Negotiation, Organizations & Markets

- 2025
- Working Paper
The Invention of Corporate Governance

By: Yueran Ma and Andrei Shleifer

The analysis of corporate governance begins with a central feature of modern capitalism—the separation of ownership and control in large corporations—first empirically documented by Berle and Means (1932). Such separation entails several agency problems reflecting conflicts between managers and shareholders, such as self-dealing by managers, low effort, consumption of perquisites, and excessive growth and diversification. Berle and Means saw self-dealing as the central agency problem and stressed the law as the fundamental mechanism of addressing it. Jensen and Meckling (1976) considered the consumption of perquisites and emphasized private mechanisms, such as financial incentives for managers, to counter wasteful perks. Jensen (1986) instead focused on excessive growth and diversification, which led him to count on leverage and takeovers. The combination of public corporate governance mechanisms, mostly the law, and market governance shaped both theory and practice.
- 2025
- Working Paper
The Invention of Corporate Governance

By: Yueran Ma and Andrei Shleifer

The analysis of corporate governance begins with a central feature of modern capitalism—the separation of ownership and control in large corporations—first empirically documented by Berle and Means (1932). Such separation entails several agency problems reflecting conflicts between managers and shareholders, such as self-dealing by managers, low...
- March 2025
- Case
Bidding for the Bunker: Crown Wine Cellars’ Complex Negotiations

By: Alex Chan and Rachel Lau
- March 2025
- Case
Bidding for the Bunker: Crown Wine Cellars’ Complex Negotiations

By: Alex Chan and Rachel Lau
- March 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
ING Türkiye: Flexible Work in a Competitive Banking Environment

By: Ashley Whillans and Nico Schaefer

This case explores ING Türkiye’s journey toward workplace flexibility within the traditionally conservative Turkish banking sector. Beginning with early remote work experiments in 2015 and culminating in the FlexING model, by 2024 ING Türkiye had positioned itself as a digital-first bank that prioritized employee well-being and autonomy. The bank’s hybrid work model—supported by agile structures, customized benefits, and values-driven performance management—helped to attract talent and encourage cultural transformation. However, amid rising economic pressures, declining employee satisfaction, and growing competition from other banks offering flexible work options, ING Türkiye faced new strategic challenges. Managers found it increasingly difficult to coordinate teams, support development, and ensure fair performance evaluations in a less structured environment. As global and local trends shifted back toward office-centric norms, CEO Alper Gökgöz and his leadership team had to decide whether to maintain their flexible model or adapt it to meet emerging organizational and market demands.
- March 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
ING Türkiye: Flexible Work in a Competitive Banking Environment

By: Ashley Whillans and Nico Schaefer

This case explores ING Türkiye’s journey toward workplace flexibility within the traditionally conservative Turkish banking sector. Beginning with early remote work experiments in 2015 and culminating in the FlexING model, by 2024 ING Türkiye had positioned itself as a digital-first bank that prioritized employee well-being and autonomy. The...

About the Unit

The NOM Unit seeks to understand and improve the design and management of systems in which people make decisions: that is, design and management of negotiations, organizations, and markets. In addition, members of the group share an abiding interest in the micro foundations of these phenomena.

Our work is grounded in the power of strategic interaction to encourage individuals and organizations to create and sustain value (in negotiations, in organizations, and in markets). We explore these interactions through diverse approaches: Although many of us have training in economics, we also have members with backgrounds in social psychology, sociology, and law.

NOM seeks to apply rigorous scientific methods to real-world problems -- producing research and pedagogy that is compelling to both the academy and practitioners.

Recent Publications

The Invention of Corporate Governance

By: Yueran Ma and Andrei Shleifer

2025 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

The analysis of corporate governance begins with a central feature of modern capitalism—the separation of ownership and control in large corporations—first empirically documented by Berle and Means (1932). Such separation entails several agency problems reflecting conflicts between managers and shareholders, such as self-dealing by managers, low effort, consumption of perquisites, and excessive growth and diversification. Berle and Means saw self-dealing as the central agency problem and stressed the law as the fundamental mechanism of addressing it. Jensen and Meckling (1976) considered the consumption of perquisites and emphasized private mechanisms, such as financial incentives for managers, to counter wasteful perks. Jensen (1986) instead focused on excessive growth and diversification, which led him to count on leverage and takeovers. The combination of public corporate governance mechanisms, mostly the law, and market governance shaped both theory and practice.

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Law; Business and Shareholder Relations

Citation

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Bidding for the Bunker: Crown Wine Cellars’ Complex Negotiations

By: Alex Chan and Rachel Lau

March 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

ING Türkiye: Flexible Work in a Competitive Banking Environment

By: Ashley Whillans and Nico Schaefer

March 2025 (Revised May 2025) |
Case |
Faculty Research

This case explores ING Türkiye’s journey toward workplace flexibility within the traditionally conservative Turkish banking sector. Beginning with early remote work experiments in 2015 and culminating in the FlexING model, by 2024 ING Türkiye had positioned itself as a digital-first bank that prioritized employee well-being and autonomy. The bank’s hybrid work model—supported by agile structures, customized benefits, and values-driven performance management—helped to attract talent and encourage cultural transformation. However, amid rising economic pressures, declining employee satisfaction, and growing competition from other banks offering flexible work options, ING Türkiye faced new strategic challenges. Managers found it increasingly difficult to coordinate teams, support development, and ensure fair performance evaluations in a less structured environment. As global and local trends shifted back toward office-centric norms, CEO Alper Gökgöz and his leadership team had to decide whether to maintain their flexible model or adapt it to meet emerging organizational and market demands.

Citation

Educators

Intuition Robotics: An AI Companion for Older Adults (B)

By: Amit Goldenberg, Elie Ofek and Orna Dan

March 2025 |
Supplement |
Faculty Research

Two years after Intuition Robotics opted to pursue a business-to-government contract with the New York State Office of the Aging, and put direct-to-consumer efforts on the back burner, it was at a crossroads. The partnership had been successful, and the company had amassed promising data on the impact of ElliQ, the AI companion they had created to alleviate loneliness and social isolation among older adults. Now Intuition Robotics leadership had to decide whether to ramp up its existing strategy in the government sector, rekindle investment in the business-to-consumer market, or approach U.S. health plan providers to advance pilot programs with them. If they targeted health plan providers, they would need to determine whether to approach private or public plans. Given the company’s limited resources, leadership had to decide how to allocate their efforts across these diverging options, each of which demanded distinct expertise and focus.

Citation

Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions

By: Alison Wood Brooks and Michael Yeomans

March 2025 |
Article |
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Humans spend much of their lives in conversation, where they tend to hold many simultaneous motives. We examine two fundamental desires: to be responsive to a partner and to disclose about oneself. We introduce one pervasive way people attempt to reconcile these competing goals—boomerasking—a sequence in which individuals first pose a question to their conversation partner (“How was your weekend?”), let their partner answer, and then answer the question themselves (“Mine was amazing!”). The boomerask starts with someone asking a question, but—like a boomerang—the question returns quickly to its source. We document three types of boomerasks: ask-bragging (asking a question followed by disclosing something positive, e.g., an amazing vacation); ask-complaining (asking a question followed by disclosing something negative, e.g., a family funeral); and ask-sharing (asking a question followed by disclosing something neutral, e.g., a weird dream). Though boomeraskers believe they leave positive impressions, in practice, their decision to share their own answer—rather than follow up on their partner’s—appears egocentric and disinterested in their partner’s perspective. As a result, people perceive boomeraskers as insincere and prefer conversation partners who straightforwardly self-disclose.

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Motivation and Incentives; Perception; Behavior

Citation

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Does Communicating Measurable Diversity Goals Attract or Repel Historically Marginalized Job Applicants? Evidence from the Lab and Field

By: Erika L. Kirgios, Ike Silver and Edward H. Chang

March 2025 |
Article |
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Many organizations struggle to attract a demographically diverse workforce. How does adding a measurable goal to a public diversity commitment—for example, “We care about diversity” versus “We care about diversity and plan to hire at least one woman or racial minority for every White man we hire”—impact application rates from women and racial minorities? Extant psychological theory offers competing predictions about how historically marginalized applicants might respond to such goals. On one hand, measurable diversity goals may raise belongingness concerns among marginalized group members who are uncomfortable with being recruited and hired based on their demographics. On the other, measurable goals might increase organizational attraction by signaling that marginalized group members are more likely to be hired. In a preregistered field experiment (n = 5,557), including measurable diversity goals in job advertisements increased application likelihood among marginalized group members—women and racial minorities—by 6.5%, without sacrifices to candidate quality. These field effects were primarily driven by White women, who were 10.5% more likely to apply after seeing a measurable diversity goal. Follow-up studies with women (total n = 893, preregistered) and racial minorities (total n = 865, preregistered) suggest that although measurable diversity goals signal a more instrumental approach to diversity, they also increase perceived strategic benefits and beliefs that the organization’s commitment is genuine among both groups, which in turn are tied to increased willingness to apply. We discuss the tensions marginalized group members face when evaluating organizational diversity initiatives.

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Recruitment; Diversity; Goals and Objectives; Communication Intention and Meaning; Behavior

Citation

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Optimal Illiquidity

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

March 2025 |
Article |
Journal of Financial Economics

We study the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias with naive beliefs. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Collected penalties are rebated lump sum. When households have homogeneous present bias, , the social optimum is well approximated by a single account with an early-withdrawal penalty of 1 . When households have heterogeneous present bias, the social optimum is well approximated by a two-account system: (i) an account that is completely liquid and (ii) an account that is completely illiquid until retirement.

Keywords: Retirement; Financial Liquidity; Personal Finance; Saving

Citation

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Discrimination, Rejection, and Job Search

By: Anne Boring, Katherine Coffman, Dylan Glover and María José González-Fuentes

2025 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

We investigate how candidates’ willingness to apply responds to (potential) discrimination and rejection using a simulated labor market. Past work has shown that “blinding” job applications reduces discrimination and increases the rate at which women are hired. Our study asks, how do blinding interventions impact the supply of candidates? Participants in our large online experiment are assigned to the role of either a recruiter or a candidate for a technical coding task. Candidates provide their willingness to apply for the opportunity with a non-blind resume that provides a coarse signal of their skills alongside gender and age, or a blind resume that hides the demographic information. We find that blinding applications increases the rate at which counter-stereotypical candidates apply, revealing an important channel through which blinding interventions can broaden and diversify the pool of talent. Our study goes beyond initial applications to explore the downstream effects of blinding in markets where candidates receive feedback. We ask whether rejections resulting from a blind process have a different impact than non-blind rejections. The effect could go either way: potential discrimination having a particularly discouraging effect on future application behavior, or a blind rejection instead being a stronger signal of quality and therefore inducing greater deterrence. We find support for the latter channel. Blind rejections have a larger impact on future applications than non-blind rejections, particularly for women. As a result, while blinding initially reduces age and gender gaps in willingness to apply, the supply-side benefits of blinding are more muted after a rejection. This causal evidence on the net effects of blinding advances our understanding of a practice that is gaining popularity in the field.

Keywords: Job Search; Prejudice and Bias; Selection and Staffing; Demographics

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