- 05 May 2011
- Research & Ideas
How ‘Political Voice’ Empowers the Powerless
Women in India often are targets of verbal abuse, discrimination, and violent crimes—crimes that are underreported. Fortunately, an increase in female political representation seems to be giving female crime victims a voice in the criminal justice system, according to new research by Harvard Business School professor Lakshmi Iyer and colleagues. Key concepts include: Political representation of disadvantaged groups is an important means of giving them a voice in the criminal justice system. An Indian constitutional amendment enacted in 1993 mandated that at least one-third of council seats at the village, intermediate, or district level be filled by women. The rise in female representation empowered more women to report crimes. Female political representation also induced law enforcement officials to be more responsive to crimes against women. Similar results were found in crimes against Scheduled Castes—the so-called untouchables who have historically been at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. An increase in SC political representation led to an increase of documented crimes against the group. Women (or other minorities) might be better able to maximize their voice by increasing their representation more broadly, rather than targeting a few high-level positions. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 May 2011
- Research & Ideas
Is Web Surfing Distracting Your Workers?
If you think that banning web surfing at work will improve your employees' productivity, think again. In new research on the effects of temptation, HBS research fellow Marco Piovesan and colleagues found that the act of resisting temptation distracted subjects enough that their work performance actually suffered. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 03 May 2011
- First Look
First Look: May 3
Giving your employees small wins ... Reducing the pain for waiting customers ... Sorting for productivity Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 03 May 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, 1880-1930
In deducing why some nations are more developed than others, it makes sense to look at their educational systems. While comparative studies on the subject focus either on developed nations or on differences between developed and developing economies, this paper hones in four of the largest developing nations at the turn of the twentieth century: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Research was conducted by Aldo Musacchio of Harvard Business School, Laktika Chaundhary of Scripps College, Steven Nafziger of Williams College, and Se Yan of Peking University. Key concepts include: BRIC comprised half of the world's population in 1900, but only 14, 21, 9, and 4 percent of school-age children in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, respectively, were enrolled in primary school, compared with more than 75 percent in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In BRIC, decentralized political structures and lack of accountability led to situations in which public resources were funneled to educate the elites. Meanwhile, poor communities had to rely on insufficient private contributions to fund their schools. However, in many areas, the elites supported the expansion of mass education, either because they wanted to produce skilled labor for their companies or because they perceived political benefits from an educated population. Their results explain why it has been so hard for BRIC countries to catch up with the education levels developed countries in the twentieth century. While the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom had two hundred years to get to their current levels of education, BRIC countries had a late start. Additionally, the paper highlights the importance of having centralized education balancing education deficiencies in distant localities or in provinces in which elites that are not interested in educating the masses capture the government. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 03 May 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
How Do Risk Managers Become Influential? A Field Study of Toolmaking and Expertise in Two Financial Institutions
Most organizations have technical experts on staff—accountants, finance professionals, internal auditors, risk managers-but not all experts are listened to at higher levels. To understand how expert influence on strategic thinking can be increased, Matthew Hall, Anette Mikes, and Yuval Millo followed the organizational transformation of risk experts in two large UK banks. One transformation was successful, the other not. Are your experts merely "box-tickers," or are they influential "frame-makers"? Key concepts include: In the first bank, the transformation of the role of experts was a movement from tacit knowledge, communicable person-to-person, to tools-mediated, highly communicable knowledge that was evident from a variety of organizational documents, practices, and technologies, and embedded in the organization's decision-making processes. These transformed experts, called frame-makers, avoided detaching themselves completely from the resulting knowledge and maintained a high degree of personal involvement in producing analysis and interpretation while participating in executive decision-making. While toolmakers may be successful in becoming frame-makers they might also fall into one of three less influential roles: box-ticker, disconnected technician, or ad hoc advisor. The second bank saw a struggle between conflicting risk management worldviews, which ultimately divided the risk function, and prevented the risk managers from reaching the influential role of frame-makers. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 02 May 2011
- Research & Ideas
Casino Payoff: Hands-Off Management Works Best
Micromanagers beware: Research of casino hosts by Harvard Business School's Dennis Campbell and Francisco de Asís Martinez-Jerez and Rice's Marc Epstein makes the case that hands-off management can work to improve employee learning and decision making. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 28 Apr 2011
- Op-Ed
While Waiting for Japan’s Recovery, Let’s Enhance Supplier Competitiveness at Home
The Obama administration and US companies do not have to wait for Japanese suppliers to recover from earthquake damage, argues Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Action can be taken now to ensure that America invests in growing our domestic stock of world-class suppliers. Key concepts include: A national campaign to enhance supply-chain partnerships could ensure that America invests in growing our domestic stock of world-class suppliers—an action that could also accelerate job creation. Big companies should target high-potential small companies as suppliers, providing them training, access to domestic and international business opportunities, and lower supplier costs through pooled purchasing or insurance. Because the concept does not require every company to do the same thing, and in fact simply asks companies to increase their efforts to do things already in their portfolio, it does not involve complicated coordination. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 28 Apr 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
When Smaller Menus are Better: Variability in Menu-Setting Ability and 401(k) Plans
Economists love menus, which can be used to help understand people's choices. For example, do we prefer more choices (larger menu) or fewer (shorter menu)? But the menu itself has to be pre-selected. Research by David Goldreich (Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto) and Hanna Halaburda (Harvard Business School) focuses on the menu setter's decisions about what to include, and how large a menu to construct in the context of 401(k) plan choices. Key concepts include: When the cost of increasing the size of a menu is sufficiently small, a low-ability, or less skilled, menu setter will offer more items in the menu than a high-ability menu setter, who will be more discriminate in deciding which menu items to include. Combining the two results leads to a negative relation between menu size and menu quality: Larger menus are worse. This counterintuitive finding follows from the fact that the smaller menu set by the high-ability menu setter is not a subset of the larger menu set by the low-ability menu setter. One must be aware of the role played by menu setters in designing the menu offered to individuals. An unskilled menu setter may offer many choices, but the quality of those choices may be inferior. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 26 Apr 2011
- Op-Ed
HBS Faculty Comment on Environmental Issues for Earth Day
Harvard Business School faculty members offer their views on the many business facets of "going green." Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 26 Apr 2011
- First Look
First Look: April 26
How Customer Lifetime Value changes decision making … A Mexican health care startup considers changing its business model … Natural gas trade heats up. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 26 Apr 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity: An Open Innovation Analysis
Does experience with adopting technology improve a person's capacity for inventing better technology? On the other hand, does invention experience increase the capacity for adoption? This paper explores how adoption and invention affect each other, using data from several programming competitions sponsored by The MathWorks Corporation. Research was conducted by Andrew A. King of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and Karim R. Lakhani at Harvard Business School. Key concepts include: "Absorptive capacity," a term coined in the late twentieth century, refers to the general ability to recognize the value of new information, choose what to adopt, and apply it to innovation. In general, both invention and adoption experience will increase invention capacity and adoption capacity. The effect of adoption experience on invention capacity is especially dramatic; adoption provides alternative ideas that spark new ones. However, inventors with a great deal of prior invention experience have an especially hard time suddenly switching to a new design path, even if that's what the project requires. The researchers believe this is because such inventors are saddled with both their old ideas and their recent ones, and thus need more time to warm up to brand new ideas mid-stream. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Apr 2011
- Research & Ideas
What CEOs Do, and How They Can Do it Better
A CEO's schedule is especially important to a firm's financial success, which raises a few questions: What do they do all day? Can they be more efficient time managers? HBS professor Raffaella Sadun and colleagues set out to find some answers. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 21 Apr 2011
- Research & Ideas
Searching for Better Practices in Social Investing
Social change requires innovation, not just in organizational practices but in funding practices, as well. This was a key message at "Social Investing: Emerging Trends in a Changing Landscape," a recent panel discussion at Harvard Business School in which several professional philanthropists explored how best to support social change. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 20 Apr 2011
- Research & Ideas
Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think
Even when we think we are making principled decisions, recent research reveals we are not as ethical as we would like to believe. Professor Max H. Bazerman discusses his new book, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It. Plus: Book excerpt. Key concepts include: Good people do bad things without being aware that they are doing anything wrong. Motivational blindness is the tendency to not notice the unethical actions of others when it is against our own best interests to notice. The "want" self—that part of us that behaves according to self-interest and, often, without regard for moral principles—is silent during the planning stage of a decision but typically emerges and dominates at the time of the decision. Organizations can monitor how they are creating institutions, structures, and incentives that increase the likelihood of unethical actions, while individuals can "precommit" to intended ethical choices. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 19 Apr 2011
- First Look
First Look: April 19
Coca-Cola execs consider Facebook … Will PepsiCo's new metric convince retailers? … Market leaders and business process innovation. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 19 Apr 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
Top Executive Background and Financial Reporting Choice: The Case of Goodwill Impairment
In the management literature, some theories hold that corporate actions and strategic choices can be partially predicted by knowing the functional background of executives. The authors provide evidence on how CEOs and CFOs who were former investment bankers, auditors, and private equity/venture capital executives managed decisions around goodwill impairments (essentially goodwill charge-offs)—a complex accounting choice involving a high degree of managerial discretion. Research by HBS professor Francois Brochet and doctoral candidate Kyle Welch. Key concepts include: Results of the research suggest that executive functional background is a significant explanatory factor of goodwill impairment reporting, and that its effect is better understood in the context of upper echelons theory and agency theory. The results can help researchers explore the role of the individual manager in explaining financial reporting choices and also help them to control for executive-level characteristics when investigating determinants of goodwill impairments. Since executive background is an actionable variable for corporate boards, a better understanding of its role in executives' financial reporting choices can be informative to those who monitor executive reporting. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 18 Apr 2011
- Research & Ideas
It’s Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works
Managers who inundate their teams with the same messages, over and over, via multiple media, need not feel bad about their persistence. In fact, this redundant communication works to get projects completed quickly, according to new research by Harvard Business School professor Tsedal B. Neeley and Northwestern University's Paul M. Leonardi and Elizabeth M. Gerber. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Apr 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
The ‘IKEA Effect’: When Labor Leads to Love
Companies increasingly involve customers in the design and assembly of products, from Converse allowing customers to design their own shoes to IKEA asking customers to assemble their own furniture. In this paper researchers Michael I. Norton (Harvard Business School), Daniel Mochon (University of California at San Diego), and Dan Ariely (Duke) use the "IKEA Effect" to explain the increase in valuation we place on products we build ourselves. The researchers discuss the implications of the IKEA Effect for marketing managers and organizations more generally. Key concepts include: Successful assembly of products—no matter how amateurish—leads consumers to value them over and above the value that arises from merely purchasing a product. Labor increases valuation of completed products not just for consumers who profess an interest in "do-it-yourself" projects, but even for those who express a preference for buying preassembled products. Successful completion is an essential component for the link between labor and liking to emerge; participants who were not permitted to finish their creations did not show an increase in willingness-to-pay. The marketing challenge lies in convincing consumers to engage in the kinds of labor that will lead them to value products more highly, especially given their general aversion to such pursuits. The overvaluation that occurs as a result of the IKEA Effect has implications for organizations as a contributor to two key organizational pitfalls: sunk cost effects and the "not invented here" syndrome. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 12 Apr 2011
- First Look
First Look: April 12
Does mandatory CSR reporting work? … ActionAid International ... Partnering with the enemy. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
How Ethical Can We Be?
Summing Up Managers like to think they act ethically, but at the end of the day ethical action is subjective, readers tell Jim Heskett. Reaction to the new book Blind Spots. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.