Ethan S. Bernstein

Ethan S. Bernstein

Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration

Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration

Ethan Bernstein (@ethanbernstein) is an associate professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School. He teaches the second-year MBA course in Managing Human Capital, the Harvard Business School online course on Developing Yourself as a Leader, and various executive education programs. He previously taught the first-year MBA course in Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD), an MBA immersive field course in Tokyo on Innovation and Leadership through the Fusion of Digital and Analog, and a PhD course on the craft of field research. 

In an era when the nature of work is changing, Professor Bernstein studies the impact of workplace transparency—the observability of employee activities, routines, behaviors, output, and/or performance—on productivity, with implications for leadership, collaboration, organization design, and new forms of organizing.

Organizational Behavior
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Featured Work Publications Research Summary Teaching Awards & Honors

Ethan Bernstein (@ethanbernstein) is an associate professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School. He teaches the second-year MBA course in Managing Human Capital, the Harvard Business School Online course on Developing Yourself as a Leader, and various executive education programs. He previously taught the first-year MBA course in Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD), an MBA immersive field course in Tokyo on Innovation and Leadership through the Fusion of Digital and Analog, and a PhD course on the craft of field research. 

In an era when the nature of work is changing, Professor Bernstein studies the impact of workplace transparency—the observability of employee activities, routines, behaviors, output, and/or performance—on productivity, with implications for leadership, collaboration, organization design, and new forms of organizing.

Professor Bernstein’s research has been published in journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Annals, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Harvard Business Review, Research on Organizational Change and Development, and People + Strategy, and it has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, NPR, Inc., Forbes, Fast Company, Businessweek, Esquire, Nikkei Business, Nikkei Shimbun, Le Monde, Maeil Business (Korea), and TEDx Boston, among others. He is a 2014 HBR McKinsey Award Finalist, and his research has won awards including the inaugural J. Richard Hackman Dissertation Award, the Academy of Management’s 2013 Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior award, the Academy of Management’s 2013 Best Publication in Organization and Management Theory award, the Academy of Management's 2014 Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in Organizational Behavior award, the Academy of Management's 2014 Best Paper Based on a Dissertation Award, the INGRoup 2014 Best Paper award, the 2013 Fredric M. Jablin Doctoral Dissertation Award from the International Leadership Association, the HBS Wyss Award, and the Susan G. Cohen Doctoral Research Award.

Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Bernstein spent a half-decade at The Boston Consulting Group in Toronto and Tokyo. Tapped by Elizabeth Warren to join the implementation team at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he spent nearly two years in executive positions, including Chief Strategy Officer and Deputy Assistant Director of Mortgage Markets, at the newest United States federal agency.

Professor Bernstein earned his doctorate in management at Harvard, where he also received a JD/MBA degree. While a doctoral student, he was a Kauffman Foundation Fellow in Law, Innovation, and Growth, and he remains a member of the New York and Massachusetts Bar Associations. He holds an AB in Economics from Amherst College, which included study at Doshisha University in Kyoto.

Professor Bernstein is a self-declared culinary adventurer and avid cyclist, runner, skier, reader, and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me listener. Originally from Los Angeles, his family now lives in Newton.

Featured Work
Getting Smarter About Smart Buildings
Intelligent environments can make the workplace safer and improve collaboration.
We’re seeing renewed energy around smart buildings as organizations, their landlords, and developers consider what it will take to facilitate a mass return to physical workspaces mid- and post-pandemic. In particular, they’re thinking about how emerging technologies, beyond garden-variety sensors and apps, can be used to track employees and keep them safe.

The Implications of Working Without an Office

In early 2020, the world began what is undoubtedly the largest work-from-home experiment in history. Now, as countries reopen but Covid-19 remains a major threat, organizations are wrestling with whether and how to have workers return to their offices. Business leaders need to be able to answer a number of questions to make these decisions. Primary among them is “What impact has working from home had on productivity and creativity?”

To help answer that question, we decided to explore how employees have fared since they began working virtually. To that end, we started surveying a diverse group of more than 600 U.S.-based white-collar employees during the second half of March and have continued to do so every two weeks since then. (This article is based on results collected through May.) Approximately half of our respondents are women, and half are men; they hail from 43 states; nearly half are married; and more than a third have children. About 40% hold management positions. We have been asking them about their job satisfaction, work engagement, perceptions of their own performance, conflicts with colleagues, stress, negative emotions, and current living situation, among other questions.

Improving the Rhythm of Your Collaboration
Alternating between always-on connectivity and heads-down focus is essential for problem-solving.
Winner of the annual MIT Sloan Management Review Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize, given for the most outstanding MIT SMR article on planned change and organizational development. This article was deemed the winner by an august panel of judges -- Sloan School faculty Deborah Ancona, John Van Maanen, and Cyrus Gibson.

In this article, we summarize our research on the value of intermittency for complex problem solving at work and give practical advice on how organizations can improve the rhythm of their people's collaboration. Executives have been counseled to be collaborative leaders and to set the example at the top that they want to see in the rest of the organization. They have taken this message seriously, transparently devoting more and more of their days to in-person and online collaboration. By role modeling such ubiquitous use of collaboration technology, business leaders have helped define an era of always-on collaboration. It is now time to role model a more sustainable, productive rhythm (i.e., patterns of sound and silence) of collaboration.
The Truth About Open Offices
There Are Reasons Why They Don't Produce the Desired Interactions
It’s never been easier for workers to collaborate—or so it seems. Open, flexible, activity-based spaces are displacing cubicles, making people more visible. Messaging is displacing phone calls, making people more accessible. Enterprise social media such as Slack and Microsoft Teams are displacing watercooler conversations, making people more connected. Virtual-meeting software such as Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Webex is displacing in-person meetings, making people ever-present. The architecture of collaboration has not changed so quickly since technological advances in lighting and ventilation made tall office buildings feasible, and one could argue that it has never before been so efficient and transparent. Designing workplaces for interaction between two or more individuals—or collaboration, from the Latin collaborare, meaning to work together—has never seemed so easy.

But as the physical and technological structures for omnichannel collaboration have spread, evidence suggests they are producing behaviors at odds with designers’ expectations and business managers’ desires. In a number of workplaces we have observed for research projects, those structures have produced less interaction—or less meaningful interaction—not more.

In this article, Ben Waber and I discuss those unintended consequences and provide guidance on conducting experiments to uncover how employees really interact. That will help managers and organizations equip them with the spaces and technologies that best support their needs.
Beyond the Holacracy Hype
The Overwrought Claims—and Actual Promise—of the Next Generation of Self-Managed Teams
Holacracy and other forms of self-organization have been getting a lot of press. Proponents hail them as "flat" environments that foster flexibility, engagement, productivity, and efficiency. Critics say they're naive, unrealistic experiments. We argue, using evidence from a multi-year research agenda at several mainstream organizations that have adopted these forms, that neither view is quite right. Although the new forms (built upon on a half-century of research on and experience with self-managed teams) can help organiztaions become more adaptable and nimble, most companies shouldn't adopt their principles wholesale. A piecemeal approach usually makes sense. Organizations can use elements of self-management in areas where the need for adaptability is high, and traditional models where reliability is paramount.
The Transparency Trap
2014 HBR McKinsey Award Finalist
To get people to be more creative and productive, managers increase transparency with open workspaces and access to real-time data. But less transparent work environments can yield more-transparent employees. Employees perform better when they can try out new ideas and approaches within certain zones of privacy. Organizations allow them to do that by drawing four types of boundaries: around teams of people (zones of attention), between feedback and evaluation (zones of judgment), between decision rights and improvement rights (zones of slack), and for set periods of experimentation (zones of time). By balancing transparency and privacy, organizations can encourage just the right amount of “deviance” to foster innovative behavior and boost productivity.
The Transparency Paradox
A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control

Using data from embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the second largest mobile phone factory in the world, located in China, I theorize and test the implications of transparent organizational design on workers’ productivity and organizational performance. Drawing from theory and research on learning and control, I introduce the notion of a transparency paradox, whereby maintaining observability of workers may counterintuitively reduce their performance by inducing those being observed to conceal their activities through codes and other costly means; conversely, creating zones of privacy may, under certain conditions, increase performance. Empirical evidence from the field shows that even a modest increase in group-level privacy sustainably and significantly improves line performance, while qualitative evidence suggests that privacy is important in supporting productive deviance, localized experimentation, distraction avoidance, and continuous improvement. I discuss implications of these results for theory on learning and control and suggest directions for future research.

 

Facts and Figuring
An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces
When it comes to solving problems, we find that the connectedness enabled by transparent, open collaboration is a double-edged sword. Problem-solving involves both the search for information (facts, or puzzle pieces needed to solve a problem) and the search for solutions (figuring, or interpretations of those facts into theories and ultimately solutions). Connectivity among collaborators allows coordinated information gathering, so that facts are found more efficiently. But it also allows coordinated interpretations of those facts into solutions (otherwise known as copying!), leading to a premature, suboptimal consensus. As we explain in much more detail in the paper, leading effective problem-solving teams thus requires flexibility in how collaboration is structured at different phases of the process.
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
Cases and Teaching Materials
Magazine Articles
Research Summary
Overview
Organizations’ quest for employee productivity is fueling a gospel of transparency in the management of organizations. Managers seek to boost productivity with a novel array of transparency-enhancing tools, like open offices, visual factories, big data, people analytics, and technologies that track everything from work activity (through wearables and mobile devices) to communication (through email, browser history, and other digital breadcrumbs) and even mood (through facial recognition). Meanwhile, the employees being observed have questions ranging from “How can I get them to leave me alone so I can do this job right?” to “How much do they know about me?” At the intersection of these perspectives lies a puzzle for researchers and theorists: how might a 21st-century behavioral theory of transparency in the workplace be crafted to take stock of these dueling concerns of manager and employee? That is the theory that Professor Bernstein seeks to build through his research, course development, teaching, and collaboration with practitioners.
Keywords: Privacy; Transparency; Productivity; Field Experiments
The Unexpected Effects of Transparency

Workplace transparency provides a foundation for learning, control, and therefore productivity. Yet, in a world obsessed with transparency, Professor Bernstein’s research shows that limitations exist--that transparency-enhancing tools can backfire due to the unintended consequences of too much transparency at work.

Why does workplace transparency work when it does? Why does it disappoint when it does?  

Professor Bernstein’s research, which uses multiple methods to address those two questions, is centered on the finding that not only does transparency reveal what employees do, it can also change what they do, with both intended and unintended consequences. A bright light helps you study an Old Master painting, but it also affects the paint and changes or fades the colors. Just as museums need to balance the need to see and the need to protect, organizations need to balance the need to observe with the observed party’s need to be private. 

Those organizations which fail to balance observer and observed perspectives on workplace transparency may do so at their peril, resulting in what Professor Bernstein has termed a transparency paradox or transparency trap: overly-transparent work environments, because they leave employees feeling exposed, may produce less-transparent employees who seek to actively conceal what they are doing—even when making improvements—thus reducing productivity and, paradoxically, transparency. 

Professor Bernstein continues to conduct research to, in his words, make transparency transparent.

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Productivity; Field Experiments; United States; Europe; China; Japan
Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

A common theme that integrates Professor Bernstein's research and course development is how the design of boundaries to observation in organizations can shape more productive employee behaviors in increasingly transparent workplaces. If the stream of research above challenges existing assumptions about transparency, empirically and theoretically exploring the unintended consequences of too much transparency at work, this second stream maps what is to be done, identifying the ways in which managers and employees (the observers and the observed) can strategically use boundaries to create zones of privacy, productive sweet spots that strike a balance between the dual needs for transparency and privacy.

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance
Teaching
Developing Yourself as a Leader
This course is an online leadership development program for the next generation of leaders (high-potential emerging leaders with rougly 7-15 years of work experience). Over 12 dynamic, high-impact weeks, a cohort of emerging leaders from around the globe engages in a one-of-a-kind leadership development experience combining the time-tested power of the Harvard Business School classroom experience and the personalized attention of one-on-one leadership development coaching – all delivered virtually via the Harvard Business Schooln Online virtual classroom. 
Related Link: Course Website
Managing Human Capital

The Managing Human Capital course has been specifically designed to teach practical skills for the future general manager (not just the human resource practitioner) who seeks to manage both other people and her or his own career with optimal effectiveness. We will explore, at a more advanced level than was possible in LEAD, those people-related issues and challenges that any good general manager should understand to be effective.

The term human capital implies that people have the capacity to drive organizational performance. The basic premise of this course is that how one manages others can be the source of sustainable competitive advantage for organizations and for individual leaders within them. Any and all students who believe they will need to effectively manage other people to produce superior business results (revenues, profits, growth) while also creating a unique place to work (such that superior business results are sustainable) should take this course.

Educational Objectives

The objective of Managing Human Capital can be captured in a simple question: How can I create places where talented people will gather, produce, develop, and thrive? 

While the question is simple in concept, it is remarkably difficult to execute. Future graduates of HBS, like the population at large, will have more and more choices about how to work and how to manage work, especially given advances in “big data,” AI, and other workplace technologies. They, and their companies--from the great global enterprises of the 21st century to the smallest entrepreneurial venture--will struggle with common questions and concerns about the people who work in their organizations, such as:

  • Module 1 (Hiring): What kind of people do I need, and how do I hire them?
  • Module 2 (Socialization): How do I effectively on-board them, setting them up for success?
  • Module 3 (Performance Management): How do I keep them fully engaged and productive?
  • Module 4 (Compensation and Rewards): How do I make sure they are properly incented to do what the organization needs them to do?
  • Module 5 (Coaching Effective Managers and Talent Development): How do I develop them over time, so they are prepared to take on bigger roles down the road? How do I let go of those who are not contributing?
  • Module 6 (Structure): How do I architect my group, team, division, or organization to make the management of human capital easier, not harder?
  • Module 7 (Reimagining the Management of Human Capital): How do I use “Future of Work” trends to my benefit and to my organization's advantage? How can I be ready for the way human capital will be managed when I come back for my 10th or 20th MBA reunion--and what experiments should I conduct in my teams and organizations in the interim to stay on the leading edge (without accidentally reinventing the wheel and rediscovering things we already knew)?

In each module, we will intentionally discuss cases that frame both traditional and bleeding-edge “Future of Work” approaches to each human capital challenge. The ‘answer’ will often lie somewhere in-between the extremes, but will-with regularity-come back to a set of guiding criteria that connect how human capital is managed with the goal of organizational performance.

In each module, and indeed within almost every session, we will explore these topics through three lenses: managing others, being managed by others, and managing our own human capital.

Related Link: Catalog Description
Syllabus
Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD)

Professor Bernstein taught Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD) from 2013-2016 (7 sections).  This course focuses on how managers become effective leaders by addressing the human side of enterprise.

The course is divided into five modules:
Leading Teams: In a world where most problems faced by organizations are too complex for a single individual to tackle alone, leadership frequently involves forming, mandating, and managing teams. And yet teams are fickle. Even as teams become more and more common at all levels of organizations, a shocking number of them fail to live up to their potential or even deliver at all. Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. In six class sessions, we build an understanding of how leadership of team identity/design and team processes can significantly improve team effectiveness and the chances of becoming a high-performing team.

Enhancing Interpersonal Effectiveness: Those in charge have always depended on others to get work done. This means building a network of effective work relationships. The segment begins by identifying the critical ingredients for building effective relationships with superiors, colleagues, and subordinates. We will look at various interpersonal relationships from different perspectives, including hierarchical, demographic, and cultural aspects, exploring the nuances of working with those from varied demographic backgrounds and the advantages and disadvantages of different communication and influence strategies. The aim of this segment is to enable managers to successfully build effective work relationships as they apply to managing in all directions.

Leading, Designing, and Aligning Organizations: This module explores in depth what it takes to be an effective leader. This segment will also examine what it takes to achieve “congruence” among an organization's elements:  its strategy, critical tasks, formal organization, people, and culture. We will study a number of leaders “in action” to gain insight into the critical functions and personal qualities that contribute to effective leadership. To be effective, the critical elements of an organization need to be in alignment.

Leading Change: Leaders’ attempts to renew or change their organizations often fail. In this segment of the course we will compare and contrast efforts to transform organizations in order to identify critical stages and activities in the change process. We will identify different approaches for developing and communicating a vision for an organization and for motivating people to fulfill that vision. We address the following questions: What are the primary sources of resistance to change? What are the most appropriate ways for overcoming them? What change strategies “work” and under what conditions?

Developing Your Path: In this final module, we will focus on several strategic issues involved in building a dynamic career, paying particular attention to early- and mid-career choices and dilemmas. We will consider the following topics:  How do individuals learn to lead? What critical experiences and relationships are needed?

The LEAD course has the following six goals:

  • The course offers a realistic preview of what it means to manage
  • The course helps students begin to transform professional identity from individual contributor to manager
  • The course helps students confront both the task learning and personal learning involved in becoming a manager
  • The course addresses the process of developing effective relationships with a diverse collection of individuals and groups
  • The course helps students develop an understanding of what it takes to be an effective leader
  • The course helps students learn how to be proactive and entrepreneurial in developing your leadership talents over the course of your career


Professor Bernstein took particular joy in teaching LEAD as he was a student in the LEAD course in the fall of 2000 (Section D).

Overview
Professor Bernstein currently teaches a second-year MBA course in Managing Human Capital (MHC). He is also the faculty chair for the Harvard Business School Online Developing Yourself as a Leader course and teaches in a variety of executive education programs.
In the past, Professor Bernstein has taught the first-year MBA course in Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD), the Japan Immersive Field Course (IFC) on Innovation through the Fusion of Digital and Analog, and a PhD seminar in the Craft of Qualitative Research.
Keywords: Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Innovation Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Management Succession; Management Style; Management Systems; Management Teams; Managerial Roles; Organizations; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance; Technology; Strategy; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Recruitment; Resignation and Termination; Retention; Selection and Staffing
Awards & Honors
Finalist for the 2014 McKinsey Award for the best article in Harvard Business Review for "The Transparency Trap" (October 2014).
Winner of the 2013 Fredric M. Jablin Doctoral Dissertation Award, awarded by the International Leadership Association and the Jepson School for Leadership Studies for demonstrating substantial insights and implications for the study of leadership through Professor Bernstein's dissertation, “Does Privacy Make Groups Productive.”
Won the 2010 Susan G. Cohen Doctoral Research Award in Organization Design, Effectiveness, and Change from the CEO (Center for Effective Organizations at the USC Marshall School of Business) and the Academy of Management's Organization Development and Change Division for his work, "Innovation Boundaries: Deconstructing Autonomy."
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