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Decision Choices and ConditionsRemove Decision Choices and Conditions →

New research on decision choices and conditions from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including the hidden biases affecting decision making, the drawback of discrete choice models, and whether judgement trumps experience.
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How Do CEOs Make Strategy?

by Mu-Jeung Yang, Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and Jan Rivkin

A study of 262 Harvard Business School-educated CEOs traces differences in strategic decision-making across managers. CEOs leading larger, faster-growing firms tend to make highly structured strategic decisions and use more analytical deliberation. Management education has long-lasting effects on decision-making.

'Repayment-by-Purchase' Helps Consumers to Reduce Credit Card Debt

by Grant E. Donnelly, Cait Lamberton, Stephen Bush, Zoe Chance, and Michael I. Norton

Many consumers fail to pay off credit card debt each month and suffer financial consequences. Repayment-by-purchase, allocating payment toward specific purchases on a credit card bill, helps consumers gain a sense of progress and control over credit card debt.

What the Stockdale Paradox Tells Us About Crisis Leadership

by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

The Stockdale Paradox and survival psychology contain wisdom for how leaders can manage the coronavirus crisis, according to Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

It’s Time to Reset Decision-Making in Your Organization

by Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott

Clear decision-making in a crisis depends on sound methodology and gathering information from a variety of sources. Advice from Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

The Bulletproof Glass Effect: When Privacy Notices Backfire

by Aaron R. Brough, David A. Norton, and Leslie John

Consumers regularly encounter privacy notices explaining if and how their personal information will be collected, stored, used, and shared. Evidence in this study demonstrates that privacy notices, though designed to promote a sense of confidence that personal data will not be misused, can undermine consumer trust and decrease purchase intent.

How to Turn Down the Boil on Group Conflict

by Michael Blanding

Intergroup conflict can grind office productivity to a halt. Jeffrey Lees discusses how understanding psychological stereotypes can help divided parties compromise. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Can These Business Students Motivate Londoners to Do the Right Thing?

by Dina Gerdeman

In the Harvard Business School course Behavioral Insights, students work in the UK with psychology experts to understand what motivates consumers and workers. What they learn can help businesses of all types, says Michael Luca. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Memory and Representativeness

by Pedro Bordalo, Katherine Baldiga Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli, Frederik Schwerter, and Andrei Shleifer

We explore the foundations of individuals’ probabilistic judgments, looking to better understand the sources of systematic errors. We conduct a laboratory experiment where participants view abstract images and are then asked to recall what they saw. We find evidence that interference in episodic memory contributes to biased probabilistic judgments.

How To Ask Better Questions

by Kristen Senz

To make the best decisions, managers must ask the right questions. This collection of past studies by Harvard Business School researchers will help you gather the critical information needed to prepare for action. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Judgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry

by Hong Luo, Jeffrey T. Macher, and Michael Wahlen

Selecting early-stage ideas in creative industries is challenging because consumer taste is hard to predict and the quantity to sift through is large. Using The Black List that ranks scripts annually based on nominations from film executives, this study shows that aggregating expert opinions helps reduce quality uncertainty and can influence high-budget production.

The Hidden Cost of a Product Recall

by Danielle Kost

Product failures create managerial challenges for companies but market opportunities for competitors, says Ariel Dora Stern. The stakes have only grown higher. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

'Always On' Isn't Always Best for Team Decision-Making

by Roberta Holland

Is it possible for teams to communicate too frequently? Research by Ethan Bernstein and colleagues suggests that groups that meet less often may be better at problem-solving. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Say Again? Uncommon Advice for Common Business Problems

by Sean Silverthorne

Sometimes the right answer is far from obvious. Learn why an introvert may be the best choice to lead your team, taking a pay cut might make you a better manager, and why you should not trust your gut when the pressure is on. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Developing Novel Drugs

by Joshua Krieger, Danielle Li, and Dimitris Papanikolaou

This paper contributes to our understanding of how financing constraints affect the direction of innovation in drug development. The authors develop a new measure of drug novelty based on molecular characteristics, and explore the tradeoffs involved in decisions to develop more novel therapies. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Come Together: Firm Boundaries and Delegation

by Laura Alfaro, Nick Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew F. Newman, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen

The study develops a simple model and provides new data to examine the relationship between vertical integration and delegation of decision-making, two critical aspects of a firm organizational design that are typically studied in isolation. The results show that delegation and vertical integration are positively correlated.

Why Employers Favor Men

by Dina Gerdeman

Why are women discriminated against in hiring decisions? Research by Katherine Coffman, Christine Exley, and Muriel Niederle finds the answer is more subtle than expected. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp

by Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth, and Oliver Tercieux

TCC (Top Trading Cycles) and DA (deferred acceptance) are the two main algorithms for priority-based resource allocation. In 2012, the New Orleans school system tried to use TCC for school assignments, but dropped it after one year. The authors of this paper compared data from New Orleans and Boston in order to review designs and algorithms for better school assignment systems.

The Impact of Campus Scandals on College Applications

by Michael Luca, Patrick Rooney, and Jonathan Smith

This paper explores the prevalence and impact of negative incidents at top United States colleges covered in the media, looking at data from 2001 through 2013. During this period, the authors identified 124 widely covered scandals. Scandals lead to large reductions in applications; a scandal covered in a long-form article has roughly the same impact on applications as a 10-ranking drop in the influential US News and World Report College Rankings.

The Surprising Benefits of Oversharing

by Michael Blanding

In a social media culture that encourages sharing of embarrassing information, revealing too much can benefit individuals but hurt businesses. New research papers from Leslie John and Michael Luca help explain why. Open for comment; 10 Comment(s) posted.

Why Unqualified Candidates Get Hired Anyway

by Anna Secino

Why do businesses evaluate candidates solely on past job performance, failing to consider the job's difficulty? Why do university admissions officers focus on high GPAs, discounting influence of easy grading standards? Francesca Gino and colleagues investigate the phenomenon of the "fundamental attribution error." Closed for comment; 24 Comment(s) posted.