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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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      • 23 Feb 2021
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Examining Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States

      The late 20th century saw dramatic growth in incarceration rates in the United States. Of the more than 2.3 million people in US prisons, jails, and detention centers in 2020, 60 percent were Black or Latinx. Harvard Business School assistant professor Reshmaan Hussam probes the assumptions underlying the current prison system, with its huge racial disparities, and considers what could be done to address the crisis of the American criminal justice system in her case, “Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      Read the Transcript

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      InformationRemove Information →

      New research on information from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including IT management, knowledge management, data mining, and analytics.
      Page 1 of 41 Results →
      • 24 Mar 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Free Riding in Loan Approvals: Evidence From SME Lending in Peru

      by Irani Arraiz, Miriam Bruhn, Benjamin N. Roth, Claudia Ruiz-Ortega, and Rodolfo Stucchi

      Using data from a large Peruvian bank trying to expand credit access to small and medium enterprises, this study shows that competing lenders use one another’s loan approvals as an input into their own approval process. Such “free riding” has great impact on market outcomes and might warrant policy intervention.

      • 11 Dec 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      When to Apply?

      by Katherine Coffman, Manuela Collis, and Leena Kulkarni

      Using a series of experiments, the authors studied gender differences in how job-seekers perceive their own qualifications for different opportunities and how this affects their decision to apply. Results suggest that soft touch employer interventions can improve the diversity of applicant pools even if candidate beliefs about their own ability are unchanged.

      • 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.

      • 28 Nov 2018
      • HBS Case

      On Target: Rethinking the Retail Website

      by Dina Gerdeman

      Target is one big-brand retailer that seems to have survived and even thrived in the apocalyptic retail landscape. What's its secret? Srikant Datar discusses the company's relentless focus on online data. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 06 Jun 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Complex Disclosure

      by Ginger Zhe Jin, Michael Luca, and Daniel Martin

      This study shows that companies looking to hide unfavorable information might strategically be making contract terms unnecessarily complex, harming consumers and undermining the effectiveness of disclosure. These results highlight a role for regulation that would encourage simpler forms of disclosure.

      • 30 Mar 2018
      • What Do You Think?

      What Should Mark Zuckerberg Do?

      by James Heskett

      SUMMING UP: Facebook doesn't necessarily need a better data-privacy policy, James Heskett's readers suggest. Instead, Mark Zuckerberg needs a new business model. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 23 Feb 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Trade Creditors' Information Advantage

      by Victoria Ivashina and Benjamin Iverson

      Trade credit represents about a quarter of the liabilities of US firms. There are several theories explaining this fact. This study reexamines whether suppliers hold private information about their trade partners, by analyzing their behavior in bankruptcy.

      • 11 Jan 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Brokers and Order Flow Leakage: Evidence from Fire Sales

      by Andrea Barbon, Marco Di Maggio, Francesco Franzoni, and Augustin Landier

      This study finds that brokers tend to reveal the occurrence of a fire sale to their best clients, allowing them to generate significant profits by predating on the liquidating fund. Such information leakage comes at the expense of higher price impact, and leads to a more costly liquidation for the fire sale originator.

      • 03 Nov 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Ideological Segregation among Online Collaborators: Evidence from Wikipedians

      by Shane Greenstein, Yuan Gu, and Feng Zhu

      This study analyzes the dynamics supporting or undermining segregated conversations. Among the findings: In spite of their great differences, contributors on Wikipedia tend to move toward less segregated conversations. Contributors’ positions become more neutral over time, not more extreme. In addition, the conflict resolution mechanisms and the mix of informal and formal norms at Wikipedia play an important role in encouraging a community that works toward a neutral point of view.

      • 29 Jun 2015
      • HBS Case

      Consumer-centered Health Care Depends on Accessible Medical Records

      by Dina Gerdeman

      There is a problem with medical records—they are scattered everywhere. John Quelch discusses approaches to integrate patient data so that medical professionals and patients can make better decisions. Open for comment; 13 Comment(s) posted.

      • 19 Jan 2015
      • Research & Ideas

      Is Wikipedia More Biased Than Encyclopædia Britannica?

      by Michael Blanding

      By identifying politically biased language in Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, Feng Zhu hopes to learn whether professional editors or open-sourced experts provide the most objective entries. Open for comment; 16 Comment(s) posted.

      • 26 Mar 2014
      • Research & Ideas

      How Electronic Patient Records Can Slow Doctor Productivity

      by Dina Gerdeman

      Electronic health records are sweeping through the medical field, but some doctors report a disturbing side effect. Instead of becoming more efficient, some practices are becoming less so. Robert Huckman's research explains why. Open for comment; 12 Comment(s) posted.

      • 10 Jun 2013
      • Research & Ideas

      How Numbers Talk to People

      In their new book Keeping Up with the Quants, Thomas H. Davenport and Jinho Kim offer tools to sharpen quantitative analysis and make better decisions. Read our excerpt. Open for comment; 3 Comment(s) posted.

      • 10 Dec 2012
      • Research & Ideas

      Why We Blab Our Intimate Secrets on Facebook

      by Carmen Nobel

      Leslie K. John and colleagues set out to discover the reason behind a common discrepancy: While many of us purport to be concerned about Internet privacy, we seem to have no worries about sharing our most intimate details on Facebook. Closed for comment; 15 Comment(s) posted.

      • 02 Aug 2012
      • Working Paper Summaries

      The Rich Get Richer: Enabling Conditions for Knowledge Use in Organizational Work Teams

      by Melissa A. Valentine, Bradley R. Staats & Amy C. Edmondson

      Individuals on the periphery of organizational knowledge-sharing networks, due to inexperience, location, or lack of social capital, may struggle to access useful knowledge at work. An electronic knowledge repository (KR) offers a practical solution to the challenges of making knowledge available to people who might otherwise lack access to relevant expertise. Such a system may function as a knowledge-access equalizer. However, the presence of a knowledge repository will not solve the problem of access to knowledge for those at the periphery of the organization unless it is used. In this paper, the authors begin to theorize the social and structural conditions that support KR use by exploring whether individuals on the organizational periphery take advantage of KRs, or whether KRs function more to enrich individuals whose experience and position already provide them better access to other knowledge sources. Using extensive data on KR use at a global, outsourced provider of software services, the authors' results show that despite the seeming promise of a KR to integrate or equalize peripheral players, it instead enriches knowledge access for people who are already well positioned. Findings thus suggest that KR use is not simply an individual activity based on need, but is instead enabled by certain social conditions (such as familiarity and experience) and inhibited by others (such as status disparities and remote location). An organizational KR thus fails to serve as an equalizer absent intervention. Key concepts include: There is a cautionary note for managers: In this study, KRs supported team performance by enriching the knowledge access of central players in the organization. KRs were less effective at ensuring much-needed access for those on the periphery. If individuals cannot get the knowledge that they need, then both their performance and their careers may suffer. Although some individuals are deployed into positions seen as organizationally necessary - such as remote offices or onto teams where they all may not know each other - in these positions they are less likely to make use of available organizational resources. There is a pattern of greater use of a KR and success for teams working in more supportive conditions. Individual and team characteristics enable people to support each other, make use of available resources, and perform effectively. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 30 Apr 2012
      • Research & Ideas

      India’s Ambitious National Identification Program

      by Dina Gerdeman

      The Unique Identification Authority of India has been charged with implementing a nationwide program to register and assign a unique 12-digit ID to every Indian resident—some 1.2 billion people—by 2020. In a new case, Professor Tarun Khanna and HBS India Research Center Executive Director Anjali Raina discuss the complexities of this massive data management project. Closed for comment; 30 Comment(s) posted.

      • 25 Apr 2012
      • What Do You Think?

      How Will the “Age of Big Data” Affect Management?

      Summing up: How do we avoid losing useful knowledge in a seemingly endless flood of data? Jim Heskett's readers offer some wise suggestions. What do you think? Closed for comment; 33 Comment(s) posted.

      • 06 Jan 2011
      • What Do You Think?

      How Should Management Deal With “Anonymous”?

      by James L. Heskett

      Summing Up When it comes to the leaky Web, Jim Heskett's readers say assume the worst and act accordingly. (New forum on February 3.) Closed for comment; 33 Comment(s) posted.

      • 06 Oct 2010
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Using What We Know: Turning Organizational Knowledge into Team Performance

      by Bradley R. Staats, Melissa A. Valentine & Amy C. Edmondson

      An organization's captured (and codified) knowledge--white papers, case studies, documented processes--should help project teams perform better, but does it? Existing research has not answered the question, even as U.S. companies alone spend billions annually on knowledge management programs. Looking at large-scale, objective data from Indian software developer Wipro, researchers Bradley R. Staats, Melissa A. Valentine, and Amy C. Edmondson found that team use of an organization's captured knowledge enhanced productivity, especially for teams that were geographically diverse, relatively low in experience, or performing complex work. The study did not find effects of knowledge use on the quality of the team's work, except for dispersed teams. Key concepts include: Using captured knowledge had a positive effect on the team's project efficiency (delivering on budget) but not on project quality (number of defects in the code). When use of knowledge was concentrated in a small number of team members, efficiency improved but quality declined. Knowledge use improved project efficiency but not quality for teams with less experience. For more dispersed teams, knowledge use was related to improved quality but not efficiency. Team knowledge use was related to improved efficiency and quality for teams completing more complex work. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 30 Aug 2010
      • Research & Ideas

      Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers

      by Julia Hanna

      To improve patient safety, hospitals hope their staff will use error-reporting systems. Question is, how can managers encourage employees to take the next step and ensure their constructive use? New research by Julia Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer, and HBS professor Michael W. Toffel. Key concepts include: Patient-safety information campaigns can help hospital staff do more than just report problems when they occur. Thanks to information campaigns, frontline workers increased the rate of suggesting constructive solutions to problems by 74 percent. The frequency increased even more when unit managers joined in problem solving. By serving as role models, managers who actively engage in problem solving can lead their frontline workers to create and share solutions. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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