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    • COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      Cold Call
      A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
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      • 05 Jan 2021
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Using Behavioral Science to Improve Well-Being for Social Workers

      For child and family social workers, coping with the hardships of children and parents is part of the job. But that can cause a lot of stress. Is it possible for financially constrained organizations to improve social workers’ well-being using non-cash rewards, recognition, and other strategies from behavioral science? Assistant Professor Ashley Whillans describes the experience of Chief Executive Michael Sanders’ at the UK’s What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, as he led a research program aimed at improving the morale of social workers in her case, “The What Works Centre: Using Behavioral Science to Improve Social Worker Well-being.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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      Decision Choices and ConditionsRemove Decision Choices and Conditions →

      Page 1 of 33 Results →
      • 17 Dec 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 06 Dec 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      '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.

      • 17 Aug 2020
      • Research & Ideas

      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.

      • 09 Jul 2020
      • Research & Ideas

      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.

      • 13 Apr 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 12 Dec 2019
      • Research & Ideas

      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.

      • 24 Jul 2019
      • Lessons from the Classroom

      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.

      • 03 Jun 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 02 May 2019
      • Sharpening Your Skills

      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.

      • 27 Feb 2019
      • Research & Ideas

      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.

      • 27 Feb 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 12 Nov 2018
      • Research & Ideas

      '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.

      • 19 Sep 2018
      • Sharpening Your Skills

      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.

      • 09 Feb 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 08 Jan 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 11 Sep 2017
      • Research & Ideas

      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.

      • 14 Jun 2017
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 05 Jul 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      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.

      • 01 Jun 2015
      • Research & Ideas

      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.

      • 25 Jul 2013
      • Research & Ideas

      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.

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