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Show Results For
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All HBS Web
(681)
- News (93)
- Research (502)
- Events (4)
- Multimedia (3)
- Faculty Publications (132)
- 28 Aug 2023
- Research & Ideas
How Workplace Wellness Programs Can Give Employees the Energy Boost They Need
While companies may tout their wellness programs as a way of investing in their employees’ well-being, many are overly focused on reducing healthcare costs, so they tend to offer step challenges and gym discounts that workers don’t have...
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by Hise Gibson
- 17 Sep 2012
- Research & Ideas
Blue Skies, Distractions Arise: How Weather Affects Productivity
Autumn has sprung, and the cold, dreary days of winter are around the corner. But take heart, wistful sun lovers. It turns out that lousy weather is actually good for business operations. A new research paper reports that a decrease in sunny weather is directly related...
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by Carmen Nobel
- December 2015
- Background Note
Incentive Systems
By: Brian J. Hall
This note serves as a supplement to any course on incentive design within organizations. The note focuses on the principal difficulties in designing incentive systems, including the tradeoff between objective and subjective performance metrics, how to design incentive...
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Keywords:
Organizational Strategy;
Compensation and Benefits;
Motivation and Incentives;
Performance Evaluation;
Strategy
Hall, Brian J. "Incentive Systems." Harvard Business School Background Note 916-029, December 2015.
- 22 Oct 2021
- Research & Ideas
Want Hybrid Work to Succeed? Trust, Don’t Track, Employees
workers over the past several months, Neeley says managers should keep three things in mind as they develop long-term plans for hybrid work. 1. Trust in employee autonomy While working from home, employees have enjoyed an unprecedented...
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by Michael Blanding
- 27 Feb 2023
- Research & Ideas
How One Late Employee Can Hurt Your Business: Data from 25 Million Timecards
deviations on the performance of individual stores in a new study. “One employee being late or absent can negatively affect not only store operations, but also their coworkers by making them stay to make up for the lost labor.” Ananth...
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- 29 Nov 2021
- Research & Ideas
How Bonuses Get Employees to Choose Work Over Family
pay—and that has the potential to lay the groundwork for an overworked, unhappy existence, according to research by Ashley Whillans, an assistant professor in Harvard Business School’s Negotiation, Organizations, and Markets Unit. The research shows that View Details
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by Rachel Kim Raczka
- May 2012
- Article
Incentive Schemes, Sorting and Behavioral Biases of Employees: Experimental Evidence
By: Ian Larkin and Stephen Leider
We investigate how the convexity of a firm's incentives interacts with worker overconfidence to affect sorting decisions and performance. We demonstrate experimentally that overconfident employees are more likely to sort into a non-linear incentive scheme over a linear...
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Keywords:
Motivation and Incentives;
Performance;
Behavior;
Prejudice and Bias;
Decisions;
Employees;
Wages
Larkin, Ian, and Stephen Leider. "Incentive Schemes, Sorting and Behavioral Biases of Employees: Experimental Evidence." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 4, no. 2 (May 2012).
- 06 Jun 2018
- Research & Ideas
Cut Salaries or Cut People? The Best Way to Survive a Downturn
eugeniek Companies looking to shed costs in an economic downturn rarely cut compensation—typically, they slash jobs instead. New research confirms the wisdom of that decision. The study concludes that when a company cuts employee pay the best View Details
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by Rachel Layne
- 24 Aug 2020
- Research & Ideas
How Much Will Remote Work Continue After the Pandemic?
Are remote workers less productive? While past research suggests that many American workers could successfully perform their jobs from outside the office, companies have been...
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by Kristen Senz
- 01 Nov 2022
- Research & Ideas
A Penny for Your Thoughts? For Big-Picture Ideas, the Right Pay Structure Matters
to focus employees on a particular task and base their pay on the workers’ performance need to be aware of the potential tradeoff when it comes to the willingness of workers to develop innovative ideas, she...
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by Scott Van Voorhis
- October 2013 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American (A)
By: Gautam Mukunda, Lisa Mazzanti and Aldo Sesia
In 2007, Cynthia Carroll, the newly-appointed chief executive of mining giant Anglo American, was considering shutting down mines in South Africa for safety reasons, namely worker fatalities. No company had ever done so before. Carroll felt that operating a company...
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Keywords:
Culture;
Leadership;
Gender;
Safety;
Working Conditions;
Business Exit or Shutdown;
Organizational Culture;
Change Management;
Mining;
Mining Industry;
South Africa
Mukunda, Gautam, Lisa Mazzanti, and Aldo Sesia. "Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American (A)." Harvard Business School Case 414-019, October 2013. (Revised November 2021.)
- May 2022
- Article
The Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Communication Patterns
By: Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeff Polzer and Raffaella Sadun
We explore the impact of COVID-19 on employees’ digital communication patterns through an event study of lockdowns in 16 large metropolitan areas in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Using de-identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270...
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Keywords:
Meetings;
Email;
COVID-19 Pandemic;
Communication Technology;
Health Pandemics;
Time Management
DeFilippis, Evan, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeff Polzer, and Raffaella Sadun. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Communication Patterns." Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 9, no. 180 (May 2022).
- 03 Nov 2015
- First Look
November 3, 2015
Workers By: Housman, Michael, and Dylan Minor Abstract—While there has been a lot of research on finding and developing top performers in the workplace, less attention has been paid to the question of how to...
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Sean Silverthorne
- January–February 2022
- Article
Algorithm-Augmented Work and Domain Experience: The Countervailing Forces of Ability and Aversion
By: Ryan Allen and Prithwiraj Choudhury
How does a knowledge worker’s level of domain experience affect their algorithm-augmented work performance? We propose and test theoretical predictions that domain experience has countervailing effects on algorithm-augmented performance: on one hand, domain experience...
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Keywords:
Automation;
Domain Experience;
Algorithmic Aversion;
Experts;
Algorithms;
Machine Learning;
Future Of Work;
Employees;
Experience and Expertise;
Decision Making;
Performance
Allen, Ryan, and Prithwiraj Choudhury. "Algorithm-Augmented Work and Domain Experience: The Countervailing Forces of Ability and Aversion." Organization Science 33, no. 1 (January–February 2022): 149–169. ("Best PhD Student Paper" at SMS conference 2020.)
- August 2012
- Case
Danshui Plant No. 2
By: William Bruns, Julie H. Hertenstein and Kelvin Liu
Danshui Plant No. 2 in southern China has a one-year contract with Apple Inc. to assemble 2.4 million iPhones. In the first three months of the contract, the plant is unable to assemble as many phones as expected and is operating at a loss. The plant manager must...
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Keywords:
Job Cuts and Outsourcing;
Production;
Budgets and Budgeting;
Manufacturing Industry;
Electronics Industry;
China
Bruns, William, Julie H. Hertenstein, and Kelvin Liu. "Danshui Plant No. 2." Harvard Business School Brief Case 913-525, August 2012.
- 22 Apr 2012
- News
The Pros and Cons of Hiring Outsiders
- 2012
- Article
Specialization and Variety in Repetitive Tasks: Evidence from a Japanese Bank
By: B. Staats and F. Gino
Sustaining operational productivity in the completion of repetitive tasks is critical to many organizations' success. Yet research points to two different work-design-related strategies for accomplishing this goal: specialization to capture the benefits of repetition...
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Keywords:
Motivation;
Productivity;
Specialization;
Variety;
Work Fragmentation;
Boundaries;
Performance Productivity;
Organizations;
Research;
Strategy;
Motivation and Incentives;
Opportunities;
Market Transactions;
Resource Allocation;
Performance;
Goals and Objectives;
Learning
Staats, B., and F. Gino. "Specialization and Variety in Repetitive Tasks: Evidence from a Japanese Bank." Management Science 58, no. 6 (June 2012): 1141–1159.
- 09 Jun 2022
- HBS Case
From Truck Driver to Manager: US Foods’ Novel Approach to Staff Shortages
workers to select and manage products in its warehouses. By the middle of 2021, US Foods, which employs about 26,000 workers, had 1,000 unfilled driving and warehouse positions. "You’re saying you might be a truck driver for a while, but...
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by Pamela Reynolds
- June 2021
- Article
The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination
By: Katherine B. Coffman, Christine L. Exley and Muriel Niederle
While there is ample evidence of discrimination against women in the workplace, it can be difficult to understand what factors contribute to discriminatory behavior. We use an experiment to both document discrimination and unpack its sources. First, we show that, on...
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Keywords:
Gender Discrimination;
Behavioral Decision Making;
Gender;
Attitudes;
Prejudice and Bias;
Economics;
Behavior;
Decision Making
Coffman, Katherine B., Christine L. Exley, and Muriel Niederle. "The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination." Management Science 67, no. 6 (June 2021).
Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-job Inequality
In this article, we examine a case of task segregation—when a group of workers is disproportionately allocated, relative to other groups, to spend more time on specific tasks in a given job—and argue that such segregation is a potential mechanism for generating...
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