Hayley Blunden is a doctoral candidate in Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. She studies how leaders can make challenging workplace interactions more productive. In her research spanning the domains of advice, feedback, voice, and virtual work, she seeks to improve the outcomes of workplace interactions by examining them as situated, relational processes. First, she investigates barriers to and opportunities for improving the transfer of developmental information. Second, her work considers how employees navigate the challenging communication contexts of the future business landscape: global and virtual work. Her research has been published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and has been featured by Harvard Business Review, The Economist, CNBC, and Forbes.
Hayley has also served as an Instructor of Management and Communication at the Harvard Extension School, where she taught The Art of Communication, a leadership class for working professionals.
Prior to pursuing her graduate studies, Hayley worked in a variety of organizational contexts. She has held positions in internal strategy, consulting, and finance, and has experience working in organizations ranging from a small startup to a Fortune 100 firm. Hayley earned her BA in Economics and Media Studies from The University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
- Journal Articles
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- Blunden, Hayley, Jennifer M. Logg, Alison Wood Brooks, Leslie John, and Francesca Gino. "Seeker Beware: The Interpersonal Costs of Ignoring Advice." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 150 (January 2019): 83–100. View Details
- Blunden, Hayley, and Andrew Brodsky. "Beyond the Emoticon: Are There Unintentional Cues of Emotion in Email?" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 47, no. 4 (April 2021): 565–579. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220936054.) View Details
- John, Leslie, Hayley Blunden, and Heidi Liu. "Shooting the Messenger." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 148, no. 4 (April 2019): 644–666. View Details
- Book Chapters
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- Blunden, Hayley, and Francesca Gino. "How the Other Half Thinks: The Psychology of Advising." Chap. 3 in The Oxford Handbook of Advice, edited by E.L. MacGeorge and L.M. Van Swol, 43–68. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. View Details
- Working Papers
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- John, Leslie K., Hayley Blunden, Katherine L. Milkman, Luca Foschini, Francesca Gino, and Bradford Tuckfield. "On the Failure to Seek Beneficial Information: The Problem with Inconspicuous Incentives." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-090, February 2016. (Revised January 2020.) View Details
- Blunden, Hayley, Jaewon Yoon, Ariella S. Kristal, and Ashley Whillans. "Soliciting Advice Rather Than Feedback Yields More Developmental, Critical, and Actionable Input." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-021, August 2019. (Revised April 2021.) View Details
- Other Publications and Materials
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- Bernstein, Ethan, Hayley Blunden, Andrew Brodsky, Wonbin Sohn, and Ben Waber. "The Implications of Working Without an Office." Special Issue on The New Reality of WFH. Harvard Business Review: The Big Idea (July 2020). View Details
- Blunden, Hayley, Jennifer M. Logg, Alison Wood Brooks, Leslie John, and Francesca Gino. "How Asking Multiple People for Advice Can Backfire." Harvard Business Review (website) (May 10, 2019). View Details
- Yoon, Jaewon, Hayley Blunden, Ariella S. Kristal, and A.V. Whillans. "Why Asking for Advice Is More Effective Than Asking for Feedback." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (September 20, 2019). View Details
- John, Leslie, Hayley Blunden, and Heidi Liu. "Research Confirms: When Receiving Bad News, We Shoot the Messenger." Harvard Business Review (website) (April 16, 2019). View Details
- Bernstein, Ethan, and Hayley Blunden. "The Sales Director Who Turned Work into a Fantasy Sports Competition." Harvard Business Review (website) (March 27, 2015). View Details
- Additional Information
- Area of Study
- Areas of Interest