Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,088)
- Faculty Publications (217)
- 2014
- Article
Investors Prefer Entrepreneurial Ventures Pitched by Attractive Men
By: Alison Wood Brooks, Laura Huang, Sarah Kearney and Fiona Murray
Entrepreneurship is a central path to job creation, economic growth, and prosperity. In the earliest stages of start-up business creation, the matching of entrepreneurial ventures to investors is critically important. The entrepreneur's business proposition and... View Details
- Article
Prosocial Bonuses Increase Employee Satisfaction and Team Performance
By: Lalin Anik, Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Michael I. Norton and Jordi Quoidbach
In three field studies, we explore the impact of providing employees and teammates with prosocial bonuses, a novel type of bonus spent on others rather than on oneself. In Experiment 1, we show that prosocial bonuses in the form of donations to charity lead to happier... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Management: Theory and Practice, and Cases
By: Richard L. Nolan
This working paper reports on a major Harvard Business School project designed to enhance MBA and practicing executives in case learning. The work is built on the foundation of HBS field cases employing the monomyth "hero's journey" classic story structure along... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; CIO; CEO; Hero's Journey; Monomyth; Management; Practice; Cases; Theory; Innovation and Invention
- 2019
- Working Paper
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability, or their responsiveness to a... View Details
- September 2013
- Article
Converging to the Lowest Common Denominator in Physical Health
By: Leslie K. John and Michael I. Norton
Objective: This research examines how access to information on peer health behaviors affects one's own health behavior. Methods: We report the results of a randomized field experiment in a large corporation in which we introduced walkstations (treadmills... View Details
- June 2013
- Article
What Is Privacy Worth?
By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie K. John and George Loewenstein
Understanding the value that individuals assign to the protection of their personal data is of great importance for business, law, and public policy. We use a field experiment informed by behavioral economics and decision research to investigate individual privacy... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Prosocial Bonuses Increase Employee Satisfaction and Team Performance
By: Lalin Anik, Lara B. Aknin, Michael I. Norton, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Jordi Quoidbach
In two field studies, we explore the impact of providing employees and teammates with prosocial bonuses, a novel type of bonus spent on others rather than on oneself. In Experiment 1, we show that prosocial bonuses in the form of donations to charity lead to happier... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
How Does Risk Management Influence Production Decisions? Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Shawn Cole, Xavier Gine and James Vickery
Weather is a key source of income risk, particularly in emerging market economies. This paper uses a randomized controlled trial involving a sample of Indian farmers to study how an innovative rainfall insurance product affects production decisions. We find that... View Details
- March–April 2013
- Article
Unlocking Innovation Through Business Experimentation
By: Stefan Thomke
There is a downside to businesses that focus heavily on standardization, optimization, and driving out variability: Such organizations leave themselves vulnerable to underinvesting in experimentation and variation, which are the lifeblood of innovation. Good... View Details
- 2013
- Book
Porte à porte: Reconquérir la démocratie sur le terrain
By: Guillaume Liégey, Arthur Muller and Vincent Pons
From January to May 2012, campaign activists supporting François Hollande knocked at five millions doors, making this door-to-door effort the largest in Europe to date. This project was formed by Guillaume Liégey, Arthur Muller, and Vincent Pons, who had met at the... View Details
- January 2013
- Article
Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India
By: Shawn A. Cole, Xavier Gine, Jeremy Tobacman, Petia Topalova, Robert M. Townsend and James Vickery
Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance... View Details
- July–September 2012
- Article
The (Un)Hidden Turmoil of Language in Global Collaboration
By: Tsedal Neeley, Pamela J. Hinds and Catherine D. Cramton
Companies are increasingly relying on a lingua franca, or common language (usually English), to facilitate cross-border collaboration. Despite the numerous benefits of a lingua franca, our research reveals myriad challenges that disrupt collaboration and contribute to... View Details
- June 2012
- Article
The Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control
Using data from embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the second largest mobile phone factory in the world, located in China, I theorize and test the implications of transparent organizational design on workers' productivity and organizational... View Details
Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Organizational Learning; Operational Control; Organizational Performance; Chinese Manufacturing; Field Experiment; Rights; Interpersonal Communication; Management Practices and Processes; Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Performance Productivity; Boundaries; Organizations; Social and Collaborative Networks; Labor and Management Relations; Power and Influence; Manufacturing Industry; China
- 2012
- Article
Does Power Corrupt or Enable?: When and Why Power Facilitates Self-interested Behavior
By: K. A. DeCelles, D.S. DeRue, J.D. Margolis and T.L. Ceranic
Does power corrupt a moral identity, or does it enable a moral identity to emerge? Drawing from the power literature, we propose that the psychological experience of power, although often associated with promoting self-interest, is associated with greater self-interest... View Details
- May 18, 2012
- Article
Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss
By: David I Levine, Michael W. Toffel and Matthew S. Johnson
Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We... View Details
- 2012
- Chapter
The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort
By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details
- January 2012
- Article
Paying to Be Nice: Consistency and Costly Prosocial Behavior
By: Ayelet Gneezy, Alex Imas, Amber Brown, Leif D. Nelson and Michael I. Norton
Building on previous research in economics and psychology, we propose that the costliness of initial prosocial behavior positively influences whether that behavior leads to consistent future behaviors. We suggest that costly prosocial behaviors serve as a signal of... View Details
- Article
Marketing Complex Financial Products in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Rainfall Insurance in India
By: Sarthak Gaurav, Shawn A. Cole and Jeremy Tobacman
Recent financial liberalization in emerging economies has led to the rapid introduction of new financial products. Lack of experience with financial products, low levels of education, and low financial literacy may slow adoption of these products. This article reports... View Details
- June 28, 2011
- Article
Using Implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates
By: Katherine L Milkman, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We evaluate the results of a field experiment designed to measure the effect of prompts to form implementation intentions on realized behavioral outcomes. The outcome of interest is influenza vaccination receipt at free on-site clinics offered by a large firm to its... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Impact of Supplier Inventory Service Level on Retailer Demand
By: Nathan Craig, Nicole DeHoratius and Ananth Raman
To set inventory service levels, suppliers must understand how changes in inventory service level affect demand. We build on prior research, which uses analytical models and laboratory experiments to study the impact of a supplier's service level on demand from... View Details