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Professor Myers examines the traits and characteristics that make people effective at learning from experience—characteristics that are...
- July 2021
- Article
Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy
By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons
We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting...
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- May–June 2021
- Article
Why Start-ups Fail
If you’re launching a business, the odds are against you: Two-thirds of start-ups never show a positive return. Unnerved by that statistic, a professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School set out to discover why. Based on interviews and surveys with hundreds...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?
By: Benjamin Enke, Uri Gneezy, Brian Hall, David Martin, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman and Jeroen van de Ven
Despite decades of research on heuristics and biases, empirical evidence on the effect of large incentives—as present in relevant economic decisions—on cognitive biases is scant. This paper tests the effect of incentives on four widely documented biases: base rate...
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- January 11, 2021
- Article
The Breach of the U.S. Capitol Was a Breach of Trust
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta
This article frames the January 6th attack of the U.S. Capitol as a betrayal of our trust in government. Using Sucher and Gupta’s trust framework, the article explains how the attacks were a failure of the four elements of trust: competence, motives, fair means, and...
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- Editorial
Why ESG Funds Fail to Scale
By: Gabriel Karageorgiou and George Serafeim
You’ve seen the headlines about the growth in environmental, social, and governance funds. Many investment professionals might read these and believe that launching a new ESG investment firm or ESG offering will be an automatic success. Our analysis of the data shows...
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Keywords:
ESG;
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
ESG Disclosure;
ESG Disclosure Metrics;
ESG Ratings;
ESG Reporting;
Investment Management;
Investment Strategy;
Investments;
Investment Fund;
Sustainability;
Sustainable Finance;
Sustainable Investing;
Investment;
Management;
Strategy;
Investment Portfolio;
Finance;
Growth and Development;
Failure
- January 2021
- Supplement
What Went Wrong with Boeing’s 737 Max? (B)
By: William W. George and Amram Migdal
Following the March 10, 2019, crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, en route to Nairobi, Kenya and the October 29, 2018, downing of Lion Air flight 610 as it took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, Boeing’s 737 Max jet, the model flown in both instances, was grounded by...
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Keywords:
Ethics;
Values and Beliefs;
Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Governance Controls;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Leadership;
Management;
Business or Company Management;
Crisis Management;
Risk Management;
Organizations;
Organizational Culture;
Problems and Challenges;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Safety;
Failure;
Transportation;
Air Transportation;
Aerospace Industry;
Air Transportation Industry;
North America;
United States
- 2021
- Working Paper
No-fault Default, Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and Financial Institutions
By: Robert C. Merton and Richard T. Thakor
This paper analyzes the costs and benefits of a no-fault-default debt structure as an alternative to the typical bankruptcy process. We show that the deadweight costs of bankruptcy can be avoided or substantially reduced through no-fault-default debt, which permits a...
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- Article
Resilience vs. Vulnerability: Psychological Safety and Reporting of Near Misses with Varying Proximity to Harm in Radiation Oncology
By: Palak Kundu, Olivia Jung, Amy C. Edmondson, Nzhde Agazaryan, John Hegde, Michael Steinberg and Ann Raldow
Background
Psychological safety, a shared belief that interpersonal risk taking is safe, is an important determinant of incident reporting. However, how psychological safety affects near-miss reporting is unclear, as near misses contain contrasting cues that... View Details
Psychological safety, a shared belief that interpersonal risk taking is safe, is an important determinant of incident reporting. However, how psychological safety affects near-miss reporting is unclear, as near misses contain contrasting cues that... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
IBM Watson at MD Anderson Cancer Center
By: Shane Greenstein, Mel Martin and Sarkis Agaian
After discovering that their cancer diagnostic tool, designed to leverage the cloud computing power of IBM Watson, needed greater integration into the clinical processes at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the development team had difficult choices to make. The Oncology...
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Keywords:
Decision Making;
Innovation Strategy;
Knowledge Management;
Knowledge Use and Leverage;
Operations;
Failure;
Technology;
Information Technology;
Software;
Health Care and Treatment;
Product Development;
Health Industry;
Information Technology Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States;
Houston;
Texas
- 2020
- Working Paper
Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial...
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- October 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
When Institutions Fail: HIV/AIDS in the 1980s
By: Tom Nicholas and Christian Godwin
During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting...
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Keywords:
Ethics;
Policy;
Government and Politics;
Health Pandemics;
History;
Rights;
Media;
Organizations;
Business and Community Relations;
Religion;
Social Psychology;
Identity;
Prejudice and Bias;
Social Issues;
Public Opinion;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
Biotechnology Industry;
Health Industry;
Journalism and News Industry;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
Public Administration Industry;
United States
- 2020
- Working Paper
Heterogeneity of Gain-Loss Attitudes and Expectations-Based Reference Points
By: Thomas Graeber, Lorenz Goette, Alex Kellogg and Charles Sprenger
We examine the role of heterogeneity in gain-loss attitudes for identifying the leading behavioral model of expectations-based reference dependence (Kőszegi and Rabin, 2006, 2007) (KR). Failure to account for recently-documented heterogeneity in gain-loss attitudes is...
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- Fall 2020
- Article
Sizing Up Corporate Restructuring in the COVID Crisis
By: Robin Greenwood, Benjamin Iverson and David Thesmar
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need to deal with a surge of financial distress in the business sector. Some firms will be able to survive, while others will face bankruptcy and thus need to be liquidated or reorganized. Many...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
When Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? The Role of Negative Information in Expert Evaluations for Novel Projects
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani
The evaluation of novel projects lies at the heart of scientific and technological innovation, and yet literature suggests that this process is subject to inconsistency and potential biases. This paper investigates the role of information sharing among experts as the...
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- July 2020
- Article
Intra-firm Geographic Mobility: Value Creation Mechanisms and Future Research Directions
This paper argues that intra-firm geographic mobility is an understudied mechanism that can help mitigate coordination failures in a geographically distributed organization. The paper presents an organizing framework on how intra-firm geographic mobility creates value...
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- June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
What Went Wrong with Boeing's 737 Max?
By: William W. George and Amram Migdal
This case describes the development of the Boeing 737 Max airplane model and the events leading up to two tragic plane crashes, in which a total of 346 people died: the crash of Lion Air flight 610 on October 29, 2018, in Indonesia, and the crash of Ethiopian Airlines...
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Keywords:
Communication;
Communication Intention and Meaning;
Communication Strategy;
Forms of Communication;
Announcements;
Decision Making;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Judgments;
Ethics;
Moral Sensibility;
Values and Beliefs;
Globalization;
Global Strategy;
Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Governance Controls;
Human Resources;
Resignation and Termination;
Leadership;
Leadership Style;
Management;
Business or Company Management;
Crisis Management;
Management Practices and Processes;
Management Skills;
Management Style;
Management Systems;
Risk Management;
Time Management;
Markets;
Demand and Consumers;
Market Platforms;
Supply and Industry;
Duopoly and Oligopoly;
Industry Structures;
Operations;
Product Development;
Organizations;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Culture;
Outcome or Result;
Failure;
Success;
Planning;
Strategic Planning;
Problems and Challenges;
Relationships;
Business and Community Relations;
Business and Government Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Safety;
Strategy;
Transportation;
Air Transportation;
Aerospace Industry;
Air Transportation Industry;
Africa;
Ethiopia;
Asia;
Indonesia;
North and Central America;
United States;
Seattle;
Chicago
- Article
Using the Balanced Scorecard for Successful Health Care M&A Integration
By: Robert S. Kaplan
The failure of merged organizations to achieve stated goals is commonplace. In health care, the challenge is exacerbated by the industry’s third-party payer system and multiple stakeholders, especially the physicians in the merging entities. This article describes how...
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- April 29, 2020
- Article
The Case for AI Insurance
By: Ram Shankar Siva Kumar and Frank Nagle
When organizations place machine learning systems at the center of their businesses, they introduce the risk of failures that could lead to a data breach, brand damage, property damage, business interruption, and in some cases, bodily harm. Even when companies are...
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- April 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Amazon in China and India
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey
Amazon has been unsuccessful in its efforts to develop a business in China. Even though Amazon was an early entrant into China’s e-commerce space, its domestic rivals, especially Alibaba, created innovative business models uniquely suited for the conditions in China. ...
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