Publications

Educators

December 2019 (Revised December 2021)
Supplement

Negotiating for Equal Pay: The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (B)

By: Christine Exley, John Beshears, Manuela Collis and Davis Heniford

Supplements the (A) case and describes the events following it View Details

Keywords: Equal Pay; Negotiation; Compensation and Benefits; Equality and Inequality; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Ethics; Negotiation Tactics; Corporate Governance; Lawsuits and Litigation; Sports; Sports Industry; United States

2016
Working Paper

Equal Opportunity? Gender Gaps in CEO Appointments and Executive Pay

By: Matti Keloharju, Samuli Knüpfer and Joacim Tåg

This paper uses exceptionally rich data on Swedish corporate executives and their personal characteristics to study gender gaps in CEO appointments and pay. Both gaps are sizeable: 18% for CEO appointments and 27% for pay. At most one-eighth of the gaps can be... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Executive Compensation; Gender; Sweden

SSRN

November 11, 2022
Editorial

Finally Companies Have to Be Upfront about Job Pay Ranges

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The significance of pay transparency laws is their role in moving American workplaces away from bias and closer to equal opportunity. View Details

Keywords: Pay; Salary; Pay Gap; Transparency; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Equality and Inequality

Article

How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay

By: Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton

Do people from different countries and different backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? Using survey data from 40 countries (N = 55,238), we compare respondents' estimates of the wages of people in different... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Justice; Wage; Cross-cultural; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Fairness; Income; Employees; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

Find at Harvard

2017
Working Paper

Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and its Relation to Firm Performance

By: Ethan Rouen

I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm accounting performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee... View Details

Keywords: Pay Disparity; Pay Ratio; CEO Pay Ratio; Income Inequality; Executive Compensation; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Business Ventures; Performance

SSRN

January 2020
Article

Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance

By: Ethan Rouen

I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and... View Details

Keywords: Pay Disparity; Pay Ratio; CEO Pay Ratio; Income Inequality; Executive Compensation; Employees; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Business Ventures; Performance

Find at Harvard

12 Apr 2016
News

Equality Takes Work

December 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Case

Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos

By: Ethan Rouen and Akari Furukawa

TJX Companies reported a CEO pay ratio of 1,596-to-1 in 2019, leaving board chair Carol Meyrowitz with a host of questions about whether, and how, she could take action to address concerns raised by having one of the highest pay ratios in the S&P 500. As a retail... View Details

Keywords: CEO Pay Ratio; Income; Equality and Inequality; Executive Compensation; Corporate Disclosure; Business and Stakeholder Relations

Educators

April 2022
Case

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

"Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The case identifies six distinct phases in the... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Gender; Management; Employees; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Equity; United States

Educators

24 Jan 2011
News

Why not all Profit is Equal

April 2022
Teaching Note

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 422-066, "Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" The case traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Gender; Management; Employees; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Equity; United States

09 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Stock Options Are Not All Created Equal

Most of the companies I've studied don't pay a whole lot of attention to the way they grant options. Their directors and executives assume that the important thing is just to have a plan in place; the details are trivial. As a result,... View Details

Keywords: by Brian Hall

27 Oct 2016
News

Paying It Forward

chains as well as small retailers on four continents. “People find us—despite very little marketing outside the United States—because everyone has the same problem,” says Kundu. “I see that we’re having an impact. What we are doing is becoming the standard for retail... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

2014
Article

Paying It Forward: Generalized Reciprocity and the Limits of Generosity

By: Kurt Gray, Adrian F. Ward and Michael I. Norton

When people are the victims of greed or recipients of generosity, their first impulse is often to pay back that behavior in kind. What happens when people cannot reciprocate, but instead have the chance to be cruel or kind to someone entirely different—to pay it... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Situation or Environment; Attitudes

Find at Harvard

07 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Supervisor of Sandwiches? More Companies Inflate Titles to Avoid Extra Pay

research out of Harvard Business School. In fact, these are just a handful of suspect titles companies are using to classify hourly workers as supervisors and avoid paying an estimated $4 billion in overtime a year, finds a study by... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

Web

Buy Now, Pay Later: Cars on Time

outstanding in the United States—about $850 billion—is about equal to the nation’s credit card debt. 23 In the 1920s, auto financing took a giant leap forward when the car manufacturers entered the game. In 1924, GM launched the General... View Details

Video

Kathleen McCartney presents "Not a Cloister—An Intervention: Women's Colleges and the Project of Gender Equality

2022
Working Paper

ESG Performance and Voluntary ESG Disclosure: Mind the (Gender Pay) Gap

By: June Huang and Shirley Lu

We study if firms with better ESG performance are more likely to provide voluntary ESG disclosure, an assumption embedded in many ESG ratings. We focus on gender diversity and proxy for performance using a firm's gender pay gap ("GPG") disclosed under a UK disclosure... View Details

Keywords: Pay Gap; Gender; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Disclosure; Policy; Diversity

SSRN