workplace relationships - Publications - Faculty & Research

August 2024
Technical Note

Managing Professional Relationships in the Modern Workplace

By: Christina R. Wing, Andrew Peddar and Dylan Torchinsky

25 Mar 2025
News

How to Mend Workplace Relationships After Microaggressions

It Takes Two to Untangle: Illuminating How and Why Some Workplace Relationships Adapt While Others Deteriorate after a Workplace Microaggression

Although scholars largely assume that workplace microaggressions negatively impact the work relationship between the target and the perpetrator, relational deterioration is not the only observable relational outcome. Indeed, there are instances of relational... View Details

Research Summary

The Unexpected Effects of Workplace Connectivity

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

While investigating how workplace transparency and privacy shape organizational behavior and performance, I wondered about the related effects of workplace connectivity. As new digital tools and organizational forms make it far easier for employees to communicate... View Details

Keywords: Human Behavior; Performance; Virtual Work; Hybrid Work; Office Space; Workplace Design; Organizations; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Networks; Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks; Communication

07 May 2014
Video

2014 G&WS: Robin Ely Presents "Women's Workplace Relationships in the Context of Gender Inequality "

Forthcoming
Article

It Takes Two to Untangle: Illuminating How and Why Some Workplace Relationships Adapt While Others Deteriorate After a Workplace Microaggression

By: Summer R. Jackson and Basima A. Tewfik

Although scholars largely assume that workplace microaggressions negatively impact the work relationship between the target and the perpetrator, relational deterioration is not the only observable relational outcome. Indeed, there are instances of relational... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Interpersonal Communication; Motivation and Incentives; Relationships; Conflict and Resolution

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Article

The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States

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

Even though epidemiological evidence links specific workplace stressors to health outcomes, the aggregate contribution of these factors to overall mortality and health spending in the United States is not known. In this paper, we build a model to estimate the excess... View Details

Keywords: Occupational Health; Health Costs; Mortality; Applied Optimization; Health

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20 Aug 2015
News

Note to Amazon: Run More Tests on Workplace Practices

Keywords: Amazon; data testing; workplace environment; best practices

Research Summary

Workplace Ethics and Global Business Standards

By: Rohit Deshpande

This research grows out of initial collaborative research with Joshua Margolis and Lynn Paine on the relationship between codes of conduct and corporate performance. This work was reported in Harvard Business Review articles in 2005 and 2011. More recent research... View Details

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

16 Mar 2021
News

Workplace Design, Post-Pandemic

Research Summary

Building Effective Relationships Across Cultures

Trust is the foundation of any successful collaborative relationship. In my first stream of research, I draw on the basic distinction between cognition-based versus affect-based trust– that is, trust from the head versus trust from the heart – to better... View Details

29 Oct 2020
News

Safe Workplaces

Keywords: Remote work

01 Sep 2012
News

A Silent Workplace Crisis

Benvenuti Photo courtesy Janet Simpson Benvenuti Although I didn’t realize it until much later, my life changed the day I agreed to become legally responsible for my 78-year-old father and my 77-year-old mother, who suffered from lung cancer and Alzheimer’s disease,... View Details

Keywords: Janet Simpson Benvenuti; caregiving; aging; Nursing and Residential Care Facilities; Health, Social Assistance

19 Aug 2014
News

A Post-Maternity Leave Survival Guide

Keywords: motherhood; maternity leave; workplace relationships; emotions; psychology

Article

How to Get the Most Out of Peer Support Groups: A Guide to the Benefits and Best Practices

By: Boris Groysberg and Robert Russman Halperin

For years business leaders have turned to peer forums—groups of four to 10 people with similar interests who meet regularly for confidential conversations—to share their problems, find support and insights, and learn and grow. But because such forums are small and... View Details

Keywords: Peer Comparison; Support; Workplace; Peer Relationships; Personal Development and Career

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10 Mar 2020
News

The Little-Understood Problem Confronting Diverse Workplaces

09 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity

intercultural disharmony, says Chua. "It is inevitable to have conflict when you bring people from different cultural backgrounds together," he says. "It's about how you manage the conflict. A lot of times managers try to put together a multicultural View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

10 Mar 2021
Blog Post

COVID Killed the Traditional Workplace

again? Should companies do away with Zoom and return the workplace to its pre-COVID ways? The answer, in a word: No. At least that’s not the future of work envisioned by several members of the Harvard Business School faculty—all of whom... View Details

Keywords: All Industries