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- November 12, 2021
- Editorial
The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload
By: Ashley Whillans, Dave Feldman and Damian Wisniewski
Everyone hates meetings. Attending too many can be highly stressful and tiring, and both productivity and quality take a hit when employees tune out, become demotivated, and lose valuable heads-down work time. As such, it’s hardly a surprise that managers in one survey...
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- Article
Fighting Bias on the Front Lines
By: Alexandra C. Feldberg and Tami Kim
Most companies aim for exceptional customer service, but too few are attentive to the subtle discrimination by frontline employees that can alienate customers, lead to lawsuits, or even cause lasting brand damage by going viral.
This article presents research... View Details
This article presents research... View Details
- November 2021
- Article
The Comprehensive Effects of Sales Force Management: A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Selection, Compensation, and Training
By: Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim and Byoung G. Park
This study provides a comprehensive model of an agent’s behavior in response to multiple sales management instruments, including compensation, recruiting/termination, and training. The model on agents’ behavior takes into account many of the key elements that...
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- Article
Using Fresh Starts to Nudge Increased Retirement Savings
By: John Beshears, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi
We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of framing future moments in time as new beginnings (or “fresh starts”). University employees (N=6,082) received mailings with an opportunity to choose between increasing their contributions to a savings plan...
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- 2020
- Article
Worry at Work: How Organizational Culture Promotes Anxiety
By: Jeremy A. Yip, Emma E. Levine, Alison Wood Brooks and Maurice E. Schweitzer
Organizational culture profoundly influences how employees think and behave. Established research suggests that the content, intensity, consensus, and fit of cultural norms act as a social control system for attitudes and behavior. We adopt the norms model of...
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Keywords:
Anxiety;
Norms;
Stress;
Culture;
Tightness-looseness;
Curvilinear;
Organizational Culture;
Emotions;
Performance
- October 28, 2021
- Article
Creating a Meaningful Corporate Purpose
By: Hubert Joly
Today, most company leaders believe that their companies’ larger purpose is to make a positive difference in the world—not just to maximize shareholder value. Defining a corporate why and making sure it guides decisions and operations has therefore become a cornerstone...
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- October 2021
- Case
Hospital 57357: Aligning Performance Towards a Vision of a Cancer-Free Childhood
By: Susanna Gallani and Youssef Abdel Aal
The case follows the Children Cancer Hospital in Egypt, also known as Hospital 57357, as it goes through the roll-out of a new performance management system, which Dr. Sherif Abouel Naga, founder and CEO of the hospital, had championed. This was a critical juncture as...
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- October 2021
- Case
The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats or Levelling Down?
By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi
Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country’s labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of...
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- October 13, 2021
- Editorial
How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now
By: Daniel Stein, Nick Hobson, Jon M. Jachimowicz and Ashley Whillans
A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in...
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- October 18, 2021
- Article
How to Reframe What Work Means to You
By: Hubert Joly
Our society often conceives of work as something we must endure so we can afford to do something else. The former CEO of Best Buy explains why this view has led to a crisis of engagement among leaders and employees alike, and offers a different model that he introduced...
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- October 2021
- Background Note
How to Write an Action-Planning Memo
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Akshaya Varghese
The ability to communicate an action plan through writing is essential for advancing ideas, earning credibility, and garnering support. Research has shown that leaders who write formal plans are more likely to execute successfully—written plans help members of an...
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- September 28, 2021
- Editorial
A Guide to Implementing the 4-Day Workweek: Working Less Can Reduce Employees' Stress—Without Sacrificing Productivity
By: Ashley Whillans and Charlotte Lockhart
As organizations continue to explore a variety of flexible work options, one promising avenue is the four-day workweek: The standard 40 hours per week is reduced to 32 hours, with the same pay and the same productivity expectations. Research suggests reducing hours can...
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- September 2021
- Case
Brown Capital Management
By: Luis M. Viceira, Emily R. McComb and Sarah Mehta
Set in July 2021, this case looks at several growth strategies under consideration at Brown Capital, the second-oldest Black-owned asset management firm in the U.S. Since its 1983 founding, Baltimore-based Brown Capital has specialized in small company growth...
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Keywords:
Business Growth and Maturation;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Diversity;
Race;
Finance;
Equity;
Public Equity;
Stocks;
Financial Management;
Financial Strategy;
Investment;
Investment Portfolio;
Employee Stock Ownership Plan;
Recruitment;
Retention;
Selection and Staffing;
Employee Ownership;
Strategy;
Financial Services Industry;
United States;
Maryland;
Baltimore
- September 2, 2021
- Article
The Digital Economy Runs on Open Source. Here's How to Protect It.
By: Hila Lifshitz-Assaf and Frank Nagle
Free and open source software (FOSS) is essential to much of the tech we use every day—from cars to phones to planes to the cloud. While traditionally, it was developed by an army of volunteer developers and given away for free, companies are increasingly taking a more...
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- Article
Elevate Employees, Don't Eliminate Them
By: Ryan W. Buell
The last major global shock—the 2008 recession—led to what economists call a “jobless recovery” as companies found they could get by with fewer employees. But post-pandemic, the author writes, managers should focus on changing employees’ roles instead. He has five key...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Employee Ownership and Wealth Inequality: A Path to Reducing Wealth Concentration
By: Thomas Dudley and Ethan Rouen
This paper examines the impact of an economy-wide shift to broad-based employee ownership on wealth concentration in the United States. Relying on government data, we show that if all private firms became 30% employee-owned, the wealth distribution would be profoundly...
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- 2021
- Book
Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael Tushman
Why do successful firms find it so difficult to adapt in the face of change—to innovate? In the past ten years, the importance of this question has increased as more industries and firms confront disruptive change. The pandemic has accelerated this crisis, collapsing...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Shared Models in Networks, Organizations, and Groups
By: Joshua Schwartzstein and Adi Sunderam
Why did the market rise yesterday? What are the implications of the latest school shooting? Why did a particular employee get promoted? To answer such questions, we often exchange models, stories, narratives, and interpretations with others. This paper provides a...
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- Article
Unconscious Bias Training That Works
By: Francesca Gino and Katherine Coffman
To become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, many companies have turned to unconscious bias (UB) training. By raising awareness of the mental shortcuts that lead to snap judgments—often based on race and gender—about people’s talents or character, it strives to...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and Georgios Serafeim
We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization...
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