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- December 10, 2021
- Editorial
Go Ahead and Ask for More Time on that Deadline
By: A.V. Whillans
Unrealistic deadlines don’t help anyone — and yet more often than not, employees avoid asking for extensions even when they know more time would help them do a better job. Through a series of studies with more than 4,000 working adults, the author illustrates how...
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- Column
The Changing Geography of Work: Priorities for Policy Makers
The COVID-19 pandemic thrust the issue of how and where we work into the spotlight. The adoption of remote and hybrid work increased exponentially as lockdowns necessitated social distancing. But now, as we enter a new phase of the pandemic, the Geography of Work—where...
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Keywords:
Remote Work;
Hybrid Work Model;
Work-from-anywhere;
Employees;
Geographic Location;
Policy
- 2021
- Article
Adaptive Machine Unlearning
By: Seth Neel
Data deletion algorithms aim to remove the influence of deleted data points from trained models at a cheaper computational cost than fully retraining those models. However, for sequences of deletions, most prior work in the non-convex setting gives valid guarantees...
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Keywords:
Machine Learning
- October 2021
- Case
The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats or Levelling Down?
By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi
Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country’s labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of...
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- September 28, 2021
- Editorial
A Guide to Implementing the 4-Day Workweek: Working Less Can Reduce Employees' Stress—Without Sacrificing Productivity
By: Ashley Whillans and Charlotte Lockhart
As organizations continue to explore a variety of flexible work options, one promising avenue is the four-day workweek: The standard 40 hours per week is reduced to 32 hours, with the same pay and the same productivity expectations. Research suggests reducing hours can...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Being the Boss: Gig Workers' Value of Flexible Work
By: Laura Katsnelson and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
Workers who join the gig economy face a challenging trade-off. Gig work provides worktime flexibility and a sense of being one’s own boss, but gig workers forgo certain protections that employees enjoy. In this paper, we study the work patterns of a large sample of...
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- May–June 2021
- Article
How to Close the Gender Gap
By: Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg
Most companies say they’re committed to advancing women into leadership roles. What they may fail to recognize, though, is that systemic barriers are holding women back. As a result, women remain disadvantaged at every stage of their employment and underrepresented in...
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- April 2021
- Article
Work-From-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographical Flexibility
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi and Barbara Larson
An emerging form of remote work allows employees to work-from-anywhere, so that the worker can choose to live in a preferred geographic location. While traditional work-from-home (WFH) programs offer the worker temporal flexibility, work-from-anywhere (WFA) programs...
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- March 2021
- Supplement
Toyota and Its Labor Union in Argentina (C)
By: Jorge Tamayo, Erik Snowberg and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
Toyota Argentina (TASA) and the union representing automotive industry workers in the country had been working together since 2011 to address the challenges faced by Toyota’s manufacturing plant in Zárate (Argentina). In 2019, after achieving all the goals set forward...
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- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Toyota and Its Labor Union in Argentina (B)
By: Jorge Tamayo, Erik Snowberg and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
Toyota Argentina (TASA) and the union representing automotive industry workers in the country had been working together since 2011 to address the challenges faced by Toyota’s manufacturing plant in Zárate (Argentina). The strategy for moving forward was built on an...
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- July 2020 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Mr. Five Percent: Calouste Gulbenkian and the Origins of Global Oil
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yazeed Al-Rashed
This case describes the business career of Calouste Gulbenkian, a skilled intermediary who was able to secure 5 percent of a vast oil concession covering much of the Middle East that was signed in 1928. Gulbenkian was an ethnic Armenian born in the Ottoman Empire,...
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Keywords:
Oil;
Globalization;
Energy Sources;
History;
Biography;
Energy Industry;
Turkey;
Central Asia;
Middle East
- May 5, 2020
- Article
Why the Crisis Is Putting Companies at Risk of Losing Female Talent
By: Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg
There has been a massive shift in how work gets done inside many companies and the global pivot to working remotely will likely change how many think about face time and rigid work schedules. Might these changes benefit women? The authors argue that will depend on how...
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- March 2020
- Article
Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-family Narrative as a Social Defense Against 24/7 Work Culture
By: Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid
It is widely accepted that the conflict between women’s family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is incomplete: men also experience it and nevertheless...
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- January 2020
- Case
Freelancer, Ltd.
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes
Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500...
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- October 2019
- Teaching Note
Google: To TVC or Not to TVC?
By: William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg
A Teaching Note for the "Google: To TVC or Not to TVC?" case study (HBS#820-048). The case discusses recent controversies regarding how Google manages temporary help agency workers, workers supplied by vendors, and independent contractors ("TVCs"). Such TVCs reportedly...
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Keywords:
Workforce;
Independent Contractors;
Talent Management;
Silicon Valley;
Google;
Employee Attitude;
Employee Compensation;
Employee Engagement;
Future Of Work;
Innovation;
Innovation And Strategy;
Inequality;
Talent Acquisition;
Labor;
Talent and Talent Management;
Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Employees;
Attitudes;
Innovation and Management;
Human Resources;
Information Technology Industry;
United States;
San Francisco
- September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
Google: To TVC or Not to TVC?
By: William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg
In late 2018, evidence emerged that many of Google’s temporary help agency workers, vendors, and independent contractors (“TVCs”) were unhappy with the company. TVCs, who reportedly made up 49.95% of Google’s 170,000-person global workforce, had raised concerns of...
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Keywords:
Workforce;
Independent Contractors;
Talent Management;
Silicon Valley;
Google;
Employee Attitude;
Employee Compensation;
Employee Engagement;
Future Of Work;
Innovation;
Innovation And Strategy;
Inequality;
Talent Acquisition;
Labor;
Talent and Talent Management;
Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Employees;
Attitudes;
Innovation and Management;
Human Resources;
Equality and Inequality;
Information Technology Industry;
United States;
San Francisco
- August 2019 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Unifying Divisions: Joro's Mission to Preserve the Planet
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Marilyn Morgan Westner
The case focuses on the initial startup team and Founders’ agreements. In March 2018, Sanchali Pal proposed renegotiating the informal founders’ agreement and equity split she and her co-founders had drafted the previous spring. They had been working together for over...
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- April 2019 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
Handy: The Future of Work? (A)
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Kieron Stopforth
Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy’s founders faced a series of decisions. Handy was an online platform business that enabled customers to book appointments...
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- November 2018
- Case
frog design
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
The case follows the genesis and development of Palo, a radical urban communications hub designed to replace payphone booths on Manhattan’s city streets, through a joint venture between frog design and a venture-backed firm LQD WiFi. The case explores the complexity of...
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- May 2018
- Supplement
Abe on Womenomics, part 1: Introductions & Japan's Corporate Culture: Excerpt from Opening Address to the World Assembly of Women, Tokyo, August 28, 2015
By: Boris Groysberg
This video supplement part one of a lightly edited 2015 speech by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in which he describes Womenomics--policies and aspirations to promote greater economic participation by Japan's women, thereby promoting economic growth, greater...
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Keywords:
Gender Equality;
Japan;
Leadership;
Government-business Relations;
Shinzo Abe;
Economic Growth;
Aging Society;
Womenomics;
Abenomics;
Labor Market Discrimination;
Workplace Culture;
Women And Leadership;
Change Management;
Leading Change;
Gender;
Business and Government Relations;
Growth and Development;
Employment;
Working Conditions;
Japan