Publications

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

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

January 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Equal Justice Initiative: Mercy, Truth and Dignity

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Gerald Chertavian and Brittany Logan

In 1989, the Equal Justice Initiative was established as a non-profit, public interest law firm by Harvard Law School graduate, Bryan Stevenson.

EJI provides legal assistance to condemned prisoners, people wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced, children in... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Nonprofit Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Issues; Race

April 2019
Case

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: The Power of Writing to Launch and Sustain a Movement (Abridged)

By: Julie Battilana, Lakshmi Ramarajan and Michael Norris

In 2018, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof and his wife, former Times writer Sheryl WuDunn (HBS ’86) who worked in finance, were planning for their next book. The couple’s earlier books had given rise to social movements around gender equity and poverty issues.... View Details

Keywords: Social Movement; Gender Equality; Writing; Social Issues; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Poverty; Books; Change; Leadership

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

2017
Working Paper

Equality and Equity in Compensation

By: Jiayi Bao and Andy Wu

Equity compensation is widely used for incentivizing skilled employees, particularly in new technology businesses. Traditional theories explaining why firms offer equity suggest that workers with higher rank should receive compensation packages more heavily weighted in... View Details

Keywords: Inequality Aversion; Compensation; Stock Options; Scarcity; Experiment; Compensation and Benefits; Equity; Equality and Inequality; Perception

June 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: The Power of Writing to Launch and Sustain a Movement

By: Julie Battilana, Lakshmi Ramarajan and Michael Norris

In 2018, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof and his wife, former Times writer Sheryl WuDunn (HBS ’86) who worked in finance, were planning for their next book. The couple’s earlier books had given rise to social movements around gender equity and poverty issues.... View Details

Keywords: Social Movement; Gender Equality; Writing; Social Issues; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Poverty; Books; Change; Leadership

12 May 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Equality and Equity in Compensation

Keywords: by Jiayi Bao and Andy Wu

24 Aug 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Equalizing Outcomes vs. Equalizing Opportunities: Optimal Taxation when Children’s Abilities Depend on Parents’ Resources

Keywords: by Alexander Gelber & Matthew Weinzierl

Article

Cheating, Inequality Aversion, and Appealing to Social Norms

By: Clara Amato, Francesca Gino, Natalia Montinari and Pierluigi Sacco

We conduct a field experiment involving 143, 9-years old children in their classrooms. Children are requested to flip a coin in private and receive a big or a small prize depending on the outcome they report. Comparing the actual and theoretical distribution of... View Details

Keywords: Cheating; Inequality Aversion; Social Norms; Children; Experiment; Behavior; Equality and Inequality; Moral Sensibility

Article

Scandal, Social Movement, and Change: Evidence from #MeToo in Hollywood

By: Hong Luo and Laurina Zhang

Social movements have the potential to effect change in firm decision-making. In this paper, we examine whether the #MeToo movement, spurred by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, led to changes in the likelihood of Hollywood producers working with female writers on new... View Details

Keywords: Gender Inequality; Social Movement; Scandal; Creative Industries; Project Selection; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Social Issues; Film Entertainment; Projects; Change

02 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Excerpt: ‘A Social Strategy’

thereby limiting the scope of people willing to engage in such behaviors. The tight integration of social and economic benefits is equally important—users can obtain the social... View Details

Article

Health Equity, Schooling Hesitancy, and the Social Determinants of Learning

By: Meira Levinson, Alan C. Geller, Joseph G. Allen and John D. Macomber

At least 62 million K-12 students in North America—disproportionately low-income children of color— have been physically out of school for over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These children are at risk of significant academic, social, mental, and physical harm... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Public Health; Air Quality; Social Determinants Of Health; Schooling Hesitancy; Vaccine Hesitancy; Racial Injustice; Inequity; Inequality; Health Pandemics; Education; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Race; Equality and Inequality

2012
Working Paper

~Why Do We Redistribute so Much but Tag so Little? Normative Diversity, Equal Sacrifice and Optimal Taxation

By: Matthew Weinzierl

Tagging is a free lunch in conventional optimal tax theory because it eases the classic tradeoff between efficiency and equality. But tagging is used in only limited ways in tax policy. I propose one explanation: conventional optimal tax theory has yet to capture the... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cost; Framework; Policy; Taxation; Analytics and Data Science; Performance Efficiency; United States

SSRN

Article

The Price of Equality: Suboptimal Resource Allocations across Social Categories

By: Stephen M. Garcia, Max Bazerman, Shirli Kopelman, Avishalom Tor and Dale T. Miller

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and profit maximizing, yet asymmetric, payoffs. Studies 1 and 2 show that people prefer to maximize profits... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Resource Allocation; Societal Protocols; Profit; Decision Making; Prejudice and Bias; Market Transactions; Ethics; Power and Influence; Distribution; Organizations

March 2017 (Revised June 2019)
Case

CEO Activism (A)

By: Michael W. Toffel, Aaron K. Chatterji and Julia Kelley

This case introduces CEO activism, a phenomenon in which business leaders engage in political or social issues that do not relate directly to their companies. The case uses several examples to describe why business leaders are engaging in CEO activism and the potential... View Details

June 23, 2020
Article

Inequality in Socially Permissible Consumption

By: Serena Hagerty and Kate Barasz

Lower-income individuals are frequently criticized for their consumption decisions; this research examines why. Eleven preregistered studies document systematic differences in permissible consumption—interpersonal judgments about what is acceptable (or not) for others... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Judgments; Consumption; Economic Inequalty; Income; Equality and Inequality; Spending; Judgments

2006
Working Paper

Worse but Equal: The Influence of Social Categories on Resource Allocations

By: Stephen M. Garcia, Max H. Bazerman, Shirli Kopelman and Dale T. Miller

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and profit maximizing, yet asymmetric payoffs. Study 1 and 2 showed that people prefer to maximize profits... View Details

Keywords: Demographics; Fairness; Resource Allocation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Profit