Publications

2010
Working Paper

Does Product Market Competition Lead Firms To Decentralize?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. Economists have developed a range of theories to account for delegation, but there is less empirical evidence,... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Employees; Managerial Roles; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Asia; Europe; North America

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor, Emerita, at Harvard Business School. Originally educated and employed as a chemist, Teresa received her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. Her current research investigates how people approach and... View Details

2009
Working Paper

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture—in the sense of shared beliefs and values—in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Cost vs Benefits; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Theory

10 May 2017
News

Who's Receiving An Honorary Degree This Sunday?

Research Summary

Monica Higgins' research, teaching, and course development activities all focus on the study of careers. Her work speaks to a particular subfield within the careers academic audience-one that adopts a 'relational' approach to career theory. A relational model is... View Details

Research Summary

Social Choice and Voting Rules

By: Jerry R. Green

This research program is based on the idea that good voting systems should take into account the frequency with which different choice problems arise. Traditional social choice theory requires properties over a fixed domain of choice problems but does not offer the... View Details

15 Dec 2016
HBS Seminar

John-Paul Ferguson, Stanford Graduate School of Business

2012
Chapter

Institutional Pressures and Organizational Characteristics: Implications for Environmental Strategy

By: Magali A. Delmas and Michael W. Toffel

A broad literature has emerged over the past decades demonstrating that firms' environmental strategies and practices are influenced by stakeholders and institutional pressures. Such findings are consistent with institutional sociology, which emphasizes the importance... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Natural Environment; Business Strategy

12 Oct 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer

Keywords: by Katherine L. Milkman, John Beshears, Todd Rogers & Max H. Bazerman

19 Jul 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Signaling to Partially Informed Investors in the Newsvendor Model

Keywords: by Vishal Gaur, Richard Lai, Ananth Raman & William Schmidt

28 Jan 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Does Product Market Competition Lead Firms To Decentralize?

Keywords: by Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen

Research Summary

Financing Payouts

Despite the obvious interest in payout policy, no paper to date has systematically analyzed how payouts are funded, perhaps because the answer might have appeared just too obvious: payouts are funded with free cash flow — at least over long enough time periods.... View Details

2015
Other Teaching and Training Material

Competitive Strategies Marketing Reading

By: Jill Avery and Sunil Gupta

Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover the fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks that business students must study.
This Reading illuminates the dynamics of companies in competition and offers a process for planning and executing marketing... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy

Purchase

2007
Working Paper

Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer

By: Katherine L. Milkman, John Beshears, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman

We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer spending decisions by examining the purchasing behavior of a sample of online grocery shoppers over the course of a year. We compare the purchases customers make when redeeming a $10-off coupon they received from their... View Details

Keywords: Spending; Consumer Behavior; Mathematical Methods; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry

October 2010
Article

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture-in the sense of shared beliefs and values in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Organizational Culture; Economics; Information Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Values and Beliefs; Mergers and Acquisitions; Framework; Satisfaction; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Communication

Purchase

01 Apr 2008
Working Paper Summaries

No Harm, No Foul: The Outcome Bias in Ethical Judgments

Keywords: by Francesca Gino, Don A. Moore & Max H. Bazerman

Article

Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics

By: Thomas Astebro, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda and Roberto A. Weber

There is a growing body of evidence that many entrepreneurs seem to enter and persist in entrepreneurship despite earning low risk-adjusted returns. This has lead to attempts to provide explanations—using both standard economic theory and behavioral economics—for why... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Personal Characteristics; Attitudes; Behavior

Article

Investor Sentiment in the Stock Market

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We examine how investor sentiment affects the cross-section of stock returns. Theory predicts that a broad wave of sentiment will disproportionately affect stocks whose valuations are highly subjective and are difficult to arbitrage. We test this prediction by... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; Stocks; Investment Return; Valuation; Forecasting and Prediction; Volatility; Price; Risk and Uncertainty; Behavioral Finance