Publications

January 2020 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Governing PG&E

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation’s out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company’s proposed new board. PG&E, which provided electricity and natural... View Details

September–October 2017
Article

The Surprising Power of Online Experiments: Getting the Most Out of A/B and Other Controlled Tests

By: Ron Kohavi and Stefan Thomke

In the fast-moving digital world, even experts have a hard time assessing new ideas. Case in point: At Bing, a small headline change an employee proposed was deemed a low priority and shelved for months until one engineer decided to do a quick online controlled... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; A/B Testing; Research; Consumer Behavior

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19 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 19, 2019

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55860 in press Journal of Consumer Psychology The Feeling of Not Knowing It All By: Yang, Haiyang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely, and Michael I. Norton Abstract—How do consumers View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

$15 Billion in Five Years: What Data Tells Us About MacKenzie Scott’s Philanthropy

for now we focused on the recipients as a lens to evaluate the underlying strategy: who they are, where they are, and what causes they support. To create benchmarks, we merged tax data for 554,000... View Details

Keywords: by Matthew Lee, Brian Trelstad, and Ethan Tran

August 1984 (Revised October 1992)
Background Note

Marketing Implementation

By: John A. Quelch

Describes a framework for evaluating marketing implementation problems and assesses the interfaces between marketing strategy and implementation. View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy

October 2016
Article

Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity

By: Alan MacCormack and Daniel J. Sturtevant

Technical debt is created when design decisions that are expedient in the short-term increase the costs of maintaining and adapting this system in future. An important component of technical debt relates to decisions about system architecture. As systems grow and... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Performance Efficiency; Applications and Software; Infrastructure

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03 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 3, 2018

positions. To enable such assessments, firms must become as transparent about their corporate political responsibility (CPR) as their corporate social responsibility (CSR). For their part, rating systems must demand such information from firms View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

November 2015 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Aspiring Minds

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively

By 2015, India-based employment assessment and certification provider Aspiring Minds had helped facilitate over 300,000 job matches through its assessment tools. Aspiring Minds' flagship product, the Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT), used machine learning... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Strategy; Higher Education; Technological Innovation; Employment; Technology Industry; India; China

26 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 26, 2019

not to give. Managers of nonprofit organizations should carefully assess this tension when determining if and how to provide information on their performance metrics. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2018
Book

Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought

By: Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sophus A. Reinert and Richard Whatmore

When Istvan Hont died in 2013, the world lost a giant of intellectual history. A leader of the Cambridge School of Political Thought, Hont argued passionately for a global-historical approach to political ideas. To better understand the development of liberalism, he... View Details

Keywords: Morals; Politics; Istvan Hont; Jealousy Of Trade; Enlightenment; Economic Nationalism; Markets; Moral Sensibility; Government and Politics; Trade; History

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04 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 4, 2018

certification programs are understandable and largely predictable if the ideas, interests, and power of key actors are accurately assessed. When alignment View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

November 2019
Article

When and Why Defaults Influence Decisions: A Meta-analysis of Default Effects

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Shannon Duncan, Elke U. Weber and Eric J. Johnson

When people make decisions with a pre-selected choice option—a “default”—they are more likely to select that option. Because defaults are easy to implement, they constitute one of the most widely employed tools in the choice architecture toolbox. However, to decide... View Details

Keywords: Choice Architecture; Defaults; Default Effects; Decision Making; Behavior; Analysis

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31 Oct 2023
Research & Ideas

Beyond the 'Business Case' in DEI: 6 Steps Toward Meaningful Change

benefits it brings, but its efforts and programs may be short-lived or be the first things to get dropped amid competing priorities, conflicting incentives, or adversity. “They're focused so much on the... View Details

Keywords: by Katherine Hutt Scott and Barbara DeLollis

Article

Manage the Suppliers That Could Harm Your Brand: Know When to Avoid, Engage, or Drop Them

By: Jodi L Short and Michael W. Toffel

The pandemic has placed a new spotlight on working conditions in factories that supply global companies. To avert problems, firms often impose codes of conduct on their suppliers and perform audits to assess compliance. Do these measures help identify unethical... View Details

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September 2023 (Revised September 2024)
Technical Note

Measuring and Managing Social Impact

By: Brian Trelstad, Gerald Chertavian and Susan Pinckney

A brief overview of how to measure social impact at nonprofits, social organizations, and impact investments. View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Change; Transformation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Public Sector; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Fairness; Entrepreneurial Finance; Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Policy; Innovation and Management; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Practices and Processes; Resource Allocation; Measurement and Metrics; Standards; Strength and Weakness; Mission and Purpose; Success; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Strategic Planning; Programs; Risk and Uncertainty; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Issues; United States

08 May 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, May 8, 2018

forthcoming Management Science Evidence of Upcoding in Pay-for-Performance Programs By: Bastani, Hamsa, Joel Goh, and Mohsen Bayati Abstract—Recent Medicare legislation seeks to improve patient care quality... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Partnering and the Balanced Scorecard

improvement programs kept failing. Meliones created a leadership team with representatives from each of the three employee groups to redefine the mission and to develop a Balanced Scorecard that incorporated... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

2010
Article

Hospital Performance, the Local Economy, and the Local Workforce: Findings from a U.S. National Longitudinal Study

Background: Pay-for-performance is an increasingly popular approach to improving health care quality, and the US government will soon implement pay-for-performance in hospitals nationwide. Yet hospital capacity to perform (and improve performance) likely depends on... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Performance; Health Industry; United States