Publications

Article

Workplace Stressors & Health Outcomes: Health Policy for the Workplace

By: Joel Goh, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Stefanos A. Zenios

Extensive research focuses on the causes of workplace-induced stress. However, policy efforts to tackle the ever-increasing health costs and poor health outcomes in the United States have largely ignored the health effects of psychosocial workplace stressors such as... View Details

Keywords: Occupational Health; Mortality; Stress; Meta-analysis; Health

March 2016 (Revised March 2022)
Teaching Note

Evive Health and Workplace Influenza Vaccinations

By: John Beshears

Evive Health is a company that manages communication campaigns on behalf of health insurance plans and large employers. Using big data techniques and insights from behavioral economics, Evive deploys targeted and effective messages that improve individuals' health... View Details

March 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Deepa Bachu (A): Design Thinking at Pensaar Design

By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal

In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details

August 2020
Article

Workplace Knowledge Flows

By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton

We conducted a field experiment in a sales firm to test whether improving knowledge flows between coworkers affects productivity. Our design allows us to compare different management practices and to isolate whether frictions to knowledge transmission primarily reside... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Interpersonal Communication; Employees; Performance Productivity; Sales; Motivation and Incentives

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31 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Powerful Workplace Motivator

workplace motivator is our natural tendency to measure our own performance against the performance of others. "Traditionally, [the field of] economics has held a very rational view of people, and there's a gigantic amount of literature... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

October 1991 (Revised January 2000)
Case

Workplace Safety at Alcoa (A)

By: Kim B. Clark and Joshua D. Margolis

Examines the challenge facing the managers of a large aluminum manufacturing plant in its drive to improve workplace safety. The CEO of the company has made safety a top priority. The plant has made good progress in reducing the injury rate, but now confronts the need... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Safety; Problems and Challenges; Change Management; Operations; Resignation and Termination; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Manufacturing Industry; United States

January 2023 (Revised April 2023)
Case

Cobalt Robotics: Scaling Workplace Robotics

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Kyung Keun Park

Founded in 2016, Cobalt Robotics, based in Fremont, California, was a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) company that built autonomous workplace robots that were designed to replace or supplement human security guards. Outfitted with over 60 sensors, Cobalt robots patrolled... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Customers; Technology Industry; United States; California

2024
Working Paper

Winner Take All: Exploiting Asymmetry in Factorial Designs

By: Matthew DosSantos DiSorbo, Iavor I. Bojinov and Fiammetta Menchetti

Researchers and practitioners have embraced factorial experiments to simultaneously test multiple treatments, each with different levels. With the rise of technologies like Generative AI, factorial experimentation has become even more accessible: it is easier than ever... View Details

Keywords: Factorial Designs; Fisher Randomizations; Rank Estimators; Employer Interventions; Causal Inference; Mathematical Methods; Performance Improvement

Article

Use Purpose to Transform Your Workplace

By: Leena Nair, Nick Dalton, Patrick Hull and William Kerr

Is keeping pace with the future of work incompatible with using purpose to guide the organization? Unilever is stretching its well-known commitment to purpose for a new and daunting challenge—the transformation of its workforce of more than 149,000 employees. Its... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Purpose; Unilever; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Talent and Talent Management; Transition; Decision Making; Transformation

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01 Jun 2009
News

Insights from the Post-Macho Workplace

been designed to create a new kind of offshore operating environment, where safety was the priority. Management attacked the safety issue from the top down, investing extensively in leadership training, policies, and practices intended to... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Oil and Gas Extraction; Mining

November 2014 (Revised March 2016)
Background Note

Mental Health and the American Workplace

By: John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Mental illness has been described as an epidemic affecting nearly a quarter of all Americans in their lifetimes, often during their most productive working years. Managers who can design organizations that maximize mental health can minimize these risks and boost... View Details

Keywords: Public Health; Productivity; Competitiveness; Stress Management; Depression; Absenteeism; Presenteeism; Work Culture; Business or Company Management; Work-Life Balance; Performance Productivity; Organizational Culture; Medical Specialties; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

Government agencies can use machine learning to improve the effectiveness of regulatory inspections. Our study found that OSHA could prevent as much as twice as many injuries—translating to up to 16,000 fewer workers injured and nearly $800 million in social... View Details

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

10 Mar 2021
Blog Post

COVID Killed the Traditional Workplace

down, it is likely that hybrid remote arrangements will become the norm at workplaces globally. It is important to design hybrid-remote work arrangements that also allow for geographic flexibility and... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

2016
Working Paper

Workplace Design: The Good, the Bad, and the Productive

By: Michael Housman and Dylan Minor

We study the effects of performance spillover in the workplace-both positive and negative-on several dimensions, and find that it is pervasive and decreasing in the physical distance between workers. We also find that workers have different strengths, and that while... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Human Resource Management; Peer Effects; Productivity; Spillovers; Toxic Worker; Strategy; Working Conditions; Performance Productivity; Human Resources

SSRN

09 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity

designers judged the creativity of the ideas, they determined that the least creative ones came from participants who had called to mind acquaintances from different cultural backgrounds with disharmonious relationships. [On average,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Research Summary

The Unexpected Effects of Workplace Transparency

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

Workplace transparency provides a foundation for learning and control, and therefore for satisfaction and productivity. Yet my research shows that an obsession with transparency-enhancing tools and structures can backfire, producing the unintended consequences of... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Productivity; Field Experiments; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks; Human Resources; Leadership; United States; Europe; China; Japan

March 2023
Supplement

Deepa Bachu (B): Insights and Experiments at Pensaar Design

By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal

In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details