from India, we examine how governments respond to adverse shocks and how voters react to these responses. The data show that voters punish the incumbent party for weather events beyond its control. However, fewer voters... View Details
- 2012
- Other Book
Redefining German Health Care: Moving to a Value-Based System
By: Michael E. Porter and Clemens Guth
The German health care system is on a collision course with budget realities. Costs are high and rising, and quality problems are becoming ever more apparent. Decades of reforms have produced little change to these troubling trends. Why has Germany failed to solve... View Details
Keywords: Health
- October 2011
- Case
Raleigh & Rosse: Measures to Motivate Exceptional Service
By: Robert Simons and Michael Mahoney
In January 2010, U.S. luxury goods retailer Raleigh & Rosse is being sued by its employees for encouraging "off the clock" hours. At the center of the class action lawsuit is the famous Raleigh & Rosse performance measurement system previously thought to be the core of... View Details
Keywords: Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Goal Setting; Compensation; Incentives; Motivation; Sales Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Growth Management; Lawsuits and Litigation; Organizational Culture; Management Systems; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Retail Industry; United States
- September 2011 (Revised December 2014)
- Background Note
Learning to Negotiate
By: Michael Wheeler
This brief note introduces to the student the challenges and rewards of learning to be a more skilled negotiator. Negotiation requires the integration of keen analytic insight with emotional intelligence capabilities. View Details
- 2011
- Book
Getting to Giving: Fundraising the Entrepreneurial Way
By: Howard H. Stevenson and Shirley M. Spence
Getting to Giving is based on Stevenson's many years as a donor, fundraiser and entrepreneur. The book offers practical techniques and real life stories, and brings passion and humor to the art and science of asking for money. Topics included in the book... View Details
- June 2011
- Article
The Paradox of Excellence
By: Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong
Why is it that so many smart, ambitious professionals are less productive and satisfied than they could be? We argue that it's often because they're afraid to demonstrate any sign of weakness. They're reluctant to ask important questions or try new... View Details
- January 2011
- Article
Let the Right One In: A Microeconomic Approach to Partner Choice in Mutualisms
By: Marco Archetti, Francisco Ubeda, Drew Fudenberg, Jerry R. Green, Naomi E. Pierce and Douglas W. Yu
One of the main problems impeding the evolution of cooperation is partner choice. When information is asymmetric (the quality of a potential partner is known only to himself), it may seem that partner choice is not possible without signaling. Many mutualisms, however,... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
What Drives Sell-Side Analyst Compensation at High-Status Investment Banks?
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and David A. Maber
We use proprietary data from a major investment bank to investigate factors associated with analysts' annual compensation. We find compensation to be positively related to "All-Star" recognition, investment-banking contributions, the size of analysts' portfolios, and... View Details