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- 2023
- Article
Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control
By: Susanna Gallani
Can managers use monetary incentives to elicit cooperation from workers they cannot reward for their efforts? I study “conduit incentives,” an innovative incentive design, whereby managers influence bonus-ineligible workers’ effort by offering bonus-eligible employees...
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Keywords:
Organizational Behavior Modification;
Peer Monitoring;
Persistence Of Performance Improvements;
Crowding Out;
Implicit Incentives;
Compensation;
Healthcare;
Social Pressure;
Image Motivation;
Incentives;
Motivation;
Performance;
Behavior;
Motivation and Incentives;
Compensation and Benefits;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Organizational Culture;
Health Industry;
California
- April 24, 2023
- Article
In the COVID Era, Why Corporate Benefits Demand CEO/CFO Leadership
The expectation that employers provide their employees’ health benefits has been around since World War II. Unfortunately, although today’s employees expect employers to treat them as individuals, ease their experiences, prioritize their wellbeing, and control cost,...
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Keywords:
COVID;
COVID-19 Pandemic;
CEO;
Leadership;
Health Insurance;
Benefits;
CFO;
Compensation and Benefits
- Spring 2023
- Article
Incentive Contract Design and Employee-Initiated Innovation: Evidence from the Field
By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin
This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers’ official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers’ propensity to engage in employee-initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are...
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- April 2023
- Teaching Note
Netflix’s Culture: Binge or Cringe?
By: Hubert Joly, Leonard A. Schlesinger, James Barnett and Stacy Straaberg
In April 2022, streaming entertainment company Netflix lost customers for the first time in more than 10 years. Once a first mover in the streaming landscape, Netflix was facing competition from Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and others. A key component of...
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Keywords:
Compensation and Benefits;
Employees;
Recruitment;
Resignation and Termination;
Retention;
Selection and Staffing;
Innovation and Management;
Innovation Strategy;
Leadership Style;
Business or Company Management;
Management Style;
Media;
Business Processes;
Organizational Culture;
Organizational Structure;
Performance Expectations;
Performance Productivity;
Creativity;
Business Strategy;
Entertainment and Recreation Industry;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
Motion Pictures and Video Industry;
Video Game Industry;
North America;
California;
Canada;
Europe;
Middle East;
Africa;
Asia;
Latin America
- March 2023
- Case
Walmart’s Live Better U
By: Boris Groysberg, Annelena Lobb and Kerry Herman
Walmart’s Live Better U (LBU) program, which allowed its frontline employees and managers to attend college at Walmart’s expense, had expanded and changed over the course of five years. How could Walmart better develop the program for its associates and use it to meet...
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- March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
- Background Note
Workforce Change: The Hidden Costs of Layoffs and Managing Staff Reductions
By: Sandra J. Sucher, Marilyn Morgan Westner and Christopher Diak
Globally, over the past fifty years, more companies have used layoffs to cuts costs during periods of decreased demand or economic downturns. But layoffs have far-reaching consequences, generate hidden costs, and harm the company in myriad ways. This note reviews ways...
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- March 2023
- Case
Layoffs in the Tech Industry: 2022-2023
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Marilyn Morgan Westner
A wave of mass layoffs swept through the tech industry, dominating news from 2022 through spring 2023. Empirical research and longitudinal studies demonstrate that layoffs rarely provide a viable long-term solution to financial problems. Why did so many tech companies...
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- January–February 2023
- Article
Rethink Your Employee Value Proposition: Offer Your People More Than Just Flexibility
By: Mark Mortensen and Amy C. Edmondson
A lot of leaders believe that the formula for attracting and keeping talent is simple: Just ask people what they want and give it to them. The problem is, that approach tends to address only the material aspects of jobs that are top of employees’ minds at the moment,...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Too Many Managers: The Strategic Use of Titles to Avoid Overtime Payments
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun and N. Bugra Ozel
We find widespread evidence of firms appearing to avoid paying overtime wages by exploiting a
federal law that allows them to do so for employees termed as “managers” and paid a salary above a
pre-defined dollar threshold. We show that listings for salaried positions...
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- December 2022
- Case
KKR at CHI Overhead Doors (A)
By: Dennis Campbell and Ethan Rouen
This case examines the decision by private equity firm KKR to grant equity to every employee at portfolio company CHI Overhead Doors upon purchasing the company in 2015. The case explores whether this initiative will create shared value, growing profits through better...
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- 2022
- White Paper
The American Opportunity Index: A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement
By: Matt Sigelman, Joseph Fuller, Nik Dawson and Gad Levanon
The American Opportunity Index: A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement is a new effort to give companies and other stakeholders a set of robust tools that measure how well major employers are doing in fostering economic mobility for workers and how they could do...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
What's My Employee Worth? The Effects of Salary Benchmarking
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Shengwu Li and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
While U.S. legislation prohibits employers from sharing information about their employees’
compensation with each other, companies are still allowed to acquire and use more aggregated
data provided by third parties. Most medium and large firms report using this type...
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- June 2022 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
Netflix’s Culture: Binge or Cringe?
By: Hubert Joly, Leonard A. Schlesinger, James Barnett and Stacy Straaberg
In April 2022, streaming entertainment company Netflix lost customers for the first time in more than 10 years. Once a first mover in the streaming landscape, Netflix was facing competition from Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and others. A key component of...
View Details
Keywords:
Compensation and Benefits;
Employees;
Recruitment;
Resignation and Termination;
Retention;
Selection and Staffing;
Innovation and Management;
Innovation Strategy;
Leadership Style;
Business or Company Management;
Management Style;
Media;
Business Processes;
Organizational Culture;
Organizational Structure;
Performance Expectations;
Performance Productivity;
Creativity;
Business Strategy;
Entertainment and Recreation Industry;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
Motion Pictures and Video Industry;
Video Game Industry;
North America;
California;
Canada;
Europe;
Middle East;
Africa;
Asia;
Latin America
- 2022
- Working Paper
A Conceptualization of Sub-Living Wages: Liabilities, Leverage, and Risk
By: Drew Keller, Katie Panella and George Serafeim
Currently the accounting system records employee wages as an expense in the income statement. However, paying below living wages can expose an organization to reputational and operational risks. In this paper, we offer an alternative conceptualization of the issue of...
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- May 2022
- Article
Variance Analysis: New Insights from Health Care Applications
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Susanna Gallani
We use a health care application to illustrate how variance analysis can be used to benchmark costs across similar service delivery sites. Variances for personnel costs, typically the largest cost component in service organizations, are calculated for price, quantity,...
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- March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Innovation at Moog Inc.
This case focuses on the challenges of incentivizing innovation within Moog, an engineering company based in New York state that designs and builds guidance systems for space, air, and land-based travel. The case enables students to grapple with the challenges of using...
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Keywords:
Innovation;
Innovation Lab;
Innovation Management;
Motivation;
Incentives;
Culture;
Compensation;
Compensation And Benefits;
Scalability;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Collaborative Innovation and Invention;
Independent Innovation and Invention;
Innovation and Management;
Innovation Leadership;
Innovation Strategy;
Organizational Culture;
Performance Consistency;
Performance Effectiveness;
Performance Efficiency;
Performance Productivity;
Performance Evaluation;
Creativity;
Motivation and Incentives;
Aerospace Industry;
Transportation Industry;
United States
- March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
- Teaching Note
France Télécom (A), (B), and (C)
By: Ashley Whillans
This case series discusses the evolution of France Télécom (now Orange) from a national telephone monopoly to a private company. During this process, the company faced numerous challenges including the entry of new competition from other countries and a workforce that...
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- December 2021
- Article
Employee Responses to Compensation Changes: Evidence from a Sales Firm
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
What are the long-term consequences of compensation changes? Using data from an inbound sales call center, we study employee responses to a compensation change that ultimately reduced take-home pay by 7% for the average affected worker. The change caused a significant...
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- September 2021
- Case
Brown Capital Management
By: Luis M. Viceira, Emily R. McComb and Sarah Mehta
Set in July 2021, this case looks at several growth strategies under consideration at Brown Capital, the second-oldest Black-owned asset management firm in the U.S. Since its 1983 founding, Baltimore-based Brown Capital has specialized in small company growth...
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Keywords:
Business Growth and Maturation;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Diversity;
Race;
Finance;
Equity;
Public Equity;
Stocks;
Financial Management;
Financial Strategy;
Investment;
Investment Portfolio;
Employee Stock Ownership Plan;
Recruitment;
Retention;
Selection and Staffing;
Employee Ownership;
Strategy;
Financial Services Industry;
United States;
Maryland;
Baltimore
- Article
Elevate Employees, Don't Eliminate Them
By: Ryan W. Buell
The last major global shock—the 2008 recession—led to what economists call a “jobless recovery” as companies found they could get by with fewer employees. But post-pandemic, the author writes, managers should focus on changing employees’ roles instead. He has five key...
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