Ting Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School, where she teaches the Leadership and Organizational Behavior course (LEAD) in the Required Curriculum.
Professor Zhang examines the topics of expertise and ethics. In the domain of expertise, she studies the cognitive and emotional barriers that prevent experts from being able to understand novices’ experiences. Using experimental methods, she explores actions that both experts and novices can take to mitigate the curse of expertise, enabling experts to be more helpful. In the domain of ethics, she studies interventions that help individuals navigate ethical challenges at work.
Ting Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School, where she teaches the Leadership and Organizational Behavior course (LEAD) in the Required Curriculum.
Professor Zhang examines the topics of expertise and ethics. In the domain of expertise, she studies the cognitive and emotional barriers that prevent experts from being able to understand novices’ experiences. Using experimental methods, she explores actions that both experts and novices can take to mitigate the curse of expertise, enabling experts to be more helpful. In the domain of ethics, she studies interventions that help individuals navigate ethical challenges at work.
Her research has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Research in Organizational Behavior and covered in media outlets including The Atlantic, New York Times, and The Washington Post. Professor Zhang has received awards for her research, including the William H. Newman Award and Academy of Management Organizational Behavior Division Best Paper based on Dissertation Award.
Professor Zhang earned an A.B. in Economics and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University. Prior to joining HBS, she was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Management Division at Columbia Business School, where she taught Managerial Negotiations.
Dilemmas featuring competing moral imperatives are prevalent in organizations and are difficult to resolve. Whereas prior research has focused on how individuals adjudicate among these moral imperatives, we study the factors that influence when individuals find solutions that fall outside of the salient options presented. In particular, we study moral insight, or the discovery of solutions, other than selecting one of the competing moral imperatives over another, that honor both competing imperatives or resolve the tension among them. Although individuals intuitively consider the question “What should I do?” when contemplating moral dilemmas, we find that prompting people to consider “What could I do?” helps them generate moral insight. Together, these studies point toward the conditions that enable moral insight and important practical implications.
We identify and document a novel construct—pettiness, or intentional attentiveness to trivial details—and examine its (negative) implications in interpersonal relationships and social exchange. Seven studies show that pettiness manifests across different types of resources (both money and time), across cultures with differing tolerance for ambiguity in relationships (the United States, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria), and is distinct from related constructs such as generosity, conscientiousness, fastidious, and counter-normativity. Indeed, people dislike petty exchanges even when the (petty) amount given is more generous (e.g., a gift card for $5.15 rather than $5), suggesting that pettiness may in some instances serve as a stronger relationship signal than actual benefits exchanged. Attentiveness to trivial details of resource exchanges harms communal-sharing relationships by making (even objectively generous) exchanges feel transactional. When exchanging resources, people should be wary of both how much they exchange and the manner in which they exchange.
Contrary to the tendency of mediators to defuse negative emotions between adversaries by treating them kindly, we demonstrate the surprising effectiveness of hostile mediators in resolving conflict. Hostile mediators generate greater willingness to reach agreements between adversaries (Experiment 1). Consequently, negotiators interacting with hostile mediators are better able to reach agreements in incentive-compatible negotiations than those interacting with nice mediators (Experiments 2). By serving as common enemies, hostile mediators cause adversaries in conflict to feel more connected and become more willing to reach agreement (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, we manipulate the target of mediators’ hostility to document the moderating role of common enemies: mediators who directed their hostility toward both negotiators (bilateral hostility)—becoming a common enemy—increased willingness to reach agreement; those who directed hostility at just one negotiator (unilateral hostility) did not serve as common enemies, eliminating the hostile mediator effect (Experiment 5). We discuss theoretical and practical implications and suggest future directions.
Ovul Sezer, Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino and Max Bazerman
People often make the well-documented mistake of paying too much attention to the outcomes of others’ actions while neglecting information about the original intentions leading to those outcomes. In five experiments, we examine interventions aimed at reducing this outcome bias in situations where intentions and outcomes are misaligned. Participants evaluated an individual with fair intentions leading to unfavorable outcomes, an individual with selfish intentions leading to favorable outcomes, or both individuals jointly. Contrary to our initial predictions, participants weighed others’ outcomes more—not less—when these individuals were evaluated jointly rather than separately (Experiment 1). Consequently, separate evaluators were more intention-oriented than joint evaluators when rewarding and punishing others (Experiment 2a) and assessing the value of repeated interactions with these individuals in the future (Experiment 2b). Third-party recommenders were less outcome-biased in allocating funds to investment managers when making separate evaluations relative to joint evaluations (Experiment 3). Finally, raising the salience of intentions prior to discovering outcomes helped joint evaluators overcome the outcome bias, suggesting that joint evaluation made attending to information about intentions more difficult (Experiment 4). Our findings bridge decision-making research on the outcome bias and management research on organizational justice by investigating the role of intentions in evaluations.
Ting Zhang, Pinar O. Fletcher, Francesca Gino and Max H. Bazerman
Research on ethics has focused on the factors that help individuals act ethically when they are tempted to cheat. However, we know little about how best to help individuals notice unethical behaviors in others and in themselves. This paper identifies a solution: instilling a mindset of vigilance. In an experiment, individuals playing the role of financial advisers recommended one of four possible investments to their clients. Unbeknown to these advisers, one of the funds under consideration was actually a fraudulent feeder fund of Madoff Investment Securities. Results from this empirical study demonstrate that instilling vigilance by asking individuals to indicate their suspicions prior to making a decision was critical to helping them notice fraudulent behavior and act on that information. In contrast, committing to a decision prior to contemplating suspicions precluded individuals from subsequently integrating critical information about the fund’s fraudulent activity. We extend these findings to other interventions aimed at helping managers notice unethical behavior.
Ethics research developed partly in response to calls from organizations to understand and solve unethical behavior. Departing from prior work that focused mainly on examining the antecedents and consequences of dishonesty, we examine two approaches to mitigating unethical behavior: (1) values-oriented approaches that broadly appeal to individuals' preferences to be more moral, and (2) structure-oriented approaches that redesign specific incentives, tasks, and decisions to reduce temptations to cheat in the environment. This paper explores how these approaches can change behavior. We argue that integrating both approaches while avoiding incompatible strategies can mitigate the risk of adverse effects that arise from taking a single approach.
Ting Zhang, Tami Kim, Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton
Although documenting everyday activities may seem trivial, four studies reveal that creating records of the present generates unexpected benefits by allowing future rediscoveries. In Study 1, we use a "time capsule" paradigm to show that individuals underestimate the extent to which rediscovering experiences from the past will be curiosity-provoking and interesting in the future. In Studies 2 and 3, we find that people are particularly likely to underestimate the pleasure of rediscovering ordinary, mundane experiences compared to rediscovering extraordinary experiences. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates that underestimating the pleasure of rediscovery leads to time-inconsistent choices: individuals forgo opportunities to document the present but then prefer to rediscover those moments in the future. Underestimating the value of rediscovery is linked to people's erroneous faith in their memory of everyday events. By documenting the present, people provide themselves with the opportunity to rediscover mundane moments that may otherwise have been forgotten.
Zhang, Ting, and Max Bazerman. "Managerial Decision Biases." In Encyclopedia of Management Theory. Volume 1 edited by Eric H. Kessler, 470–474. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2013.
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Ovul Sezer, Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino and Max Bazerman
People often make the well-documented mistake of paying too much attention to outcomes of others' actions while neglecting information about the original intentions leading to those outcomes. In four experiments, we examine interventions aimed at reducing the outcome bias. Contrary to our initial predictions, individuals weighed others' outcomes more—not less—when fair intentions leading to undesirable outcomes and selfish intentions leading to desirable outcomes were presented jointly rather than separately (Experiment 1). Separate evaluation reduced the outcome bias even when participants were merely observers unaffected by the outcomes reached (Experiment 2). Complex information intensified the outcome bias under joint evaluation (Experiment 3). Finally, raising the salience of intentions prior to discovering outcomes helped joint evaluators overcome the outcome bias (Experiment 4).
Sezer, Ovul, Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino, and Max Bazerman. "Overcoming the Outcome Bias: Making Intentions Matter." Working Paper, April 2014.
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Modupe Akinola, Caitlin Snow, Ting Zhang and Katherine Phillips
Citation:
Akinola, Modupe, Caitlin Snow, Ting Zhang, and Katherine Phillips. "Strathmore Medical College." Columbia CaseWorks Series. New York: Columbia Business School Case No. 170407, 2016. Electronic.
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