Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
  • Research
    • Research
    • Publications
    • Global Research Centers
    • Case Development
    • Initiatives & Projects
    • Research Services
    • Seminars & Conferences
    →
  • Publications→

Publications

Publications

Filter Results : (138) Arrow Down
Filter Results : (138) Arrow Down Arrow Up

Show Results For

  • All HBS Web  (1,632)
    • Faculty Publications  (138)

    Show Results For

    • All HBS Web  (1,632)
      • Faculty Publications  (138)

      Employee Motivation Remove Employee Motivation →

      Page 1 of 138 Results →

      Are you looking for?

      Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model
      Employee Motivation
      → Search All HBS Web
      • January 2021
      • Teaching Note

      Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language

      By: Ashley V. Whillans
      This case explores the growth of Ureed, an online marketplace for translation services that is powered by a workforce consisting of remote freelancers who are based in the United Arab Emirates. Nour Al Hassan, the founder and CEO faced the challenge of how best to...  View Details
      Citation
      Purchase
      Related
      Whillans, Ashley V. "Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 921-028, January 2021.
      • 2021
      • Article

      Helping and Happiness: A Review and Guide for Public Policy

      By: Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans
      Perhaps one of the most reaffirming findings to emerge over the past several decades is that humans not only engage in generous behavior, they also appear to experience pleasure from doing so. Yet not all acts of helping lead to greater happiness. Here, we review the...  View Details
      Keywords: Generosity; Helping; Behavior; motivation And Incentives; Happiness; Policy
      Citation
      Find at Harvard
      Read Now
      Related
      Aknin, Lara B., and Ashley V. Whillans. "Helping and Happiness: A Review and Guide for Public Policy." Social Issues and Policy Review 15 (2021): 3–34.
      • November 2020
      • Teaching Note

      Social Salary Setting at Spiber

      By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears
      This case tells the story of Spiber, a Japanese technology start-up company. To reflect the company’s values, the leadership team implemented a new and unique salary-setting process: each employee had the authority to choose their own salary. In the course of...  View Details
      Keywords: Compensation; General Management; Employee Benefits; Incentives; motivation; Compensation And Benefits; Fairness; motivation And Incentives; Management; Happiness; Negotiation; Cross-cultural And Cross-border Issues; Japan
      Citation
      Related
      Whillans, Ashley, and John Beshears. "Social Salary Setting at Spiber." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 921-014, November 2020.
      • August 2020
      • Article

      Workplace Knowledge Flows

      By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
      We conducted a field experiment in a sales firm to test whether improving knowledge flows between coworkers affects productivity. Our design allows us to compare different management practices and to isolate whether frictions to knowledge transmission primarily reside...  View Details
      Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Interpersonal Communication; employees; Performance Productivity; Sales; motivation And Incentives
      Citation
      Find at Harvard
      Read Now
      Related
      Sandvik, Jason, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert, and Christopher Stanton. "Workplace Knowledge Flows." Quarterly Journal of Economics 135, no. 3 (August 2020): 1635–1680.
      • Article

      Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives

      By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler
      Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are...  View Details
      Keywords: Incentives; Motivation Laundering; Self-signaling; motivation And Incentives; Behavior; Perception
      Citation
      Find at Harvard
      Read Now
      Related
      Kirgios, Erika L., Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman, and Judd B. Kessler. "Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 29 (July 21, 2020): 16891–16897.
      • June 2020 (Revised March 2020)
      • Case

      Social Salary Setting at Spiber

      By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears
      Can a “set your own salary” system boost employee happiness and motivation? Spiber made synthetic silk built from proteins mimicking the proteins found in spider silk, the world’s toughest known material by weight. Kazuhide Sekiyama and Junichi Sugahara established...  View Details
      Keywords: Compensation And Benefits; motivation And Incentives; Happiness; Negotiation Tactics; Cross-cultural And Cross-border Issues; Biotechnology Industry; Japan; United States
      Citation
      Educators
      Purchase
      Related
      Whillans, Ashley, and John Beshears. "Social Salary Setting at Spiber." Harvard Business School Case 920-050, June 2020. (Revised March 2020.)
      • March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
      • Case

      Culture at Google

      By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Amy Klopfenstein and Sarah Mehta
      Beginning in 2017, technology (tech) company Google faced a series of employee-relations issues that threatened its unique culture of innovation and open communication. Issues included protests surrounding Google’s contracts with the U.S. government, restrictions of...  View Details
      Keywords: Human Resources; employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Retention; Resignation And Termination; Labor; Working Conditions; Employment; Labor Unions; Wages; Law; Lawsuits And Litigation; Rights; Ethics; Values And Beliefs; Fairness; Organizations; Organizational Culture; Mission And Purpose; Social Psychology; Attitudes; Behavior; Conflict Management; Trust; motivation And Incentives; Prejudice And Bias; Power And Influence; Technology; Search Technology; Web; Hardware; Society; Social Issues; Culture; Civil Society Or Community; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Gender; Race; Technology Industry; North And Central America; United States; California
      Citation
      Educators
      Purchase
      Related
      Hsieh, Nien-hê, Amy Klopfenstein, and Sarah Mehta. "Culture at Google." Harvard Business School Case 320-050, March 2020. (Revised August 2020.)
      • March 2020 (Revised October 2020)
      • Module Note

      Sales Force Compensation

      By: Doug J. Chung
      The author developed this note for scholars, educators, and practitioners that are interested in sales force compensation. It is based on the author’s investigations across a variety of organizations in multiple industries and provides a conceptual framework for the...  View Details
      Keywords: Sales Strategy; Sales Force Management; Sales Compensation; Salary; Commissions; Bonuses; Quota Setting/updating; Quota Frequency; Extrinsic Vs Intrinsic Motivation; Salesforce Management; Compensation And Benefits; Strategy
      Citation
      Purchase
      Related
      Chung, Doug J. "Sales Force Compensation." Harvard Business School Module Note 520-084, March 2020. (Revised October 2020.)
      • February 2020
      • Article

      Effects of a Tournament Incentive Plan Incorporating Managerial Discretion in a Geographically Dispersed Organization

      By: Carolyn Deller and Tatiana Sandino
      Using retail chain data, we study the effects of a tournament incentive plan based primarily on objective performance, but incorporating managerial discretion in the selection of winners. In principle, such plans could motivate employees to perform both at a high...  View Details
      Keywords: Tournaments; Subjectivity; motivation And Incentives; Fairness; Performance Improvement; Geographic Location
      Citation
      SSRN
      Find at Harvard
      Read Now
      Related
      Deller, Carolyn, and Tatiana Sandino. "Effects of a Tournament Incentive Plan Incorporating Managerial Discretion in a Geographically Dispersed Organization." Management Science 66, no. 2 (February 2020): 911–931.
      • January 2020
      • Case

      Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language

      By: Ashley V. Whillans, Esel Çekin and Alpana Thapar
      Jordanian entrepreneur, Nour Al Hassan, founded Tarjama in 2008, tapping into an underserved and high demand need: Arabic translation service. Its lean model comprised of hiring full-time employees, mainly women, who worked from home. It steadily grew over the...  View Details
      Keywords: Language Translation; Freelancers; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Management; Expansion; Quality; Growth And Development Strategy
      Citation
      Educators
      Purchase
      Related
      Whillans, Ashley V., Esel Çekin, and Alpana Thapar. "Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language." Harvard Business School Case 920-038, January 2020.
      • 2020
      • Working Paper

      Recognition Incentives for Internal Crowdsourcing: A Field Experiment at NASA

      By: Jana Gallus, Olivia S. Jung and Karim R. Lakhani
      What might motivate employees to participate in internal crowdsourcing, a peer-based approach to innovation? Should organizations use incentives that are congruent with their established hierarchical structures, or should they use incentives that are aligned with the...  View Details
      Keywords: Online Platforms; Employee Engagement; Managerial Recognition; Innovation And Management; employees; motivation And Incentives
      Citation
      SSRN
      Read Now
      Related
      Gallus, Jana, Olivia S. Jung, and Karim R. Lakhani. "Recognition Incentives for Internal Crowdsourcing: A Field Experiment at NASA." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-059, November 2019. (Revised May 2020.)
      • September 2019
      • Case

      Shell: A Company of Opportunity?

      By: Joseph B. Fuller and Emer Moloney
      The Opportunity Hub was a cloud-based platform that enabled managers to market projects they were working on and associated resourcing needs as “Opportunity Owners” and employees, or “Opportunity Seekers,” to browse these statements of need and engage when they had...  View Details
      Keywords: Business Divisions; Change Management; Competency And Skills; Experience And Expertise; Talent And Talent Management; Energy; Energy Sources; Non-renewable Energy; Renewable Energy; Human Resources; employees; Retention; Collaborative Innovation And Invention; Innovation And Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Jobs And Positions; Job Design And Levels; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge; Knowledge Use And Leverage; Labor; Human Capital; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Resource Allocation; Organizational Change And Adaptation; Performance Evaluation; Performance Productivity; Strategic Planning; Projects; motivation And Incentives; Business Strategy; Social And Collaborative Networks; Technology Platform; Chemical Industry; Energy Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Netherlands
      Citation
      Educators
      Purchase
      Related
      Fuller, Joseph B., and Emer Moloney. "Shell: A Company of Opportunity?" Harvard Business School Case 320-025, September 2019.
      • August 2019
      • Case

      Bark Gift Shop Ltd.

      By: Susanna Gallani, Jan Bouwens and Peter Kroos
      This case describes a setting in which the CFO of Bark Gift Shop Ltd., a gift items retailer, discovers an undesired pattern in the performance data suggesting that her shop managers that perform well during the first part of the year, purposely reduce their effort in...  View Details
      Keywords: Data Analytics; employees; Behavior; Performance; Management; Goals And Objectives; motivation And Incentives; Analysis
      Citation
      Educators
      Purchase
      Related
      Gallani, Susanna, Jan Bouwens, and Peter Kroos. "Bark Gift Shop Ltd." Harvard Business School Case 120-008, August 2019.
      • 2019
      • Working Paper

      Connecting the Dots: Superordinate Framing Enhances the Value of Unimportant Tasks

      By: Jaewon Yoon, A.V. Whillans and Ed O'Brien
      Each day, people begrudgingly complete mundane tasks. Four experiments (N = 3,502; two pre-registered) reveal that a simple intervention—superordinate framing—can enhance people’s task experiences. In two initial experiments, working adults were asked to describe...  View Details
      Keywords: Superordinate Framing; employees; motivation And Incentives; Goals And Objectives; Mission And Purpose; Perspective
      Citation
      Read Now
      Related
      Yoon, Jaewon, A.V. Whillans, and Ed O'Brien. "Connecting the Dots: Superordinate Framing Enhances the Value of Unimportant Tasks." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-011, July 2019.
      • July 24, 2019
      • Article

      How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating

      By: Jaewon Yoon, A.V. Whillans and Ed O'Brien
      Managers constantly encourage employees to think about why they do the work they do in order to give them a sense of purpose and fight against demotivation. But our latest research—with nearly 4,000 working adults in the U.S.—suggests that this hyperfocus on purpose...  View Details
      Keywords: employees; motivation And Incentives; Goals And Objectives; Perspective
      Citation
      Find at Harvard
      Read Now
      Related
      Yoon, Jaewon, A.V. Whillans, and Ed O'Brien. "How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating." Harvard Business Review (website) (July 24, 2019).
      • June 2019
      • Case

      Athena Bancorp

      By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Sarah Abbott
      Athena Bancorp was founded in 2016 by Beth Daniels, a banking professional with 15 years of experience in the industry. Daniels took advantage of what she perceived as a gap in the market caused by recent industry consolidation, a decreasing industry focus on branch...  View Details
      Keywords: Banks And Banking; Entrepreneurship; Growth And Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Human Resources; Strategy; Service Delivery; Banking Industry
      Citation
      Educators
      Purchase
      Related
      Schlesinger, Leonard A., and Sarah Abbott. "Athena Bancorp." Harvard Business School Brief Case 919-517, June 2019.
      • April 2019 (Revised June 2019)
      • Case

      From Globalization to Dual Digital Transformation: CEO Thierry Breton Leading Atos Into 'Digital Shockwaves' (A)

      By: Tsedal Neeley, JT Keller and James Barnett
      Thierry Breton, chairman and CEO of IT company Atos, faced a pivotal juncture. After spending eight intense years scaling the company globally to over 100,000 employees in 70 countries, he was ready to take the next crucial step. Breton was convinced that rapid digital...  View Details
      Keywords: Dual Digital Transformation; Transformation; Disruption; employees; Competency And Skills; Training; Decision Making
      Citation
      Educators
      Purchase
      Related
      Neeley, Tsedal, JT Keller, and James Barnett. "From Globalization to Dual Digital Transformation: CEO Thierry Breton Leading Atos Into 'Digital Shockwaves' (A)." Harvard Business School Case 419-027, April 2019. (Revised June 2019.)
      • April 2019
      • Article

      Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence

      By: Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael Menietti
      Understanding why employees go the extra mile at work is a key problem for many organizations. We conduct a field experiment at a medical organization to study motivations for employees to submit project proposals for organizational improvement. In total, we analyze...  View Details
      Keywords: Field Experiment; Innovation; Contest; Incentives; Free-rider Problem; Healthcare Organizations; employees; motivation And Incentives; Innovation And Invention; Organizations; Performance Improvement; Perspective
      Citation
      Find at Harvard
      Related
      Blasco, Andrea, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani, and Michael Menietti. "Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 160 (April 2019): 214–229.
      • 2019
      • Working Paper

      Learning or Playing? The Effect of Gamified Training on Performance

      By: Ryan W. Buell, Wei Cai and Tatiana Sandino
      Gamified training is a novel management control system in which companies use gamification techniques to engage and motivate employees to learn. This study empirically examines the performance consequences of gamified training by conducting a field experiment in a...  View Details
      Keywords: Gamified Training; Management Control Systems; Employee Engagement; employees; Learning; Training; motivation And Incentives; Performance
      Citation
      Read Now
      Related
      Buell, Ryan W., Wei Cai, and Tatiana Sandino. "Learning or Playing? The Effect of Gamified Training on Performance." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-101, March 2019.
      • March–April 2019
      • Article

      The Future of Leadership Development

      By: Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu
      The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that...  View Details
      Keywords: Talent Management; Executive Education; Leadership Development; Business Education; Management Skills; Learning; Online Technology
      Citation
      Find at Harvard
      Related
      Narayandas, Das, and Mihnea Moldoveanu. "The Future of Leadership Development." Harvard Business Review 97, no. 4 (March–April 2019): 40–48. (Spotlight Talent Management.)
      • 1
      • 2
      • …
      • 6
      • 7
      • →

      Are you looking for?

      Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model
      Employee Motivation
      → Search All HBS Web
      ǁ
      Campus Map
      Harvard Business School
      Soldiers Field
      Boston, MA 02163
      →Map & Directions
      →More Contact Information
      • Make a Gift
      • Site Map
      • Jobs
      • Harvard University
      • Trademarks
      • Policies
      • Digital Accessibility
      Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College