Publications

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January 2019
Article

Wage Elasticities in Working and Volunteering: The Role of Reference Points in a Laboratory Study

By: Christine L. Exley and Stephen J. Terry

We experimentally test how effort responds to wages—randomly assigned to accrue to individuals or to a charity—in the presence of expectations-based reference points or targets. When individuals earn money for themselves, higher wages lead to higher effort with... View Details

Keywords: Reference Points; Wage Elasticities; Labor Supply; Effor; Volunteering; Prosocial Behavior; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Nonprofit Organizations; Behavior

August 1993 (Revised August 2002)
Exercise

Work Methods Design Exercise

Teams of students receive identical product design specifications, a sample unit of the product, and a series of assignment questions that entail time and motion studies, which they must both understand and perform before class discussion. In class, teams explain how... View Details

Keywords: Resource Allocation; Product Development

21 Dec 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Wage Elasticities in Working and Volunteering: The Role of Reference Points in a Laboratory Study

Keywords: by Christine Exley & Stephen Terry

23 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn’t)

concept of "Enterprise 2.0"—a term coined by McAfee on the general idea of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used in business—popped up on Wikipedia, McAfee beamed. "I was bizarrely proud when my work rose to the level of inclusion in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

April 2023
Article

A Field Experiment on Subgoal Framing to Boost Volunteering: The Trade-off Between Goal Granularity and Flexibility

By: Aneesh Rai, Marissa A. Sharif, Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman and Angela L. Duckworth

Research suggests that breaking overarching goals into more granular subgoals is beneficial for goal progress. However, making goals more granular often involves reducing the flexibility provided to complete them, and recent work shows that flexibility can also be... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement

13 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 13

practices creating a learning and innovative organization; and tracking results in terms of the "four Rs" of retention, referrals, returns to labor, and relationships with customers. It shows "the culture cycle" at View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2007 (Revised February 2007)
Case

Wikipedia (A)

By: Karim R. Lakhani and Andrew P. McAfee

Wikipedia has emerged as a robust model for content production by volunteers working asynchronously on the Internet with a unconventional model for distributed decision making. The "Articles for Deletion" process in Wikipedia provides unique insight into the inner... View Details

Keywords: Information Publishing; Information Management; Internet and the Web; Information Technology; Globalization; Service Delivery; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Information Industry; Information Technology Industry

January 2015
Case

Marie Trellu-Kane at Unis-Cité: Establishing Youth Service in France

By: Julie Battilana, Michel Anteby and Anne-Claire Pache

Marie Trellu-Kane is trying to decide how Unis-Cité should respond to French President Jacques Chirac's announcement in 2005 of a new national voluntary civil service program. Since 1994, Trellu-Kane and her co-founders had been creating and overseeing a civil service... View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Leadership; Non-profit Management; Government And Business; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Design; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Social Enterprise; Paris

June 2007 (Revised December 2008)
Case

Marie Trellu-Kane at Unis-Cite

By: Michel Anteby, Julie Battilana and Anne-Claire Pache

Marie Trellu-Kane is trying to decide how Unis-Cite should respond to French President Jacques Chirac's announcement in 2005 of a new national voluntary civil service program. Since 1994, Trellu-Kane and her co-founders had been creating and overseeing a civil service... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Design; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Social Enterprise; Paris

July 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

The Robin Hood Army

By: Susanna Gallani

In 2014, Neel Ghose and a handful of friends spent one evening distributing excess food they had collected from local restaurants to the less fortunate people living under the Hauz Khas flyover in South Delhi. Four years later, this initiative had developed into The... View Details

Keywords: Volunteer-based Organization; Food Redistribution; Nonprofit Organizations; Food; Human Needs; Expansion; Global Range; Growth and Development

13 Feb 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 13, 2018

passionately for a global-historical approach to political ideas. To better understand the development of liberalism, he looked not only to the works of great thinkers but also to their reception and use amid revolution and interstate... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2013
Article

Opting-in: Participation Bias in Economic Experiments

By: Robert Slonim, Carmen Wang, Ellen Garbarino and Danielle Merrett

Assuming individuals rationally decide whether to participate or not to participate in lab experiments, we hypothesize several non-representative biases in the characteristics of lab participants. We test the hypotheses by first collecting survey and experimental data... View Details

Keywords: Participation Bias; Laboratory Experiments; Prejudice and Bias; Research

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August 2020
Case

Sangu Delle

By: Leslie Perlow and Matthew Preble

By 2020, Sangu Delle (MBA 2016) has already made significant progress towards his life-long goal of solving Africa’s myriad and diverse challenges. At 33 years old, he is the founder and chairman of the for-profit Golden Palm Investments Corporation, CEO of Africa... View Details

Keywords: Impact; Impact Investing; Mental Health; Social Capitalism; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Health Care and Treatment; Personal Development and Career; Health Industry; Africa

2009
Other Unpublished Work

When Weak Ties and Social Alternatives Benefit Organizational Commitment: Evidence from Wikipedia

This study examines the social mechanisms reinforcing participant commitment to collaborative work. Previous literature largely fails to acknowledge the wider context of individual workplace commitments, or suggests that multiple concurrent work and life commitments... View Details

Keywords: Social and Collaborative Networks

March 2010 (Revised February 2014)
Case

Community Health Workers in Zambia: Incentive Design and Management

By: Nava Ashraf and Natalie Kindred

This case examines the various considerations relevant to selecting and compensating workers in a context where their work involves a pro-social component. This is relevant to not only health care in Zambia, but to NGO and public sector workers who are both motivated... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Training; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Mission and Purpose; Non-Governmental Organizations; Motivation and Incentives; Health Industry; Zambia

Article

What Do Nongovernmental Organizations Do?

By: Eric D. Werker and Faisal Z. Ahmand

Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers... View Details

Keywords: Non-Governmental Organizations; Growth and Development; Welfare or Wellbeing; Poverty; Service Delivery; Crime and Corruption; Social Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Resource Allocation; Product Development; Framework

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2016
Chapter

Nudging as a Tool for Leaders

By: Max Bazerman

BOOK ABSTRACT: Jewish organizational life is inundated with publications on organizational change and effective leadership, but from mutually exclusive sources: business and organizational studies, on the one hand, and Jewish studies, on the other. One addresses... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Leadership; Civil Society or Community; Religion; Business and Community Relations