Publications

SSRN

Article

Multitasking While Driving: A Time Use Study of Commuting Knowledge Workers to Assess Current and Future Uses

By: Thomaz Teodorovicz, Andrew L. Kun, Raffaella Sadun and Orit Shaer

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To achieve this goal, however, we need to develop a... View Details

Keywords: In-vehicle User Interfaces; Time-use Study; Automated Vehicles; Knowledge Workers; Commuting

March 2021
Article

Experimenting During the Shift to Virtual Team Work: Learnings from How Teams Adapted Their Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Ashley V. Whillans, Leslie Perlow and Aurora Turek

Past research has focused on understanding the characteristics of work that are fully virtual or fully collocated. The present study seeks to expand our understanding of team work by studying knowledge workers' experiences as they were suddenly forced to transition to... View Details

Keywords: Team Work; Activities; Virtual Work; Digital Technologies; Groups and Teams; Health Pandemics; Internet and the Web; Adaptation

2023
Working Paper

Labor Reactions to Credit Deterioration: Evidence from LinkedIn Activity

We provide the first analysis of workers’ on-the-job networking activity following their firm’s credit deterioration. Using high-frequency networking on LinkedIn, we show that workers initiate more connections immediately following adverse credit shocks. We propose a... View Details

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

business-as-usual activities that are now being accomplished under extraordinary circumstances. Everyone on your team can now add the line “ during a global pandemic” to their list of job duties. Acknowledge that! At the same time, be... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

the individual work activities that create intermediate products, services, and information. In essence then, the people who work in an organization that produces something are simultaneously engaged in collaborative production and... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

31 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

American Idle: Workers Spend Too Much Time Waiting for Something to Do

Paul Bradbury American workers are usually a pretty busy bunch, yet their time spent idle costs employers an estimated $100 billion per year, according to a new study from Harvard Business School. “We suspected idle time might be more... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

September 24, 2021
Article

A Labor Movement for the Platform Economy

By: Li Jin, Scott Duke Kominers and Lila Shroff

Platforms are fundamentally changing the contract between workers and companies—and the workers and creatives that create value for platform companies, and rely on platforms for their livelihoods, often have little power when it comes to getting their concerns... View Details

Keywords: Gig Workers; Decentralized Collective Action; Internet and the Web; Labor; Labor and Management Relations; Digital Platforms

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24 Mar 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Securing Jobs or the New Protectionism? Taxing the Overseas Activities of Multinational Firms

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

07 Dec 2015
Research & Ideas

Why Immigrant Workers Cluster in Particular Industries

choose to specialize because of the advantage they acquire through their social networks. ©iStock/vadimguzhva “Many immigrant groups spend a lot of time with other members of their own ethnic community,” says Kerr, who knows this firsthand—his wife is Finnish and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Transportation; Beauty & Cosmetics; Retail

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

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Applications and Software; Product Development; Organizations; Employees; Behavior; Competition; Cooperation; Creativity; Information Technology Industry

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04 Feb 2014
Working Paper Summaries

From Crowds to Collaborators: Initiating Effort and Catalyzing Interactions Among Online Creative Workers

Keywords: by Kevin J. Boudreau, Patrick Gaule, Karim R. Lakhani, Christoph Riedl & Anita Williams Woolley

2023
Working Paper

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

SSRN

November 2000 (Revised November 2002)
Case

Activity-Based Management at W.S. Industries (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Sanjay Pothen

W.S. Industries undertakes the design and implementation of an activity based costing (ABC) system, and the ABC information empowers workers to make process improvement decisions. Workers' incentive pay is tied to cost savings from process improvements. View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Motivation and Incentives; Performance Evaluation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Knowledge Management; Energy Industry; India

Educators

05 Nov 2019
Working Paper Summaries

The Economic Effects of Private Equity Buyouts

Keywords: by Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ben Lipsius, Josh Lerner, and Javier Miranda

November 1995
Case

Transformation of Pratt & Whitney North Haven (C)

By: H. Kent Bowen, Linda A. Hill, Andrew P. Burtis, Sylvie Ryckebusch and John Schiavone

As part of the Pratt & Whitney North Haven restructuring effort, Ed Northern and his business unit managers are encouraging workers to make decisions and take an active role in improving the manufacturing process at North Haven. Business Unit Manager Tom Hutton has... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Decisions; Capital; Human Resources; Agreements and Arrangements; Production; Problems and Challenges

Educators

28 Dec 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Tech Clusters

Keywords: by William R. Kerr and Frederic Robert-Nicoud

30 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers

to sharing a solution to the problem, the campaigns had a much larger effect, nearly tripling the frequency with which frontline workers suggested a solution to the problem. In addition, units in which managers "practiced what they... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

The incentives were not aligned: Companies wanted faster, more productive work, while workers sought more hours and a chance to earn overtime pay. “My colleagues and I actively tried to hamper the success of... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

Spring 2023
Article

Incentive Contract Design and Employee-Initiated Innovation: Evidence from the Field

By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin

This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers’ official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers’ propensity to engage in employee-initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are... View Details

Keywords: Employee-initiated Innovation; Contract Design; Rank-and-file; Extra-role Behaviors; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation and Management

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