Discretion Within the Constraints of Opportunity: Gender Homophily and Structure in a Formal Organization
| Authors: | Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart, and Michael L. Tushman |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 27, 2012 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Research has demonstrated that people associate most with others who are similar to themselves, including others of the same sex. What are the implications of such patterns for organizations? This study, written by Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart, and Michael L. Tushman, offers evidence of how and by whom formal lateral structures serve to link together an otherwise siloed organization. Analyzing millions of e-mail interactions among tens of thousands of employees of a single large firm, the researchers find that it is women more than men who tend to bridge formal structural boundaries in organizations. Thus women play a potentially valuable role in creating ties throughout an otherwise siloed multidivisional corporation. Despite the influence of a firm's formal organizational structure, people often have plenty of discretion to exercise choice. Same-sex interaction results from discretionary choice within the boundaries of the firm's opportunity structure. These results suggest (but do not prove) that same-sex interaction especially by woman can help to span formal organizational boundaries that are otherwise difficult to traverse. The findings raise questions for future research about whether conventional wisdoms regarding gender differences in social network structure remain accurate in current-day organizations.
Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty
| Authors: | Max H. Bazerman and Francesca Gino |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 26, 2012 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2012 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
What makes even good people cross ethical boundaries? Society demands that business and professional schools address ethics, but the results have been disappointing. This paper argues that a behavioral approach to ethics is essential because it leads to understanding and explaining moral and immoral behavior in systematic ways. The authors first define business ethics and provide an admittedly biased history of the attempts of professional schools to address ethics as a subject of both teaching and research. They next briefly summarize the emergence of the field of behavioral ethics over the last two decades, and turn to recent research findings in behavioral ethics that could provide helpful directions for a social science perspective to ethics. These new findings on both intentional and unintentional unethical behavior can inform new courses on ethics as well as new research investigations. Such new directions can meet the demands of society more effectively than past attempts of professional schools. They can also produce a meaningful and significant change in the behavior of both business school students and professionals.
Published in 2011
It's Alive!: Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research
| Published: | December 5, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 4 Comments posted |
Business researchers are turning increasingly to experiments in the lab and field to unlock the secrets of what motivates CEOs, consumers, and policymakers.
Fairness, Efficiency, and Flexibility in Organ Allocation for Kidney Transplantation
| Authors: | Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias, and Nikolaos Trichakis |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 28, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
For many people who suffer end-stage renal disease, a kidney transplant is considered a potentially life-saving gift. Allocation policies for kidneys from deceased donors are thus of central importance and have to accomplish major objectives in alleviating human suffering, prolonging life, and providing nondiscriminatory, fair, and equal access to organs for all patients. In this paper, the authors focused on national allocation policies in the United States and the recent effort to revise the current policy. Their design of a national allocation policy focuses on perhaps the simplest, most common and currently used priority method, namely a point system. They also present four case studies in which they designed new policies under different scenarios.
Better-reply Dynamics in Deferred Acceptance Games
| Authors: | Guillaume Haeringer and Hanna Halaburda |
|---|---|
| Published: | June 29, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
There's an inherent problem in the market design theory known as mechanism design, in that the players in the market may not understand the design, and thus may make bad choices until they learn to work the system better. This paper explores the issue of learning the design. It focuses on a particular mechanism, the Deferred Acceptance algorithm for two-sided matching markets, which is used in many real-life markets. Research was conducted by Guillaume Haeringer of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Hanna Halaburda of Harvard Business School.
Is Web Surfing Distracting Your Workers?
| Published: | May 4, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 10 Comments posted |
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.
The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India
| Authors: | Lakshmi Iyer, Anandi Mani, Prachi Mishra, and Petia Topalova |
|---|---|
| Published: | April 5, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2011 (Revised July 2011) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Protecting the rights of disadvantaged citizens remains a challenge in both developing and developed countries. These individuals often are targets of verbal abuse, discrimination, and violent crime. Using evidence from India, this paper shows that political representation of disadvantaged groups is an important means of giving them a voice in the criminal justice system. Research was conducted by Lakshmi Iyer of Harvard Business School, Anandi Mani of the University of Warwick, and Prachi Mishra and Petia Topalova of the International Monetary Fund.
Individual Rationality and Participation in Large Scale, Multi-Hospital Kidney Exchanges
| Authors: | Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 24, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
As kidney exchange moves from local networks to a national level, a new set of problems arises. One central issue, for example, is how individual hospitals can be motivated to participate. This paper by Itai Ashlagi (Sloan School of Management, MIT) and Alvin E. Roth (Harvard Business School) provides a theoretical framework to study and overcome the kinds of problems that can be anticipated.
Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions
| Author: | Alvin E. Roth |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 17, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | November 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Certain markets face the problem of "unraveling," in which competition for good talent leads a firm to make job offers earlier and earlier, without sufficient knowledge about any given applicant—and in which applicants are forced to decide whether to accept a job before they really know much about working for that firm. Harvard Business School professor Alvin E. Roth discusses how this issue affects the labor markets for new lawyers and gastroenterology fellows, as well as the market for postseason college football bowls.
To What Degree Does the Job Make the Person?
| Published: | March 10, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | What Do YOU Think? |
| Forum: | closed | 41 Comments posted |
Summing Up: Jobs shape us as much as we shape our jobs, Jim Heskett's readers suggest.
From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America
| Authors: | Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 4, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
No transformation looks more consequential for the history of American higher education than the extraordinary rise of business schools and business degrees in the twentieth century. Marion Fourcade (UC Berkeley) and Rakesh Khurana (HBS) analyze the changing place of economics in American business education as reflected in the teaching of three elite business schools over the course of the twentieth century: the Wharton School (1900-1930), the Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration (post World War II), and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago (1960s-present).
How Foundations Think: The Ford Foundation as a Dominating Institution in the Field of American Business Schools
| Authors: | Rakesh Khurana, Kenneth Kimura, and Marion Fourcad |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 1, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
What causes institutions to change? This paper adds organizational and exogenous perspective to existing theories by looking at the idea of "dominating institutions"—a class of formal organizations purposively designed to change other institutions. HBS professor Rakesh Khurana and colleagues look at the Ford Foundation and its work reshaping America's graduate schools of management between 1952 and 1965 through funding of "centers of excellence" at a number of schools, including Harvard Business School.
Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs about Others
| Authors: | Rafael Di Tella and Ricardo Pérez-Truglia |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 26, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
This paper explores the idea that people who can take advantage of a particular situation will tend to believe that others would choose to take advantage of the same situation if given the chance-thus helping to justify the decision to act selfishly. In their research, Harvard Business School professor Rafael Di Tella and Harvard PhD student Ricardo Pérez-Truglia test their hypothesis on a group of well-heeled Argentinean college students, using a modified version of the "dictator game" in which both the "dictators" and the "recipients" are given the chance to make a selfish choice.
Testing Coleman's Social-Norm Enforcement Mechanism: Evidence from Wikipedia
| Authors: | Mikolaj J. Piskorski and Andreea Gorbatai |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 20, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
| Forum: | open for comment; 4 Comments posted |
Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and doctoral candidate Andreea Gorbatai look to the editing process on Wikipedia to test and validate the well-accepted (but little-verified) theory of sociologist James Coleman that social norm violations decline as network density increases. Support for Coleman's mechanism would alert us to the importance of punishments for norm violations and rewards for such punishments, and thus help us to design social systems in which norms are observed.
Published in 2010
Cognitive Barriers to Environmental Action: Problems and Solutions
| Authors: | Lisa L.Shu and Max H. Bazerman |
|---|---|
| Published: | December 15, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | November 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Researchers have long studied the cognitive barriers that cloud our thinking and decision-making. In a recent book chapter, HBS doctoral student Lisa L. Shu and professor Max H. Bazerman look at three barriers that can prevent clear decision-making, specifically on environmental issues. They also propose ways in which these biases could be put to advantage in promoting sound environmental policy and practice.
Making Right Choices: Art or Science?
| Published: | December 2, 2010 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | What Do YOU Think? |
| Forum: | closed | 46 Comments posted |
Summing Up Is choice an art or science? Jim Heskett's readers wonder whether the question is the right one to ask. (Online forum has closed; next forum opens January 6.)
Prosocial Spending and Well-Being: Cross-Cultural Evidence for a Psychological Universal
| Authors: | Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh, John Helliwell, Robert Biswas-Diener, Imelda Kemeza, Paul Nyende, Claire Ashton-James, and Michael I. Norton |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 27, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Can money buy happiness? Apparently it can--if that money is spent on someone else. New research shows that people around the world gain emotional benefits from using their financial resources to benefit others. The research, which included data from 136 countries, was conducted by Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh, and John Helliwell, University of British Columbia; Robert Biswas-Diener, Centre of Applied Positive Psychology; Imelda Kemeza, Mbarara University of Science & Technology; Paul Nyende, Makerere University; Claire Ashton-James, University of Groningen; and Michael I. Norton, Harvard Business School.
The Consumer Appeal of Underdog Branding
| Q&A with: | Anat Keinan |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 13, 2010 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | closed | 21 Comments posted |
Research by HBS professor Anat Keinan and colleagues explains how and why a "brand biography" about hard luck and fierce determination can boost the power of products in industries as diverse as food and beverages, technology, airlines, and automobiles.
What Top Scholars Say about Leadership
| Q&A with: | Rakesh Khurana |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 10, 2010 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
As a subject of scholarly inquiry, leadership—and who leaders are, what makes them tick, how they affect others—has been neglected for decades. The Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, edited by Harvard Business School's Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana, brings together some of the best minds on this important subject. Q&A with Khurana, plus book excerpt.
Why Do Firms Use Non-Linear Incentive Schemes? Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Overconfidence
| Authors: | Ian Larkin and Stephen Leider |
|---|---|
| Published: | April 21, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The use of "non-linear" performance-based incentive contracts is very common in many business environments. The most well-known example is salesperson compensation, though many other types of performance-based pay, including stock options, bonus systems based on defined metrics, and pay based on subjective performance, often exhibit non-linear characteristics. Research has demonstrated that non-linear incentives are highly distortionary because employees manipulate their work in order to maximize their pay. While some scholars have recommended that companies stop using non-linear incentives, little research has been done to investigate the possible benefits of non-linear schemes. In this paper, HBS professor Ian Larkin and Ross School of Business professor Stephen Leider (HBS PhD '09) explore the role that the behavioral bias of overconfidence may play in explaining the prevalence of non-linear incentive schemes. They conclude that the linearity or non-linearity of an incentive system could play an important role in sorting employees according to their level of confidence; in addition, there may be three possible benefits to having overconfident employees.
