Publications

Article

Diversity Thresholds: How Social Norms, Visibility, and Scrutiny Relate to Group Composition

By: Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman, Dolly Chugh and Modupe Akinola

Across a field study and four experiments, we examine how social norms and scrutiny affect decisions about adding members of underrepresented populations (e.g., women, racial minorities) to groups. When groups are scrutinized, we theorize that decision makers strive to... View Details

Keywords: Social Norms; Impression Management; Groups and Teams; Governing and Advisory Boards; Diversity; Gender; Decision Making

August, 2022
Article

Changing Ingroup Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the United States

By: Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new outgroup change the ingroup's perceptions of other outgroups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of... View Details

Keywords: In-group-out-group Relations; Ingroup-outgroup Relations; Immigration; Race; Relationships; United States

2021
Working Paper

Changing Ingroup Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the U.S.

By: Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new outgroup change the ingroup's perceptions of other outgroups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of... View Details

Keywords: In-group-out-group Relations; Immigration; Race; Attitudes; Boundaries; Prejudice and Bias

SSRN

08 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

The Height Tax, and Other New Ways to Think about Taxation

me the key to explaining the disconnect between theory and intuition starts with the particular goal for tax policy assumed in the standard framework. As I said earlier, that goal is to minimize the total sacrifice borne by those who pay... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

02 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

Ray A. Goldberg

and some 1,000 cases. By the time he became professor emeritus in 1997, he had taught some seven thousand Harvard MBA students and ten thousand Executive Education participants in programs at Soldiers Field and abroad, while advising... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Agriculture & Agribusiness

November 1990 (Revised April 1999)
Case

General Motors: Packard Electric Division

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Packard Electric is the division of General Motors (GM) that does all of the electrical wiring and cabling for GM automobiles. They developed a new approach for passing the cables through the firewall between the engine and passenger compartments. The new technology... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Cost; Management Style; Product Design; Product Development; Production; Projects; Groups and Teams; Conflict and Resolution; Technology; Auto Industry

January 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Jackie Robinson: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer

This case traces the rise of Jackie Robinson from the poor streets of Pasadena, California to one of the most famous people in America after he overturned the color barrier in baseball. The case describes how as a youth he excelled at basketball, football, baseball,... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Power And Influence; Personal Characteristics; Values And Beliefs; Mission And Purpose; Sports; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Leading Change; Personal Development and Career; United States

10 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Key to Doing Your Best at Work? Be Yourself

John, the charismatic chief marketing officer of Netflix (once described by Buzzfeed as the “coolest” person to ever go onstage at an Apple event). Research shows being true to who you are leads to greater professional performance and... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

August 2020 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Nubank: Democratizing Financial Services

By: Michael Chu, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo

Nubank, a wholly-digital solution created to disrupt Brazilian banking, with 6 million clients and a $4 billion valuation after five years, must decide whether to expand to Mexico. The company was founded in São Paulo in 2013 by Colombian-born David Vélez to seize what... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Financial Inclusion; Digital Banking; Credit Cards; Banks and Banking; Disruption; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; South America; Brazil; North America; Mexico

10 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Commodity Busters: Be a Price Maker, Not a Price Taker

Insurance built a wonderful business by selecting relatively low-risk customers from among generally high-risk motorcyclists. Step 4: Keep it simple. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by mismanaging your own... View Details

Keywords: by Benson P. Shapiro

September 2023
Article

(Not) Paying for Diversity: Repugnant Market Concerns Associated with Transactional Approaches to Diversity Recruitment

By: Summer R. Jackson

In a 20-month ethnographic study, I examine how a technology firm, ShopCo (a pseudonym), considered 13 different recruitment platforms to attract racial minority engineering candidates. I find that when choosing whether to adopt recruitment platforms focused on racial... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Recruitment; Race; Organizational Change and Adaptation

August 2013 (Revised November 2015)
Case

Prudential Financial - General Motors Pension Risk Transfer: Back to the Future?

By: Luis M. Viceira and Emily A. Chien

In November 2012, Prudential Financial and General Motors closed on a $25.1B pension risk transfer (PRT) transaction, the largest of its kind to date by an order of magnitude both in the U.S. market and globally. In exchange for an in-kind transfer of $25.1B in... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Asset Management; Insurance; Retirement; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry

2014
Article

The Shifting Landscape of LGBT Organizational Research

By: Michel Anteby and Caitlin Anderson

Over the past generation, sexual minorities—particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) persons—have gained increased visibility in the public arena. Yet organizational research has lagged behind in recognizing and studying this category of... View Details

Keywords: Research; Organizations; Gender; Diversity

2023
Working Paper

The Limits of Algorithmic Measures of Race in Studies of Outcome Disparities

By: David S. Scharfstein and Sergey Chernenko

We show that the use of algorithms to predict race has significant limitations in measuring and understanding the sources of racial disparities in finance, economics, and other contexts. First, we derive theoretically the direction and magnitude of measurement bias in... View Details

Keywords: Racial Disparity; Paycheck Protection Program; Measurement Error; AI and Machine Learning; Race; Measurement and Metrics; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Forecasting and Prediction; Outcome or Result

SSRN

February 2002 (Revised February 2003)
Case

Argentina's Financial System: The Case of Banco de Galicia

By: Rafael M. Di Tella, Tarun Khanna, Huw Pill, Alexandra de Royere and Ingrid Vogel

Describes the development of Argentina's financial system after the "Tequila Crisis" that came about as a result of the speculative attack on the Mexican peso's peg to the U.S. dollar in December 1994. Although Argentina's banking system was strengthened overall due to... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Emerging Markets; Macroeconomics; Business Strategy; Banks and Banking; Financial Crisis; Family Business; Acquisition; Banking Industry; Argentina