Publications

19 Apr 2016
Blog Post

First Minutes are Critical in New-Employee Orientation

M. Cable, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats. The first few minutes of new employee orientation, if done right, can lead to happier and more productive workers and, ultimately, increased customer... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

April 2021 (Revised June 2021)
Case

IBM: Design Thinking

By: Srikant M. Datar, Amram Migdal and Paul Hamilton

This case describes the 2012-2020 effort at IBM to implement design thinking throughout the company and hire thousands of designers to serve on every product team alongside technical engineers and developers and product managers. IBM’s design transformation is told... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Divisions; Business Units; Business Organization; Change; Change Management; Transformation; Competency and Skills; Talent and Talent Management; Design; Human Resources; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Jobs and Positions; Job Design and Levels; Leading Change; Management; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Management Practices and Processes; Operations; Product; Product Design; Product Development; Organizations; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Strategy; Adaptation; Adoption; Technological Innovation; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

24 Feb 2014
News

Stop Chasing Star Employees. Cultivate Your Own

May 2005 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Founder-CEO Succession at Wily Technology

By: Noam T. Wasserman and Henry McCance

Before he accepts the new CEO position, Dick Williams wants founder Lew Cirne to step down as chairman. While considering Williams' incredible demand, Cirne reflects on everything he has already given up to get Wily Technology to this point. He agreed to step down as... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Succession

March 2018
Case

GiveDirectly

By: John Beshears, Joshua Schwartzstein, Tiffany Y. Chang and Brian J. Hall

How should nonprofits design compensation systems to attract and retain talent? GiveDirectly is a respected charitable organization with an unconventional approach. Instead of spending on traditional aid programs in areas such as health care and food access in... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofits; Charity; Effective Altruism; International Aid; Compensation; Goals; Bonuses; Incentives; GiveDirectly; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Recruitment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

16 Mar 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Driven by Social Comparisons: How Feedback about Coworkers’ Effort Influences Individual Productivity

Keywords: by Francesca Gino & Bradley R. Staats; Banking

H-E-B: Creating a Movement to Reduce Obesity in Texas

In January 2012, H-E-B Grocery Co., a private retail chain with stores located in Texas and Mexico, was introducing its Healthy at H-E-B program to its customers. The program, which started with the company's employees a few years earlier, was an effort to... View Details

14 Nov 2019
News

How migration makes the world brainier

December 2000
Case

Stock Options at Virtua.Net

By: Brian J. Hall, Noam T. Wasserman and Carleen Madigan

Describes issues facing three young founders of a high-tech start-up in Silicon Valley, including hiring an experienced CEO and negotiating with a potential VC investor. Focuses on the incentive and compensation aspects of negotiating with job candidates (e.g., what... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Stock Options; Executive Compensation; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Negotiation

September 2008 (Revised December 2011)
Case

Frank Addante, Serial Entrepreneur

By: Noam T. Wasserman and Antony Uy

Frank Addante is a 28-year-old serial entrepreneur who is in the process of building his fifth venture. Of his first four ventures, two were sold, one went public, and in the last he decided to close the venture and return unused capital to his investors. With the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Equity; Selection and Staffing; Groups and Teams

2020
Working Paper

Should Firms Move Talent from the Geographic Periphery to Hubs? A Strategic Human Capital Perspective

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Victoria Sevcenko and Tarun Khanna

A longstanding literature holds that firms should hire and move talent from the geographic periphery to hubs as a means to create value from human capital. They do so, however, at the risk of losing the worker to rivals located in the same geographic hub,... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Selection and Staffing; Employment; Residency; Technology Industry; India

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2023
Working Paper

The Market for CEOs: Evidence from Private Equity

By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov

Most research on the CEO labor market studies public company CEOs while largely ignoring CEOs in private equity (PE) funded companies. We fill this gap by studying the market for CEOs among U.S. companies purchased by PE firms in large leveraged buyout transactions.... View Details

Keywords: CEOs; Jobs and Positions; Ownership; Recruitment

2007
Working Paper

The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks

By: Christopher Avery, Christine Jolls, Richard Posner and Alvin E. Roth

In the past, judges have often hired applicants for judicial clerkships as early as the beginning of the second year of law school for positions commencing approximately two years down the road. In the new hiring regime for federal judicial law clerks, by contrast,... View Details

Keywords: Law; Education; Employment; Selection and Staffing; Marketplace Matching

July 2002 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Harrah's Entertainment, Inc: Rewarding Our People

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan

Marilyn Winn, head of human resources at Harrah's Entertainment, must make a recommendation to the company's president and CEO about whether the existing bonus payout program is effective at motivating employees or whether it should be revised and/or replaced. A recent... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Human Capital; Management Style; Motivation and Incentives; Alignment; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

September 2017
Case

Sensing (and Monetizing) Happiness at Hitachi

By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton

Inspired by research linking happiness and productivity, Hitachi had invested in developing new “people analytics” technologies to help companies increase employee happiness. Hitachi had begun manufacturing high-tech badges that quantify a wearer’s activity patterns.... View Details

Keywords: People Analytics; Japan; Sociometers; Wearables; Interpersonal Communication; Human Resources; Happiness; Technology Industry; Japan

04 Aug 2021
News

Worried About the Great Resignation? Be a Good Company to Come From

November–December 2020
Article

Getting Serious About Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case

By: Robin Ely and David A. Thomas

Leaders may mean well when they tout the economic payoffs of hiring more women and people of color, but there is no research support for the notion that diversifying the workforce automatically improves a company’s performance. This article critiques the popular... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Change; Trust

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August 2019
Background Note

Note on Shared Ownership

By: Ethan Bernstein and Nick Rekenthaler

While several tactics can drive company performance by instilling a sense of shared ownership among employees, perhaps the most direct is to actually share ownership with employees. Many public and private companies across industries have done just that, and studies... View Details

Keywords: Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Human Resources; Employees; Human Capital; Ownership; Cooperative Ownership; Employee Ownership; Customer Ownership; Governance

January 1991 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Black Caucus Groups at Xerox Corp. (A)

In 1970 Xerox had a very progressive affirmative action program yet, once hired, black employees faced serious problems, due both to overt discrimination and to their exclusion from the informal networks of support, information and mentoring that the other salespeople... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Alliances; Race Characteristics; Employees; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; United States