Faculty & Research

• HBS Book

The rapid and unprecedented changes brought on by COVID-19 have accelerated the transition to remote working, requiring the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to virtual work in just weeks, leaving managers and employees scrambling to adjust. This massive transition has forced companies to rapidly advance their digital footprint, using cloud storage, cybersecurity, and device tools to accommodate their new remote workforce.

• Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 164 (May 2021): 116-135.

People often respond to others’ emotions using verbal acknowledgment (e.g., “You seem upset”). Yet, little is known about the relational benefits and risks of acknowledging others’ emotions in the workplace. We draw upon Costly Signaling Theory to posit how emotional acknowledgment influences interpersonal trust. We hypothesize that emotional acknowledgment acts as a costly signal of the perceiver’s willingness to expend personal resources to meet the needs of the expresser. Across six studies, we found convergent evidence that emotional acknowledgment led to greater perceptions of costliness, and in turn, to higher evaluations of trust.

• Global Initiative

A large literature on state-business relations in China has examined the political role of capitalists and collusion between the state and the private sector. This paper contributes to that literature, and our understanding of the internal differentiation among China’s business elites, by documenting the emergence of a particular kind of large, non-state business group that we argue is more akin to a mafia system than any standard definition of a firm. Drawing on large-N descriptive data as well as deep ethnographic and documentary research, we argue that mafia-like business systems share organizational principles (plunder and obfuscation) and means of growth and survival (relations of mutual endangerment and manipulation of the financial system). Understanding the particular moral economy that underlies mafia-like business systems and their interactions with the state challenges methodological foundations of research on China’s political economy and helps explain recent conflict between high-profile business people and the state.

• Featured Case

In 2020, JPMorgan Chase announced a $30 billion Commitment to Advance Racial Equity. The Commitment included investments in housing, small businesses, and financial literacy across the U.S., and diversity, equity, and inclusion within the bank. It was part of a broader cultural shift within JPMorgan and U.S. society to better acknowledge and work to remedy the effects of systemic racism in the financial system. The bank was now focused on implementing their commitments—turning their $30 billion into homes, bank accounts, and businesses that would improve the situation in minority communities across the country.

• Featured Case

JUST Capital is a nonprofit organization that seeks to make public companies more "just" by measuring and ranking their overall impact on society, based on the priorities most important to the average American. This case examines JUST’s strategy for influencing corporate behavior in the broader context of contemporary concerns about Capitalism. The case explores the extent to which Capitalism is broken, whether JUST Capital's performance evaluation rubric is relevant to corporate managers, and whether its strategies for exerting influence are likely to be effective in improving corporate behavior.

• HBS Working Knowledge

Efforts to deregulate the US electricity sector beginning in the 1990s included market-based prices and restructuring measures to introduce competition. This paper argues that electricity prices increased after deregulation because of the presence of market power.

• HBS Working Paper

This paper examines how government funding programs geared towards early-stage companies interact with private capital markets. Using hand-collected data on 755 government programs worldwide, we find that governments’ allocations to such funding programs have been comparable to global venture capital disbursements in the past decade. Government programs were more frequent in periods with more private venture activity, a relationship that was stronger in nations with better public governance. The programs’ structures often relied on the local private sector. The private sector’s involvement was greater when government programs targeted earlier-stage companies and when rankings of government effectiveness were higher.