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- January 12, 2023
- Article
Progressive Decentralization: A High-level Framework
By: Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers
We explain a high-level framework for designing for future decentralization up front, and offer some guidance about when and how to do so. The guidelines apply to both web3 projects and more traditional organizations.
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Developing a Sustainable High Commitment, High Performance System of Organizing, Managing, and Leading: An Actionable Systems Theory of Change and Development
By: Michael Beer
This paper presents a theory for developing an adaptive high commitment, high performance system of organizing, managing, and leading. It is a synthesis of my 50 years of action and field research presented in my books and articles. It operationalized and makes...
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- September 2022
- Article
A Spanner in the Works: Category-Spanning Entrants and Audience Valuation of Incumbents
By: Rory M. McDonald and Ryan T. Allen
Previous work has examined how audiences evaluate category-spanning organizations, but little is known about how their entrance affects evaluations of other, proximate organizations. We posit that the emergence of category-spanning entrants signals the advent of an...
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- September–October 2022
- Article
Seeking Purity, Avoiding Pollution: Strategies for Moral Career Building
By: Erin Reid and Lakshmi Ramarajan
This study builds theory on how people construct moral careers. Analyzing interviews with 102 journalists, we show how people build moral careers by seeking jobs that allow them to fulfill both the institution’s moral obligations and their own material aims. We...
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- 2022
- Chapter
Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning Toward the Greater Good
By: Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls employed the ‘veil of Ignorance’ as a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial thinking. By imagining the choices of decision-makers who are blind to biasing information, one might see more clearly the organizing...
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- 2022
- Article
Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium
By: Nathan Wilmers and Letian Zhang
Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor
market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial...
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- April 27, 2022
- Article
Inequality in Researchers' Minds: Four Guiding Questions for Studying Subjective Perceptions of Economic Inequality
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Shai Davidai, Daniela Goya-Tocchetto, Barnabas Szaszi, Martin Day, Stephanie Tepper, L. Taylor Phillips, M. Usman Mirza, Nailya Ordabayeva and Oliver P. Hauser
Subjective perceptions of inequality can substantially influence policy attitudes, public health metrics, and societal well-being, but the lack of consensus in the scientific community on how to best operationalize and measure these perceptions may impede progress on...
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- February 2022
- Case
Business Roundtable 2019 Statement: A New Paradigm or Business as Usual?
By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Amram Migdal
This note focuses on the antecedents of, reactions to, and clarifications about The Business Roundtable’s August 19, 2019, “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” The note includes background information on corporate governance as practiced in the United States in...
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- 2022
- Chapter
Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
This chapter explores differences in the making of a ‘modern’ fiscal state under colonial and sovereign rule. Focusing on African and Asian colonies (1820–1970) and their respective European metropoles, it argues that while the introduction of ‘modern’...
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Keywords:
Fiscal Modernization;
Colonial Rule;
Economic History;
Sovereign Finance;
History;
Taxation;
Africa;
Asia
- 2021
- Working Paper
A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective on the Persistence of Racial Inequality at Work
By: Sanaz Mobasseri, Wiliam Kahn and Robin Ely
This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop a theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. companies, treating White men as the dominant group and Black people as an illustrative subordinate group. We theorize that this persistence is rooted...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
ESG: Hyperboles and Reality
By: George Serafeim
ESG has rapidly become a household name leading to both confusion about what it means and creating unrealistic expectations about its effects. In this paper, I draw on more than a decade of research to dispel several myths about ESG and provide answers to important...
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- November 2021
- Article
Corporate Strategy and the Theory of the Firm in the Digital Age
By: Markus Menz, Sven Kunisch, Julian Birkinshaw, David J. Collis, Nicolai J. Foss, Robert E. Hoskisson and John Prescott
The purpose of this article is to reinvigorate research in the intersection of corporate strategy and the theory of the firm in light of the rapid advancement of digital technologies. Using the theory of the firm as an interpretive lens, we focus our analysis on the...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and Georgios Serafeim
We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
This paper explores differences in the making of a ‘modern’ fiscal state under colonial and sovereign rule. Focusing on African and Asian colonies (1820–1970) and their respective European metropoles, it argues that while the introduction of ‘modern’ taxes was part of...
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Keywords:
Economic History;
Fiscal Modernization;
Colonial Rule;
Sovereign Finance;
History;
Taxation;
Africa;
Asia
- 2021
- Article
The Virtues and Limitations of Dynamic Capabilities
By: Bharat Anand and David J. Collis
Dynamic capabilities have been identified as a key determinant of competitive advantage. This paper explores the foundations of dynamic capabilities, and the limits to their effectiveness, first theoretically and then through the case of Danaher, the most successful...
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- 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...
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- Article
Reflections: Toward a Normative and Actionable Theory of Planned Organizational Change and Development
By: Michael Beer
A normative and actionable theory of planned organizational change and development is proposed based on fifty years of engagement by the author as a scholar-consultant. Five principles are central features of the theory and practice proposed: 1) Organizations are...
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- Article
Making a Difference: Developing Actionable Knowledge for Practice and Theory
By: Michael Beer
There is a widely acknowledged gap between academic research and practice. While the field of organizational studies and development has had an impact on management practice in some organizations, it has had only a modest impact on widely accepted management practice...
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- October 2020
- Article
Collusion in Markets with Syndication
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Richard Lowery and Jordan M. Barry
Markets for IPOs and debt issuances are syndicated, in the sense that a bidder who wins a contract may invite losing bidders to join a syndicate that together fulfills the contract. We show that in markets with syndication, standard intuitions from industrial...
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Keywords:
Collusion;
Antitrust;
IPO Underwriting;
Syndication;
＂Repeated Games＂;
Markets;
Game Theory
- 2020
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 3 Transaction Free Zones
In Chapter 2 we saw that the most economical locations for transactions in a task network are the so-called thin crossing points—places where transfers are easy to define, count and pay for. However, in many places in the task network, transfers of material, energy,...
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