Publications

SSRN

Article

Technology, Identity, and Inertia: Through the Lens of 'The Digital Photography Company'

By: Mary Tripsas

Organizations often experience difficulty when pursuing new technology. Large bodies of research have examined the behavioral, social, and cognitive forces that underlie this phenomenon; however, the role of an organization's identity remains relatively unexplored.... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Culture; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Identity; Perception; Technology Adoption

April 2021
Article

Work-From-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographical Flexibility

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi and Barbara Larson

An emerging form of remote work allows employees to work-from-anywhere, so that the worker can choose to live in a preferred geographic location. While traditional work-from-home (WFH) programs offer the worker temporal flexibility, work-from-anywhere (WFA) programs... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Flexibility; Work-from-anywhere; Remote Work; Telecommuting; Geographic Mobility; USPTO; Employees; Geographic Location; Performance Productivity

Article

The Wisdom of Competitive Crowds

By: Kenneth C. Lichtendahl, Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Phillip E. Pfeifer

When several individuals are asked to forecast an uncertain quantity, they often face implicit or explicit incentives to be the most accurate. Despite the desire to elicit honest forecasts, such competition induces forecasters to report strategically and nontruthfully.... View Details

Keywords: Forecast; Forecasting and Prediction

16 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

What Football Firings Teach Managers About Staying Relevant

of the NFL coaching carousel over the last few decades? Why did coaches succeed or fail in a league that some scholars have referred to as a natural laboratory for studying performance? When and why did previously successful coaches lose... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht, and Abhijit Naik; Sports

March 1998
Case

Bumper Acquisition (A2), A: Confidential Information for Medallion Capital, Inc.

By: James K. Sebenius and David T. Kotchen

Located in Mundelein, IL, Thermo-Impact, Inc. is a rapidly growing, private firm that manufactures automotive bumpers. In 1995, a number of large automotive supply companies and a private equity investment firm offer to buy Thermo-Impact. The cases in this series focus... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Valuation; Negotiation Participants; Decision Making; Negotiation Process; Entrepreneurship; Negotiation Offer; Acquisition; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Illinois

11 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

Mixing Open Source and Proprietary Software Strategies

nature of the competition is. They should also weigh the importance of user innovation for their market and the value of their complementary good. In the case of some software products, the complementary product is very important. For... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Web Services

08 Jun 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Twenty-first Century Skill: Trading Carbon Credits

Cap and trade has become an increasingly popular mechanism used by governments to induce green behavior among corporate polluters, with news emerging almost daily. Just recently New Jersey Governor Chris Christie withdrew his state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Energy; Utilities

06 Oct 2015
First Look

October 6, 2015

for understanding the multinational firm as a set of relationships. I then apply one key element of that approach—the relationships among firms as a direct source of geopolitical outcomes—to the natural gas trade of Eurasia in three eras... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

Name Your Price. Really.

of experiments—including a field experiment where she posed with students as snack bar employees—Santana found that by subtly manipulating the environment, sellers can dramatically change what some buyers are willing to pay. Retailers are... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

2008
Thesis

Being B-Boys: Style, Identity, and Respect Among New England and Miami Street Dancers

By: Curtis K. Chan

This study examines the phenomenon of a street dance known as "b-boying" to explore how dancers locate, negotiate, and perform identities, as well as the tensions that occur concomitantly. Drawing on data from participant-observation, interviews, and diverse archival... View Details

Keywords: Social Psychology; Identity; Negotiation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Boundaries; Conflict and Resolution; Arts; Northeastern United States; Miami

10 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Prospective Students Steer Clear of Schools Rocked by Scandal

10 percent drop in applications the following year. That’s roughly the same impact a university would experience if it fell 10 spots on the U.S. News & World Report college rankings list. “We’re hoping this will help (colleges)... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education

30 Jul 2014
Lessons from the Classroom

Teaching The Deal

resolve internal conflicts. In the Negotiations course, students not only analyze a number of case studies, but also participate in a series of negotiation exercises that give them hands-on practice with a variety of deal-making scenarios, allowing them to View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education

02 Sep 2002
Research & Ideas

Foreign Multinationals in the U.S.: A Rocky Road

What can companies today take away from the experience of myriad multinationals in the United States? A lot, says HBS professor Geoffrey G. Jones, a specialist in business history and international business. In the following e-mail... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston & Martha Lagace

January 2013
Supplement

The Great East Japan Earthquake (D): Lawson's Response

By: Hirotaka Takeuchi, Victor Stone, Samer Abughannam, Sebastien D'Incau, Jonathan Driscoll, Katharine Hill and Jeffrey Reynolds

CEO Niinami Takeshi (HBS '91) stared out his corner office window as the Tokyo skyscrapers swayed and the concrete trembled. He was in the midst of the largest seismic event to hit Japan in recorded history. Lawson's managers understood earthquake response. They had... View Details

Keywords: East Japan; Earthquake; Lawson's; Natural Disasters; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Japan

Purchase

Research Summary

The Role of Information Technology in the Provision of Services

By: James I. Cash

James I. Cash, Jr. is exploring the role of information technology in service management. Specifically, he is studying the implications of the ubiquity of information technology at three levels in service-providing organizations. (In the United States today, service... View Details

2021
Article

Fair Influence Maximization: A Welfare Optimization Approach

By: Aida Rahmattalabi, Shahin Jabbari, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Phebe Vayanos, Max Izenberg, Ryan Brown, Eric Rice and Milind Tambe

Several behavioral, social, and public health interventions, such as suicide/HIV prevention or community preparedness against natural disasters, leverage social network information to maximize outreach. Algorithmic influence maximization techniques have been proposed... View Details

19 Feb 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Relative Performance Transparency: Effects on Sustainable Choices

Keywords: by Ryan W. Buell, Shwetha Mariadassou, and Yanchong Zheng

Research Summary

Consumer's Relationships with Technologies

Susan M. Fournier is involved with two lines of research investigating consumers' relationships with technological products. The first project (with Professor David Mick of the University of Wisconsin) concerns 'everyday technologies' such as... View Details

March 2020
Article

Gender Differences in Communicative Abstraction

By: Priyanka D. Joshi, Cheryl J. Wakslak, Gil Appel and Laura Huang

Drawing on construal level theory, which suggests that experiencing a communicative audience as proximal rather than distal leads speakers to frame messages more concretely, we examine gender difference in linguistic abstraction. In a meta-analysis of prior studies... View Details

Keywords: Construal Level Theory; Psychological Distance; Gender; Communication; Leadership